What the CIA Knows That You Don’t: AI, Espionage, and the Future of America | Andrew Bustamante PT 1

Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In today’s episode, we have an electrifying conversation with Andrew Bustamante, a celebrated former CIA operative and the driving force behind Everyday Spy. Andrew and Tom dive deep into a spectrum of compelling topics, from the intricate dynamics of international politics and the evolution of warfare with AI, to the pressing issue of national security and the challenges of managing government efficiency. We kick things off with a light-hearted observation about Tom’s new wardrobe choices, but quickly transition into an intense dissection of cultural differences between East and West, illustrated by Andrew's experiences in Japan. The duo explores how malleable humanity is and the profound impact of childhood experiences on individual development. SHOWNOTES 00:00 U. S. Unpreparedness During Transition Period 16:17 Government's Role in National Continuity 20:39 "Deep State's Capitalism Critique" 37:30 US Military Stretched Thin 42:31 "AI Verification for Balanced Insights" 52:25 "Bold Threats and Potential Fallout" 01:09:48 Desired Female President: Authentic and Inspiring 01:16:18 Embrace Bad Ideas for Innovation CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://landroverUSA.com https://landroverusa.com Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out. Goldback: Goldbacks are currency for now, and for the future, get yours at https://alpinegold.com/shop-precious-metals/ref/impact RoboForm: Protect yourself and get 60% off your first year with RoboForm at https://www.roboform.com/lp?frm=promo-discount-50&affid=tbily https://www.roboform.com/lp?frm=promo-discount-50&affid=tbily 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 SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. 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. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** 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 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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• 1:08Speaker 01

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• 1:37Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm Tom Viliou, and this is Impact Theory. Here is the reality. The balance of power is being completely redefined. Governments are making big moves that aren't making headlines. AI is no longer just a tool. It's a game changer reshaping influence. And global alliances that seemed unbreakable are already starting to fracture. Whether you see it or not, these changes are going to hit you where it matters most: your freedom, your finances, and your future. If you want to navigate this, you need to see the moves coming before they hit you. My guest today is former CIA officer who spent years operating in a world where power isn't just a concept, it's a weapon. He knows exactly who's pulling the strings, why they're doing it, and how you can position yourself to stay ahead of the curve.

• 2:22Tom Bilyeu?

  So without further ado, let's jump right into my time with the one and only Andrew Bustamante. Tomorrow, the president is going to get a briefing from CIA on his desk. What should be in that briefing?

• 2:35Speaker 02

  That's a great question. It's it's going to be a different briefing than it was yesterday, which is it goes without saying. But at the same time, what we're finding in the intelligence community, both publicly and non publicly, is that assessments have not been accurate. For about two and a half years now, intelligence assessments have not been accurate. If you recall, America misassessed what was going to happen in Afghanistan with the withdrawal. America did not correctly assess how fast Russia and Ukraine was going to resolve. America did not anticipate what was going to happen between Israel and Hamas, let alone Israel's incursions then into Lebanon and now into the Golan Heights. And for sure, the United States was unprepared for what happened in Syria over the last two to three weeks.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  So the big question is, why are the assessments wrong? And how do you fix that moving forward? Now, one thing that's not being talked about in the press that should be talked about in the press is that ever since nine 11,

• 3:30Speaker 02

  we've known as a federal government that one of the most vulnerable points for American national security is the transition period between the end of one election and the emergence of a new president, the first hundred days of a new president. So nine 11 happened during that window. What we're seeing right now is that window has presented itself again. And inside of that window, what have you seen? You've seen the Ershtnik come out of Russia. You've seen Ukraine start firing American weapons. You've seen Biden approve more money than than he believes Trump will approve. You've seen Syria completely change hand handoff and takeover. You've seen Israel make incredible progress in the Golan Heights.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  We're seeing people exploiting what is now known as a vulnerable period for America. What else are we yet to see? Because January 6th is when the new president is ratified, but there's still generally another hundred days after that before they start taking active charge. So whatever the current CIA is seeing, Director Burns is seeing. Has got to be speaking about assessments that he doesn't trust. And the incoming CIA Director Ratcliffe, most likely, has also has to be preparing for the fact that he doesn't know if he can trust the assessments he's getting.

• 4:48Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting. So in in that situation, what what can Ratcliffe do to figure out, not even figure out, what can Ratcliffe do to be able to trust the agents in the field?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  It's not a problem with the agents in the field, and this is a great thing that we're seeing with Cash Patel, the nominee for the FBI Director. One of the things, non-publicly, again, that's happening, but people don't see it happening, is that Donald Trump is bringing in people that are publicly known, but not necessarily qualified for the positions that he's nominating them for. And that's got the world in an uproar. And the media is talking about that. What the media is not talking about is the incredible amount of effort that's happening on the back end, where Trump is trying to build advisory panels that are very knowledgeable about the topics. So he essentially wants his cronies to come in and support him in their positions, but he's backfilling them with advisors that know what the hell they're talking about.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  This isn't a new model. This is something that's been happening ever since the second George Bush that we know of, where they bring in cronies, but then they support the cronies with advisors. It's just happening in a different way with Donald Trump. So Cash Patel has come in and he's made it very clear. He doesn't trust the senior echelons of FBI. And his efforts to try to route out troubled or troubled factors at FBI is really going to be looking at the leadership of FBI, not looking at the rank and file. Ratcliffe's doing the same thing. He knows that the working level field operator, field analyst, field tech ops person hasn't been politicized yet. They're they're still ideologically predisposed to serving American interests.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  It's not until three, four, five tours in 12, 15 years of service that you start thinking, well, How do I maximize my retirement? How do I get to the top of the food chain before I punch out? How do I make? Because that's when you start having kids that are in high school age, getting onto college. That's when you start having your first or second divorce that you're trying to fund. It becomes difficult.

• 6:51Tom Bilyeu?

  The first or second divorce you're trying to fund.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  I mean, that's.

• 6:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Realistic way to look at it.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  It's hard. It's hard when you are a field operator. You do three phenomenal tours. You don't have any problem making $80,000 a year to live in Washington DC or capitals around the world. And then you come back to a spouse that's disappointed because for the last 10 years, you've picked a different spouse over that person. You've picked a career over your partner. And then there's a divorce and then you lose half your net worth. And then you're 40 years old, making $90,000 a year, but everything's cut in half and your spouse takes it. And everybody you love and everyone you believe in is gone and you're left with a career. So you rebuild again and you double down in that career. Those are the people that become the problem.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Because those are the people who rise up in power through a process that we call riding coattails. Some people call it having a rabbi. Some people call it having a godfather. You're not the most qualified. You're just loyal to the person above you who's loyal to the person above them, who's loyal to the person above them. All of a sudden, the people in their last 10 years of service are much less loyal to the American people than the people in the first 10 years of their career. Ratcliffe, I think, knows that. Cash Patel knows that. So as they come in from the outside, they can kick the hornet's nest with very little cause for repercussion.

• 8:14Tom Bilyeu?

  So what becomes the play? How do they do this well? How do we solve the deep state problem?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  So first, I don't like to call it the deep state problem. I think it's more of a inefficiency, government incompetence problem. Because it's not about meritorious service. It's not about having skills in your job that take you up to the top. It's about who you're loyal to that takes you up to the top. That becomes the exact same problem that we see people criticizing in Russia, in Israel, in Iran, where leadership doesn't want to brief up the truth. They don't want to tell their senior leaders. Bad news because they're afraid they're afraid that if I brief up bad news, I'll be held accountable, or if I brief up bad news, I'll be punished or whatever else. I won't

• 9:01Speaker 02

  be in the rabbis' good graces anymore. So I'll get kicked out. Well, what do you think led to all the bad assessments in the intelligence arena for the United States over the last two years?

• 9:11Tom Bilyeu?

  So you're saying the people on the front line, they get what's going on, they report what's going on, but then people are afraid of the messenger being killed and so they lie?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Sort of. Here's, let me, I'm gonna get too much in the weeds so that you can pull me out to where it's helpful.

• 9:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  A field operator will write on average between two and four reports a day, right? So a field core collector, they're called for CIA, will write between two and four reports a day. Those two and four reports that are written are written to be delivered to Langley, Virginia, headquarters for CIA. But they won't get to Langley for between 48 and 21 or two days and three days because for the next two to three days, they'll sit in the queue in their field office and be edited by middle management. Edited to say what middle management wants to make sure Langley hears, but is different than what actually happened.

• 10:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Right. Is it, is it as innocent as spin? Or is it really, I gotta find a way to say this, that's not going to raise the blood pressure of my godfather?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Uh, it's three things, really. There's spin to make sure that they can secure more funds for operations in the future. So if I'm having a mediocre operation, it might get spun to sound more optimistic so that we can secure funding next quarter for the continuation of this operation. So there is spin. Then there's also, we don't want to raise eyebrows. We don't want to raise blood pressure. So we'll dampen down a little bit of the more concerning parts and we'll amp up a little bit of the more comforting parts. So now we might tamper down the fact that the case officer didn't do a complete SDR or the case officer, uh, you know, didn't fulfill a report about something else, whatever. We'll damp down the bad news, pump up the good news so that it just kind of skates through Langley.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  And then the third piece is that what we want to do is we also want to make sure that we don't, uh, we don't give anybody the impression that we're doing something wrong. Because the last thing that senior management wants in the field is somebody at Langley to come back and say, what are you thinking letting this person do this or do that? So receipts, expenses, how many operations are doing in a week? How many operations are doing in a day? All of that'll get kind of massaged. So there's a lot of massaging that happens before it even leaves the field office to get to Langley. And then when it gets to Langley, it hits what's known as an operating desk. Operations desks are managed by the lowest level, youngest officers. And then those operating officers at the desk will be the ones that read 15 reports,

• 11:43Speaker 02

  but then only highlight the most important three or four for their supervisor, who highlights the most important one or two for his supervisor or her supervisor, who highlights the most important one or two that goes to the analysis wing that makes the president's daily brief.

• 11:57Tom Bilyeu?

  That is an absolutely brilliant breakdown of the problem because it's so mundane, it's so human. This is exactly what I know people to be like. Do you view this as an intractable problem that we will never be able to solve?

• 12:10Speaker 02

  This is where I have my reservations. I'm optimistic but reserved in my optimism for what Donald Trump is trying to do with the new organization that he created, DOGE? Is that what the new organization is?

• 12:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, Department of Governmental Efficiency.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Because the government is inherently inefficient. That's what it was built to be. It wasn't accidentally made to be inefficient. It was built to be inefficient so that it could withstand the constant transition of change in government.

• 12:43Tom Bilyeu?

  I think we have to define, and maybe I'm debating you, but there's two kinds of inefficiency. There's gridlock, which I think the government was literally designed to do. And if people understand the difference between Congress and Senate, they will understand the Senate is meant to cool down the emotions of the Congress, which has everything to do with how they're elected. Originally, the Senate wasn't even elected. So you have Congress, very sensitive to their constituents, Senate not so much, meant to cool it down, right versus left, meant to gridlock so that only the things that both sides agree on get through. But then there's the inefficiencies that you just described, which is what I will call, it's humans acting in their individual best interest, so I understand that, but it equates to lunacy. So it's all short-term thinking, never long-term thinking.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  I agree with what you're saying, and I would still say that the government was designed to be

• 13:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Both kinds of inefficient?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Operationally inefficient, correct.

• 13:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Was it designed to have the short-term thinking versus long-term thinking?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  No, no. It was designed to be slow to make process, slow to make progress. So even though you've got the built-in child, the built-in, um, gridlock, to use your term.

• 13:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  You've got the gridlock element to make sure that bipartisan or the best ideas make it to the top. Survive the gridlock. There's that idea, but then those things have to be implemented. That's where the operational inefficiency comes in. So you also have to consider the fact that the government has to survive. We've talked about this, you and I, before. The government of the American people has to survive even more so than the American people themselves. Right? If we were to have something happen that wiped out two-thirds of the American population. If the US government existed, then the idea of America exists. Therefore, we survive. It's no longer an existential threat to have something that kills two-thirds of the, of the population.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  That's how the government was built. So the reason you have so many government jobs, the reason you have so many government offices, the reason you have so many government middle managers is essentially to build in an inefficiency that makes it so that progress happens slowly. So that a president can come in and have a, a great idea that everybody agrees to the last year of their term. The world changes two months later, six months later. A new president takes over and then they come up with a new great idea. Over that, all that volatility of two years, the actual operation of bringing the first good idea to light never really takes off. That's how the government is built.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  It's built so that you can't be a, a hot shot second year officer that immediately becomes the director of CIA. You have to serve the 15 years before you get a cha, a chance on the seventh floor. That's how it's built, completely the opposite of the way that the corporate world is built. Like, it's completely the opposite of the way that the American dream is built.

• 15:41Tom Bilyeu?

  How is it different than the corporate world?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  In the corporate world, if you're badass sales, badass marketing, badass product, you can shoot right to the top. If you've got proven value over everyone else, you can go right to the head of the line. And then you can hold the head of the line until you either melt down or a competitor creeps up that's superior to you. You see it especially in the arts. How many actors, musicians, artists come in, they're unknown, they create a work of brilliance, of genius, of genius, the population gets behind them, money gets behind them, investors get behind them, they shoot to the top of their game, they burn out on drugs, they burn out on something else, they fall, they crash to the bottom, maybe they reinvent themselves, they scream back up to the top.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  We've seen this dozens of times. You see, movies are made about artists who have had that exact kind of skyrocket and crash, right? The government can't afford that. That is dangerous to government operations. So they tamp all that down by forcing an inefficiency, by forcing a minimum number of years of service before you're eligible for promotion. Nobody can promote higher than one level above where they currently are. So you can't-

• 16:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Was that defined by the founding fathers though, or is this something that's arisen over time?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  That's something that's arisen over time.

• 16:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, see, I think we have to tease out, the government was designed to do this. When I hear that, I hear founding fathers. And the government was, the government with a blind watchmaker has ended up like this. And so, call it evolutionary design. Because I think that the gridlock, intentional, founding fathers wanted that, they knew human nature well enough. It sounds to me like what you don't like calling the deep state, which I like calling the deep state, only because if you, if you accept this as, this is just how humans are, they're going to, they're going to go through that divorce, they're going to need to fund it, so they're suddenly going to be looking for their godfather who wants a loyalist below them, who thusly is loyal to the person above them.

• 17:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, I get how that all plays out. But if you don't attack that, then I think you have a problem. Now, here's the only difference that I see between the government and corporate America. Quick break here, but don't go anywhere. Andrew Bustamante is just getting started.

• 17:55Tom Bilyeu?

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• 18:40Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:24Tom Bilyeu?

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• 20:05Speaker 02

  We're back. Let's dive right in.

• 20:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, here's the only difference that I see between the government and corporate America. Corporate America can't hide because you will go out of business. The government can steal the money of its constituents. Really, truly, the more I look at this, the more I realize that's exactly what's happening. And because the government can steal money and they don't have to get you to vote for everything. They can just keep doing this forever and ever and ever, operating at these huge losses from a deficit perspective. And there's all kinds of mechanisms by which they will sooner take us to war instead of confronting the fact that they just need to stop spending the money. Okay, so corporate America, cold hard reality of being out in the marketplace. If you don't have enough money to make payroll, you go out of business.

• 20:51Tom Bilyeu?

  This is why the banking industry deranges because the government basically does the same thing with the banking industry. And so it's no longer true capitalism. Because the government isn't true capitalism, this thing that I call the deep state to wake people up so they understand it is sinister. In as much as, yes, it's just an echo of human foibles and weakness. I get that. I understand how each individual actor thinking short term makes the decisions that they make. But if we were able to point at and say, this is the KPI that this government, and this is really what Doge is about. This is a KPI that this department is held accountable to. And if you don't hit that, then we're going to start firing people. And it's that simple. And I think that once you understand it was not designed that way with intention by well meaning people anyway.

• 21:36Tom Bilyeu?

  It was designed by selfish, short term people over evolutionary timeframes within, you know, governmental structures. I mean, obviously, the last couple hundred years. But we should not want that as far as I can tell, and we should want to bust that up. But it seems like you think there's a good thing here.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. So, so.

• 21:56Tom Bilyeu?

  We want to smooth out the volatility.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just to be clear, I don't think there's a big gap between you and I. In terms of our ambitions for what we want the future to look like. I would even go to say, in terms of the imperatives that you and I know the future must look like. I don't think there's a big gap between us. I think where there is a gap between us is in the battlefield truth. And the battle, as an example, right? The federal government does not use work instructions.

• 22:28Tom Bilyeu?

  What does that mean?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  A corporation uses work instructions, meaning you can hire a new person, bring them into an office, and you can literally give them access to a folder, standards, standard operating procedures. Standard operating procedures, in my understanding, in my experience in corporate America, and in our business at Everyday Spy, we create SOPs, which are standard operating procedures. Here's the standard operation of how you bring a product to market. Here's a standard operating procedure of how you run a marketing campaign. And then inside that SOP, we have links to work instructions, which tell you step-by-step checklists, how you do each thing that must be done inside the SOP.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  The government does not use work instructions, and by and large, the government does not use SOPs. Most of the government is written on the back of what's known as institutional knowledge, and on-the-job training, OJT. So a new person comes in, they go through training, they go through onboarding and orientation, and then they go to their office where they're taught through some senior person, or mid-ranked person, how to actually do the job. It's not documented, there's rarely a checklist, there's rarely a work instruction, there's rarely an SOP. The military does the best job of having actual checklists, and those checklists, or you just follow them blindly, so they don't live like a work instruction.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  They don't get updated with new technology updates, they don't get updated with new systematic software updates. They just, they exist until they're rewritten, and then they exist again. That type of continuity is a very difficult thing for the government. They don't have a best practice around that, because to your exact point, short-term interests, people want to make sure they always have a job. If they make a work instruction and an SOP, that could lead to an automation that could cost them their job. And inside the federal government, all you have to do, there's a state, there's a saying, you just wait out your leadership change, because every year, somebody has to get promoted. Every two years, somebody new gets appointed. Every four years, somebody new gets elected. So if you're a government employee, you just can sit there and wait,

• 24:35Speaker 02

  because the change happens faster than your own reported progress in your job. So the reason that you have this backlog of inefficiency, isn't because the founding fathers wanted it. I don't know that the founding fathers could visualize the technology and the progress that we've made this quickly. I think that what's happened instead is human beings have taken office. They've done what they needed to do to survive. The government evolves slower than the corporation, the corporate sector. Technology is different, upgrades are different, software is different. Government still uses. Windows technology is 20 years old because it hasn't been certified yet as safe for government systems. You see what I'm saying?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  It's terrible, man, but it's the reality of it. I'm excited for Doge. I'm excited for an office of government efficiency, but I have seen what's happened with the Office of Government Accountability. And I've seen what challenges it's had. Because the people who make the laws that dictate the hiring practices for government. The people that make the laws that dictate the promotion and remuneration requirements for the government. Those laws all have to be changed in order for something like Doge to actually make significant changes.

• 25:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Laws have to be changed?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  So the how you're hired, how you're fired.

• 25:54Tom Bilyeu?

  There are laws around how you're hired and fired.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  That's a fair point. I don't know that there's legislative laws at a federal level. I would want to double check that, but the government policies. In order for something to be a policy in a federal government. It goes through multiple layers of bureaucracy to be approved as a policy. Not like a corporate policy where somebody just pencils something in and then that's corporate policy.

• 26:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Jesus Christ. One, I want to acknowledge how brilliantly you're able to explain that. Two, I want to acknowledge that you're yanking a dark cloud over my heart. So for real, so. As a business owner, the first thing that you learn is you cannot fuck around. You cannot drag employees that are underperforming because the reality is that the organism as a whole will die.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:40Tom Bilyeu?

  And you were talking about we could. Two thirds of the population could be annihilated, but as long as we have the government, the idea of America still exists. But here's the problem. When you calcify the government in the way that you're talking about by allowing all of this short term thinking. All of this just weighed out your boss, that's insane. This, this is how empires fall. I want everybody to understand, if you can hear my voice, please understand the following. Every empire in history has so abused the monetary system that they go away. Now, how do you end up abusing the monetary system? You get something like this where people are not being held accountable to the results that they're supposed to deliver.

• 27:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And if you allow an organization to be created where people are just waiting out their bosses, now it really does become a figurehead comes in, they focus entirely on international endeavors because they can actually influence international policy, but they can't really do anything at home. And so you get this, what's happening to America right now, as much as, as far as I can tell is we become effectively the hegemon in waiting at the end of World War I. Some would say we are the hegemon at that point. Certainly by the end of World War II, we are everything. And we've just been trading on that goodwill until now. And now it's breaking down because of largely, not only, but largely because of this

• 28:06Tom Bilyeu?

  layer of concrete in the gears of what could otherwise be a high functioning government. Okay, so.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Let me, but let me, I also, I'm glad that we're part of the dark cloud club.

• 28:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Cause I also have a dark cloud over my heart pretty much all the time.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  I'm sorry to.

• 28:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Don't apologize. I always want to know what's true.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  But.

• 28:26Tom Bilyeu?

  All I care about is what's.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  But here's, here's what's, here's what's important to understand. It doesn't have to be that way, to your point, because there is a tool that the president has called like the presidential authority to make executive orders. An executive order trumps all other previous laws at its penning. And since the days of Obama, we've seen nothing but an increase in the president's willingness to write more executive orders than ever before. So Donald Trump has the precedent already to come in and make more executive orders than Biden made, which were more than the previous Trump made, which were more than the previous Obama made, right? So we have this, this precedent now for Donald Trump to come in and just sign executive orders. And with the, with the flick of a pen, he can change all the policies.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  He can change all the status quo. He can absolutely upend everything. I think he will. When he does give the executive orders for a massive cleaning of the federal government, we have to also expect that it will be executed, meaning we will see a huge purge of federal employees.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  There's no work instructions and SOPs to back up new federal employees. So when we see that big purge, we should expect problems. We should expect upheaval and chaos and people aren't going to know what they're doing.

• 29:42Tom Bilyeu?

  On an international stage?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  On a domestic stage, at least in a government stage. So we should expect things to get worse before they get better. What happens when a company realizes it has problems? It can lay people off, it can fire people, it can change policies, it gets worse before it gets better. The major problem here is that a company, a for-profit company, or the major difference here is that for-profit companies need a profit to survive, or else the company dies. Federal government does not need a profit. It's got a tax base, it's got guaranteed revenue. All it needs is employed people to pay taxes so that it can make revenue. That's why the government's always so focused on employment rates. If you have more unemployment, you have less tax revenue. If you have people who are employed in jobs that are low paying, you have less tax revenue.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Unless we start increasing our tax rates, which is how Europe survives with very high tax rates. So that's the game that the government's trying to play. Fewer employees will reduce the amount of overhead costs. But then if they don't have people who can do the job, they'll have to turn to contractors. Those contractors come at a premium price. And now you basically have the entire administrative government operating the same way that the intelligence services operate, which is they don't have enough staff employees, they augment with contract employees. And that's how your khakis, your booze allens, your Deloitte's of the world became billion-dollar companies because they just started producing government contractors.

• 31:06Tom Bilyeu?

  It seems to me that we need the system to be broken because when you look at what we're doing,

• 31:18Tom Bilyeu?

  yes, the government has a guaranteed tax base. However, we are racking up a trillion dollars of debt every 100 days. The only way out of that is to spend less. So slash the government employees, slash entitlements, whatever the case is going to be. But look at the 10 biggest things that we spend money on, you're going to be slashing those. It's not going to be at the margins. Or you have to raise GDP. And if we could get people, all of us, anybody, hey, if you're here listening right now, uh, think of the GDP as the revenue generated by the government. It's not, because the government ultimately does not generate revenue, but they can either impede or unimpede the GDP of everybody else that's within its borders.

• 32:03Tom Bilyeu?

  So the whole thesis that Trump is operating under is that I'm going to be able to unlock growth. GDP is going to go up, so I don't have to tax people more and commit suicide like Europe is doing. Hi, Europe, I hope you're okay. Uh, I don't know what the fuck they're doing. But if you look at the number of companies that are worth more than a billion dollars that were started in the last 50 years or something like that, the US has a ton and Europe has like six. It's crazy. Uh, and anybody that thinks corporations are evil, I will just remind you, the government doesn't make money. They take money from the people that make money and it's the corporations that make money. So if you want your people to be thriving, you've got to have GDP.

• 32:47Tom Bilyeu?

  When the government makes up all the GDP, don't get me started, printing money, debt, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  There is a third tool.

• 32:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Please say more.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  To get out of debt.

• 32:58Tom Bilyeu?

  You're either about to change my life or we're about to be in fisticuffs.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Fisticuffs might be the way it goes. You can just default. So think about what happens if the, when you look at the national debt that the US states carries, 12 to 15% of that debt is owed to one country, China. And then you have a half a billion more that's owed to Russia. And then you have obfuscated numbers that go to the ultra wealthy that are Chinese, are Russian, are Iranian, are Turkish, are Saudi.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  You could arguably simply not pay those debts, write it off the top line, right off the amount owed, and simultaneously strike an economic blow to your largest adversaries. I'm not altogether unconvinced that that is exactly the strategy that we plan. That when we decide to go to war with East versus West, when we decide to get involved, we're going to do to China what we did to Russia, and we proved that we're willing to do, when we sanctioned the actual cash reserves of Russia that was being held in US-denominated dollars and European euros. We just took their money.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Extrajudicial, not at all allowed, something that we had NATO sign off on because we control NATO, it was totally illegal, in every definition of the word. There's no reason we can't just do that with our national debt, and that's going to reduce us like 25% overnight, and defund our enemies from being able to work against us. Will it destroy the US dollar? Arguably, if you're doing it only to your adversaries, maybe not. Maybe that makes your allies even more allied, because now you have a massive head start against your enemies. But that is a third way that companies get out of debt.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Fisticuffs, or?

• 34:54Tom Bilyeu?

  No, I was like, there's no thing he's going to be able to pull out. You are correct. In terms of being able to change the ratio of debt to GDP, that is the nuclear option, because that, there's no guarantees in life, I want to be very clear, I cannot see the future, and it's possible that that works out just fine. It's also possible that 10 years later, we are dropping bombs on each other at a scale never before seen in human history. People do not like it when you fuck with their money.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 35:24Tom Bilyeu?

  And wowza. Fully concede the point that that is certainly a thing that we can do. Hey, if we want to get crazy, we could also devalue the dollar against gold, and that won't make the world happy either, but that would also have a very big impact on the debt. Uh, okay. The reason that is so dark and I can hear wolves howling in the background is really twofold. One, because it's all too possible that that's on the menu of options. Uh, and two, because that, that is where Ray Dalio has been saying, this is all gonna go, that we end up in a hot war. And the reason we end up in a hot war is when we lock up China's money and they're in the

• 36:09Tom Bilyeu?

  middle of a, um, crisis, cause they are in the middle of a crisis right now. Nothing that the US hasn't seen and I'm sure they'll be able to inflate their way out of it and all that good stuff, but if the US freezes some ungodly amount of my money and I'm China, I go, oh, really? You wanna play? Cool, Taiwan's mine. And now I'm gonna see how badly you want these chips in your modern way of life, uh, because you either give me my money back or I'm going in and I'm taking over and I'm cutting off your supply. They are not gonna roll over. They are not just gonna take it. And this is truly, last time we talked, you said that World War III has already started. Uh, that's how World War III goes from a, what do you mean we're in World War III?

• 36:51Tom Bilyeu?

  To, uh, downtown LA just got vaporized.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:55Tom Bilyeu?

  So, time for a quick break. More with Andrew Bustamante after this.

• 37:02Tom Bilyeu?

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• 37:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 38:35Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  I think at the end of the day, the truth holds today as it's held for our multiple conversations. The future is not happy. We are years away from happy future. We are potentially months away from positive indicators that happiness is coming, but we're not anywhere close to happy yet. And we won't be close to happy for a long time. China won't roll over. Great point, right? Also, when it comes to actual measurable, objective facts about China right now, they have the largest military industrial complex in the world when it comes to counts, counts of troops, numbers of active warships, numbers of aircraft, ammunition's at the ready. They surpass us by almost

• 39:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Ability to make more.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  By almost seven times.

• 39:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, they are us when Pearl Harbor happened.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  So they're not going to roll over because they look at us and they see that we have our senior advisors to the military advising to stop giving weapons to Ukraine and Israel because we are at such a deficit, we don't even know how we would wage a sustained conflict if we were the active participant. So if China were to invade Taiwan militarily, which there's no indications that that is their intention necessarily, but that is one of their options. If they invade militarily, the US is really only going to be able to augment Taiwanese defense capabilities. We won't be able to wage a war on our own just based on our manufacturing capability and the amount of ammunition, weapons, troops, tanks, ships that we have already built.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Chinese shipbuilding is outproducing us. Chinese military training is outproducing us. China is outspending us. And what did we learn from Russia in Ukraine? The whole world sanctioned Russia? How did they keep their economy alive? Wartime economy. Why are, well, France and Germany are fucked right now on their own. But before they fucked themselves with meltdowns in their parliaments, they were the ones warning that if we don't find a way to bring a ceasefire in Ukraine, Russia is going to continue to build its economy on the back of a war. That's exactly how the United States has survived some of our worst times. We had a wartime economy. That's what made Afghanistan, Iraq worth it. That's what made World War II worth it. That's what made the Korean War worth it. That's what made Vietnam worth it.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Because economies go up. Domestic production goes up. Employment goes up. Tax bases go up when there's a war. China is preparing mentally and fiscally for some kind of conflict. Doesn't have to be with us. It can be with all of its neighbors in the South China Sea for all it cares. But right now, we literally can't wage war. What are we going to do in the future? They're not going to roll over. And to your exact point, they know we're not going to roll over. So you've got these two big fucking dogs staring at each other. Growling, but not barking yet. And everybody else is walking around being like, oh, they're fine. Cause there's a mesh fence between them.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  I don't know what the future holds, but it's not, it's not going to be a hard barbed wire fence that makes these two dogs peaceful.

• 41:48Tom Bilyeu?

  By the time this airs, it will have already happened. But what do you think about Trump inviting Xi Jinping to his inauguration?

• 41:56Speaker 02

  I like the idea. Because again, you have to, you have to acknowledge a big dog.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  There's a, I have a puppy now. We have a four month old poodle, standard poodle puppy. It's got the same hair as me, right? Only white instead of black. But one thing that I've learned in the puppy training classes is that there's nothing more dangerous than a dog on a leash. Cause when a dog's on a leash, instinctively, it feels like it's confined, trapped. So then when a dog on a leash meets another dog on a leash, they start pulling on the leash, coming at each other. If they didn't have the leashes, their instincts wouldn't force them into conflict. They'd be trying to smell each other's ass, right? Completely different movement. But instead, from the outside observer, you watch these two dogs growling, salivating, pulling at each other as if they would kill each other.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  It's the leash that's the problem, not the dogs. So essentially, what we have in the United States with China is you have these two big dogs that want to acknowledge each other. They want to sniff each other's ass. I think Trump knows that. Let them sniff. And then, from there, they can start making moves that are not going to be misinterpreted. Remember how we avoided the Cuban Missile Fiasco, right? The crisis avoided nuclear war because there was a bunch of ass sniffing going on, right? People were trying to, they had intel on us, we had intel on them, back and forth. There, we could avoid miscommunications, to the point where they even had a phone that they could call each other to make sure that there was no miscommunication. The world is full of miscommunication right now.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Things are unexpected, things are happening that analysts didn't anticipate. Assessments are wrong about what is happening. Nobody can guess what the next step is. Who would have guessed that Assad would have fallen in 14 days, backed by Turkey, and that now those Turkish-backed groups would be fighting American-backed Kurds inside Syria? Who would have guessed that was gonna happen two and a half weeks ago? Like, there's only four people in the entire United States that watch fucking Syria, right? So I think having, so Trump's plan to invite Xi to include him in more and more things of the United States is wise. But he also has to account for the fact that anything he shows or tells Xi is gonna make

• 44:13Speaker 02

  its way to Putin and make its way to Kim Jong-un and make its way to all of the enemies of the United States, because that's how Xi maintains his leverage over the growing axis of resistance, because they're a big dog and they're invited to sniff the other dog's ass.

• 44:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so if we've got Trump coming in and he's got a cadre of people that are for the reasons that you laid out, they're not going to surface the truth.

• 44:42Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm going to pose a way around that. Tell me if you think this is crazy. So the way that you laid out the problem seems fundamentally true because it is in keeping with what I know about the human animal. Given the state of AI, what I would do is say, I want my analysts, I want the human touch, I want to see what's going on there, but I also want the people, the field agents, to be able to feed their briefs into an AI that's going to summarize and hand it to me. I will verify the bias of the AI by asking it to take both sides of arguments that I know the answer to and see if it's really giving me something that's just bias on bias, or if it's able to take both sides. So that now I can compare and contrast. This is what the AI says is going based on field data

• 45:26Tom Bilyeu?

  being reported to it, and then this is what the people are telling me, and I would compare and contrast. That plus, whether I have to do it as an executive order, which I'm actually not a big fan of, but if I have to be able to do an executive order to be able to hire and fire people based on performance, then executive order I would highly recommend. Those two things. I can hold government employees accountable to results, and I have an AI to gut check what I'm getting from the field. Do you see another way to do that better?

• 45:57Speaker 02

  I don't think I see a way to do that better, but there are some elements there that I want to make sure in keeping true to our dark cloud, right?

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Performance metrics, the day they're implemented would be the first day that you'd be able to actually measure performance for a government employee. They don't have metrics right now. It's kind of standard practice across the government. They don't have performance.

• 46:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Elon, David Sacks, Trump, like, they're going to be able to come up with metrics.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  I agree. I agree. They can. I'm just saying that when they come up with them, that would be day one. So from now until the day those are rolled out and issued is all before day one, right? And then to your point about performance, the performance process for government employees, even military employees, the performance process is flawed. Everybody is overstated in their performance report. So basically, your bad employee is an employee who meets expectations. Formally on paper and your standout employees are the ones that exceed expectations and have all sorts of accolades.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  And then the people who you're trying to flag for promotion are the people who exceed expectations, have all kinds of accolades and have certain keywords inside their resume. That also highlight to the to the board that's reviewing them for promotion. This is somebody that their boss really wants them to promote. So it's already hyperinflated. You don't have any anybody that you can easily cut because if you actually look at everybody's performance review, they're all 10 out of 10.

• 47:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's not how you cut though, man. So if you and it'll be interesting because I know you're growing like a weed at Everyday Spy. I'm going to look into your future and I'm going to tell you it's going to go like this. There are going to be people that in your heart of hearts, you realize you're caring because you like them as people, but they don't deliver results and that you're making excuses for them. And if they blindly submitted a project that you'd be like, oh, whoever project this is, kill it. And then only to find out that it's somebody that you really like. And so ultimately, as you scale, you will hit a point where you can't oversee everything. And suddenly you'll be pulled away from your wife and kids because you have to go deal with the fire. And as you're looking at you like, I should never have been pulled into this. You will say, who's responsible for this? And a name will come up and you'd be like, ah, cool. That person is not useful to this organization.

• 48:13Tom Bilyeu?

  You will very rapidly begin to recognize those patterns. I I've just, I've lived it. I'm I'm a few years in your future.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  You're not even that, I mean, I've I've already started struggling with what you're saying.

• 48:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  You're totally right.

• 48:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Make itself apparent over time. Right now, Trump has around him the greatest living entrepreneurs. It is insane what he's been able to bring around him. Now, I get it. There are complications to the government that's going to make this very difficult and it is not going to be some like Pollyanna outcome. However, Elon walked into Twitter and was just like, Pareto Principle 8020. I'm going to get rid of 80% of the people and hope that I got the 20% right. Obviously, you'll look at metrics, but it won't be the employee reviews. It's going to be things like, it'll be different for every department. I want to be very clear. But he went and was just like, how many lines of code did you submit? Okay, so first thing is there's a line in Elon's mind knowing. From an engineering standpoint, how many lines roughly of code you should be submitting?

• 49:10Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm just gonna lop off anybody that doesn't submit that amount of code. And will I have lost some like really high level guys that just don't do a lot? Yeah, I don't give a fuck like they're just, you have to have a line. Then I can bring people back if I have to. And I remember openly on X. He was like, hey, Timmy or whatever, we fired you. We actually want to bring you back. If you would reach out. So that's his thing. Seeing what Mila is doing in Argentina. Same thing, weed whack. And then if you overdo it, you can bring some people back in. But he's managed to, I think, build a surplus like it's actually working. So I have a lot of high hopes for that.

• 49:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Again, not existing in a Pollyanna land. But if you were to make a prognostication about where all of this goes, do you think it is just? It's too gridlocked. They're never going to be able to make progress. These guys are just gonna heads down, wait them out?

• 50:07Speaker 02

  I think, so you, I still owe you a second answer and this answer, right? So I think that the existing government establishment is going to try first. Heads down, wait out our leadership. Let's also be honest. Donald Trump has a history of loving people this year and hating them next year.

• 50:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Loving them this morning and hating them this afternoon. Yes.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  So

• 50:29Tom Bilyeu?

  That's my big fear.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  But that, that feeds into the existing government culture of we just wait out the boss.

• 50:34Tom Bilyeu?

  This guy's gonna self-destruct.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Just wait out the boss. And even if they don't have to wait out Donald Trump. They can wait out Elon Musk. They can wait out whoever Musk hired. They can wait out whoever's implementing the, the policy of the person that Elon hired. Like they can wait and wait and wait and wait. And that's all they know, right? Even your high performing government person, even the person who's listening now, who knows that they work their ass off in the federal government? And they've never been rewarded for it because that's the way it works. Even that person knows on some level, I could just color and wait. Like I can just do that.

• 51:07Tom Bilyeu?

  It's so dark.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  It's, but it's what, it's, it's their survival mechanism. So that will be the first instinct. I think that instinct can be. buffered out, right? To your exact point. Do I see a future with AI? Absolutely, I see a future with AI. There are risks inherent with that future. AI is still code. Code can be hacked in by an adversary. AI is still based on the inputs and who knows what the inputs are going to be. There's all sorts of challenges there, but you can't turn away from the future just because there's challenges. Of course, there's challenges. You have to go in knowing those challenges. I love that you brought out Argentina. It's a, it's a perfect, timely, relevant example. This chaotic leader came in with plans to completely upend everything that was established.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  And for a year, he struggled to keep people believing. And then after a year, that's still not good, but it's better. By a lot. By a lot. And a lot better than what it was, isn't saying much to most democracies, but it's a shit ton better. Simultaneous and in parallel to that, you had France dissolve parliament and then revote to bring in new leadership. And then you had the resignation of the prime minister that resulted in a no confidence vote of the parliament. So France is back to no leadership again. Germany just had a no confidence vote in its parliament and its current, whatever the, is it a prime minister in Germany? Whatever the hell. Chancellor? Olaf, the chancellor, thank you.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Like two days ago, he was voted in no confidence vote in parliament. So they're melted down. The top two largest economies in Europe, the two bastions of democracy in Europe, the two largest partners to the United States and NATO, arguably with UK. They don't have a government right now. They're melted down. They have to go back to the drawing board and reelect because the people couldn't pick the right leadership more than one time in a row. So you got Malay saying, burn it all down, build it back up. You've got the old world trying to keep the old way and burning down on their own. And now we've got this question of Donald Trump and people wondering, is he just going to destroy America?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I think he's got a plan to burn it down, build it back up because he's done that. And like you said, he's, he's creating this ensemble of entrepreneurs who have all in their careers had to burn it down and build it back up. The building it back up is not a guarantee. Takes a whole lot more work than burning it down. But sometimes you gotta you gotta burn the cornfield to reset the soil to grow something better.

• 53:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think he's gonna destabilize America?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Destabilize is a tough word, right? I would argue that I would argue that he's he has stabilized the United States on fewer feet. If you consider a table has four legs, does it need four legs? There are plenty of tables that have three legs and there are other tables that have six legs. So did he destabilize the United States or you just reduce the number of legs? I get the impression that the people who support him and see what he sees are more stable than ever. The people who don't understand him and don't see what he sees are more unraveled than ever.

• 54:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think he's gonna destabilize the international order? And I'll give you an example.

• 54:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Dear Hamas, if you don't hand back the hostages by the time I take office, all hell will break loose. Now, he might be able to find a way to dance around saying that. He might be able to find a way to dance around saying, I'll end the Russia Ukrainian conflict before my first day in office. He's making a lot of bold statements. And if he keeps making those claims and doesn't back them up, he's gonna have a domestic problem massively. And so I have a feeling he either has to deliver results or deliver big action in the form of delivered aggression.

• 55:16Tom Bilyeu?

  And if he gets results because everybody's scared, great, it'll be a big win. If they're all like, no, I'm gonna wait this fool out, he's gonna implode. And then he's forced to do something that is.

• 55:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Direct American military intervention that destabilizes things.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  There's two answers, I think, to your question. So I think he will stabilize the world around American hegemony again.

• 55:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So, strong man.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Strong man, strong leader. Unfortunately, that's what's working in the world right now. Strong man, strong leader. What's Israel, right? Netanyahu. People don't like what he's doing. Strong man, strong leader. Xi Jinping, Putin, even Al Jala, Jelani right now. Strong man, strong leader. Fucking Erdogan, 20 years in power in Turkey, a secular democracy, like, strong men, strong power centers are in, in fashion and effective right now. That's why Biden didn't have very much success. Not strong man, strong leader, strong orator, strong anything, right? It's why Kamala Harris didn't stand a chance from the moment

• 56:27Speaker 02

  that she was nominated. She's not strong. She can't even retain, she couldn't even retain her own staff. How is she going to retain the momentum of a people behind her? So my point with all that is to say Donald Trump fits the mold of what stabilizes right now. But that stabilizing doesn't mean conflict free. It usually means more conflict to stabilize your corner of the sandbox, if you will. But the second side to that is that geopolitics is not like domestic politics. You can make big promises in geopolitics that never come true, and the world forgets and forgives. Domestic politics, when you make big promises,

• 57:09Speaker 02

  people expect you to deliver, because domestic shit affects us every single day. Your paycheck, the price of bread, whether your children are safe in school, that stuff bothers you every day. What the fuck happens in Ukraine? Eh. What the fuck happens with national debt? Eh. What the fuck happens with Hezbollah Hamas? Or what's HTS? Eh. So he can make all the promises he wants abroad, and the United States won't really.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  We won't flex on him for that. We've seen that. Do you remember Zelensky's first promises with the Ukraine war? That Ukraine will not quit until the original borders before the annexation of Crimea were returned to their custody. He's thinking about quitting now. What did Netanyahu say about Hamas? "We will not quit until Hamas is eradicated." Hamas isn't eradicated. He's thinking about quitting, right? He's already looking at Yemen. What's he gonna make? These guys make huge promises. And they make promises that are existential. And the world forgets about it, right? They'll move on. So Trump knows geopolitics is a lot like marketing. You can say you have the best cup of coffee in the world. But when your coffee is just eh, it's okay, because you still made the revenue off the coffee.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  And people will like your cake, or your pie, or your eggs instead, and they'll keep coming back. That's how geopolitics works.

• 58:27Tom Bilyeu?

  That's so interesting, because it is exactly like marketing. If you want to rally people, you've gotta give them something big and exciting. When I was 60 pounds heavier than I am now, I didn't say to myself, "I'm gonna lose 20 pounds." I said, "I'm gonna have six-pack abs." And focusing on six-pack abs, that was motivating. That was motivating enough to endure two years of effectively rabbit starvation.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  I can't imagine you with that much extra weight.

• 58:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Dude, yeah. Oh, I've got the photos. And it was, it was an example of the study that they've done that shows that that's just true. People need the big things. So if I'm Trump, if I'm Netanyahu, it's all gonna be the biggest, the best, number one, all the way, total eradication. Because that is a big enough goal to get everybody excited. Now, once you get into the reality of there's a lot of people dying, then now the mood shifts. You got what you needed out of the big bombastic promise, and now we get into something that's more realistic. But there is something about, maybe you're right. Maybe it'll just be, everybody forgets all the things that Trump said internationally. And as long as he closes the border and people's wages go up, they'll be like, "Yeah, I don't care."

• 59:35Speaker 02

  I'm good.

• 59:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  I mean, to a certain extent, I think Trump is successful because he understands marketing so well. The man has made a fortune putting his name on buildings. You've gotta know a thing or two about how to make people find value in you. When all you have to do is put your name on their building and they're willing to license it from you. Right? That's power. That's truly understanding the American zeitgeist. I think Trump understands that, and I think that's why people like to call him a populist leader. We've only had populist leaders for like the last 15 years. We are electing the most popular person.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Barack Obama's hope campaign was nothing but fucking populism. Right? That's all Biden wouldn't have been elected if not for Trump. I will never, or I'm sorry, if not for Obama saying, I'll never forget this. He's a lifetime American servant. And he's gonna leave a proud legacy for the American people upon this presidency. And instead, look at the actual legacy this guy has left. Yes, he's been a lifetime public servant. That's not how the history is gonna remember this guy.

• 1:00:48Tom Bilyeu?

  How's he gonna be remembered?

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  He's gonna be remembered as the guy who destroyed our economy with COVID. He's gonna be remembered as the guy who pardoned his son. He's gonna be remembered as the guy who tripped and, and fell on stage and people doubted his mental capabilities. He's gonna be remembered as the person who nominated a vice president that America had denied multiple times before to run for office. That's how he's gonna be remembered. And I feel bad for Joe Biden because that sucks. The dude's had enough hardship in his life. He doesn't also need to have his legacy questioned forever, but it will. It will because at the end of the day, Biden and Obama and the democratic people continue to put faith in the National Democratic Convention.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Rather than what they know the people of America want. And that's the big difference that's happened. Since the introduction of Donald Trump into the political cycle, he understands what the people want. He doesn't care what the convention wants. Right? If you, there's huge amounts of Republicans that don't support him. Remember when he first ran? He first ran kind of on an independent platform until he could be absorbed into the Republican platform so that he had the. Unwritten, written rule that of having either Democratic or Republican support. And then even when he's in office, Republicans work against him. The guy's constantly being ousted and and threatened by his own party. So he definitely doesn't have the party support.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Inside the liberal part of the world, they don't do anything without the full party support. They're separate. They they don't speak the voice of the American people. They speak the voice of the party. And then the people who believe in the party's definition of democracy believe that the party is their best interest. Like, that's whether the party creates the popular idea, or whether the individual creates the popular idea. In both cases, it's populism. You're just promoting what's popular, and that's what people are voting on.

• 1:02:42Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. The Democratic Party does not feel like a populist party to me. When they shot down Bernie Sanders, Bernie was the populist wing of the left-wing ideology. And they took the exact opposite approach. This whole idea of the elites, man, I am absolutely fascinated by the elites. So I was not, I wasn't aware of how the sort of quote unquote world worked for a very long time because I was so successful at building businesses. And it's only recently when my business became understanding how the world works that I'm like, okay, wait a second. Piecing this all together, it is, it is shocking to me, the anti-democratic way that the Democratic, ironically,

• 1:03:25Tom Bilyeu?

  party puts their candidates together, leverages this concept of the elite to cram it down people's throats. Do you know a guy named Martin Gury?

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:03:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Also ex-CIA guy. I had him on the show recently. His episode wasn't that popular. It's a great fucking episode. But he is, um,

• 1:03:44Tom Bilyeu?

  he's somebody that looks at the global communication. And he said, uh, he basically predicted Trump. Because he was watching what was going on with social media, and he realized, oh, once everybody is the media, the whole idea of the elites falls away, you're no longer able to control the narrative, and that's not a good thing. And that once narrative is just coming from everywhere, people are not going to be able to make sense of the world. So we need a new elite to step forward to be worthy. The of being followed and it's like I kind of track what he's saying. But the whole idea of it's what I call the dumb voter problem. Let's see if I can continue to trigger people by refusing to change my language around this. The reason I call it that is I I want to know. So I'm perfectly willing to accept that I'm somebody else's dumb voter.

• 1:04:29Tom Bilyeu?

  I get that I just want to know when you think of a group as being a dumb voter. How do you think they should be treated? So the way I believe you should handle dumb voters. Again, I understand I am someone else's dumb voter. But the way I believe the people I look at and say this person is just objectively dumb. Like they can't process raw data. We all think that of someone somewhere. I'm not passing a moral judgment. I'm not saying dumb people are bad people. I'm saying there's some people that cannot navigate the world well. Despite that, I believe that because no one should be trusted to draw that line, least of all me. That we should be saying you, hey, they're citizen.

• 1:05:08Tom Bilyeu?

  They are a full citizen with rights and you're just going to have to deal with whatever comes from everyone getting to vote.

• 1:05:17Tom Bilyeu?

  The elites take a totally different stance. And their thing is some people are too dumb to think through this. And I'm not willing to live in a world where the quality of the decision making is degraded by dumb people. That scares the life out of me. And so I, if we could live in a world where there was a group of people that I could trust to be perfectly moral and blah, blah, blah. Sure, but I can't. And so I would much rather have where every idea that doesn't violate current American. Free speech laws are allowed to be heard and don't try to silence people. Don't try to cram a candidate down our throat, which is what the Democratic Party did. I would rather be if we're in a populist mood, then I would rather have a populist leader.

• 1:06:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, does that mean that that can't go dark? No, of course it can, but I don't believe in preemptive strikes. I am not a precog. I cannot read Donald Trump's mind. So I don't want to see people try to break the democratic process. Anyway, that was a lot of words around. I don't think the Democrats have been populist for quite a while.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  It's funny because I would, I would say that you are correct when it comes to. If you look at populism being something that is actually effective, right? For all people.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Where I would differ from you is if you say what's important to Democrats? What's important to the Democratic National Convention, the DNC? What's important to them? What's popular to them? That's what they try to promote. If you remember Bernie Sanders was shot down.

• 1:06:45Tom Bilyeu?

  That's popular to a really small group of people that think they know better.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  And think that they're bigger than they really are.

• 1:06:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  If you think about what happened when Hillary Clinton was running against Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was who they supported when they shot down Bernie Sanders. And all that came out in open source, right? That even the DNC had emails talking about how they were going to silence the Sanders campaign and drive that support to the Clinton campaign. Why? Because they wanted a Clinton. They wanted a female. They wanted all of that Democratic value, Democratic Party value stuff. Because that was trendy and relevant and interesting to their party at the time. Well, what was Kamala Harris? The same thing. She was a mixed-race female with no, with no kids of her own.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  That's trendy and popular in their group and their in-group bias. That's what they thought all of America wanted. What, that was exactly their flaw. That wasn't what all of America wanted.

• 1:07:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Can I take umbrage with that?

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely, man.

• 1:07:49Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think it's what they thought all of America wanted. I think it's what they thought all of America needed.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 1:07:55Tom Bilyeu?

  They are dumb voters.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 1:07:56Tom Bilyeu?

  We are going to decide for them because I do not want my, uh, my ability to make good decisions to be watered down by dumb people. This is why I, I have one question for anybody who wants to be a quote unquote elite. What do you do with dumb voters?

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Tom Bilyeu?

  And the way that they answer that question, if they want to relegate them in any way, if they want to silence them or ice them out, I'm like, dude, this is how you become a totalitarian state. Everybody thinks they're doing the right thing. Everybody thinks they know what's better. And I'm just like, god damn, will you people please stop trusting yourselves?

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, this is my message to entrepreneurs. This is my message to parents. This is my message to, uh, certainly people in the government. Stop trusting yourself so much. Please understand, here's how I want people to think about me. Because I'm going to say what I believe to be true as a Aggressively as I believe it. So if I really believe something, I'm going to say it with all the aggression in the world. I'm not going to hedge my bets because I am trusting them to go, I'm gonna take the read of a whole bunch of people who are giving me their very narrow, wildly distorted lens on what they see. And the analogy that I use is the truth, capital T, capital T, capital the, capital truth, is when you are trying to figure out what it is, because it is effectively unknown.

• 1:09:12Tom Bilyeu?

  We don't even know the laws of physics. So when I reach inside of this black bag that has an object inside of it that is the truth, and I'm wearing fucking mittens, which is what life is like, and I'm trying to feel what this thing is, I have a guess. And then I want a whole bunch of other people to go in and be like, no, I don't think it's that. I think it's this. And another, and another, and another. Because I do not believe that I am some sort of magical person who can reach inside with the mittens in the black bag and figure out exactly what it is, so that I want everyone to listen to me, not even in my own company. Nobody can see that. Jesus, maybe Elon Musk. But if I had to guess, even he is simply surrounding himself with a whole lot of, in fact, here's what I think is really going on with Elon Musk.

• 1:09:54Tom Bilyeu?

  As a leader, you will only be able to attract people who look at you and go, ooh. I'll round it to smart. It's not always that. But people are not going to go to work for somebody that they think is dumber than they are. So you're only going to be able to staff up with people that look at you and go, ooh, you're a little bit smarter than me. And because Elon is so freakishly smart and effective, he can get a whole group of freakishly smart people to work for him. So even he is going, I need other really, really smart people to poke at this problem and to say what the issue is. And I think when I look out at political issues, the problem is people trust themselves too damn much.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  That is a cognitive bias that's known as the Dunning Kruger effect. When you overstate your capabilities internally, and you're in fact less capable than you really are, that is an example of the cognitive bias called Dunning Kruger. And you're exactly right. We see it. Everybody's prone to it. But with the entrenchment of the DNC, the liberals have become very, very vulnerable to their own confidence.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Just like you were saying, they thought the world needed a mixed-race female president. They didn't even think, is the world ready for this? They didn't think, is this candidate the right candidate? We've had this conversation, you know, countless times personally and publicly. I'm a huge fan of women in a million ways. I think women are brilliant. I think women are smart. I think women are physically gifted. Can be. Can be, can be, just like men can be, right? So I'm all for the equality, like, understanding and believing the equality between men and women. But that makes it all the more important to me that when we have a female president, she isn't given any, like, freebies on the way to the top. Gangster. She's gotta be thug, man.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  She's gotta be just as thug as any American person who gets to the top of the food chain. When they ride on mom and dad's coat heels or the last name or some sort of party bias, like, will I accept it? Sure, I'll accept it, but it doesn't get me pumped. It doesn't get me excited, right? I want our first female president to be somebody that gets the whole world excited, right? Somebody who pulled themselves up from bootstraps. But all of that to say that your point, your point over and over again today, and I love it, is human behavior, because human behavior is predictable. If you understand human behavior better than the human is sitting across the table from you, you will predict what they do before they do it. And they for damn sure aren't going to be able to predict what you're doing, because they're not as prepared as you are for human prediction.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  When it comes to human behavior, CIA has a rule of thumb that they teach us very early in our experience at the farm. Be the dumbest person in the room. And you've brought up dumb voters and you've brought up dumb people. And I think this is so valuable, because it fits exactly why we're taught, that idea of being the dumbest person in the room. When you are smart, but you act dumb, I don't mean you walk in and say stupid things trying to make people believe you're dumb. When you're just quiet. People will assume through human behavior that you either have nothing to say or have nothing intelligent to say. They will not assume that you have something intelligent that you're just holding on to.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  So they will then start to assume that you are the dumbest person in the room. You must be dumb because you're not participating. You must be dumb because you're not saying anything enlightening. You must be dumb because you're just sitting there with a blank stare on your face. That's how you immediately turn yourself into a non-threat in any situation, just through silence. And then by pretending to be the dumbest person in the room, you actually become even more informed because guess what everybody else is doing? Talking. They're all talking, trying to prove that they're the smartest person in the room. So it turns you into this core collector, collecting information, biases, points of view, perspectives, arguments, counter arguments from everybody. And no one's asking you anything.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Nobody's assessing you to be threatening in any way, shape, or form. And the beautiful part is, you can walk into that room quiet, you can walk out of that room quiet. And you've sucked up the sum total of information that was in that room, and you're carrying it to the next room where they assume that you're dumb again. And you can keep looking dumb, sucking up information that you can use for your own distinct competitive advantage, anytime, anyplace, on your choosing. You're no longer subject to when opportunity strikes. You can literally create the opportunity on your own. So there's a strategic, cognitive, demonstrable advantage to appearing dumb. And what you're saying is that there are people out there, particularly in the Democratic

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  Party, who are looking at people who are quiet and just assuming they're dumb, when in fact, those people could very well be exercising one of the most powerful advantages in the elicitation and intelligence world.

• 1:14:51Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a really powerful idea. It's not what I'm saying. So, but, but really, and I don't want to diminish what you just said, because it's such a powerful tool to have in your quiver. What I am saying is, there, the world has dumb people.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  That is fair. Objectively, fair.

• 1:15:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Objectively. You reveal yourself when you explain to me how you want to treat dumb people. And everybody's line of what is dumb is different, right? So the reality is if someone can solve better problems than you, they can think through things faster, et cetera, et cetera. The whole world's gonna say, yeah, they're smarter and cool. So if they're the line of what is smart and what is not smart, then I fall into the category of dumb. What I'm getting, and I've seen this in, in podcasting, you find yourself colliding with people that you're like, whoa, that's what you, that's your take on this issue? And when I tried to map, okay, this is somebody really smart, this is somebody that I really respect,

• 1:15:50Tom Bilyeu?

  but the way that they want to handle the world, it, it, it happened with free speech. When I saw during COVID that people wanted other people to shut up because they were spreading misinformation, I was like, holy fuck, you actually think you have, that you understand things so well, that you're prepared to lie to other people because you think the outcome of your lie is better than them groping for the truth? I was like, what the fuck? Like, that, that is, to me, that is such a psychotically self-destructive way to approach the world. You, you blind yourself intentionally because you're saying, I don't want to hear from these people. I don't want other people to debate ideas. Jordan Peterson has this right. The whole idea of thinking, of running thought experiments is so that you can think through a highly risky idea

• 1:16:35Tom Bilyeu?

  without having to live it, because in living that highly risky idea, you may literally die. And so running a simulation in your mind of what happens when you do XYZ thing, that act, that thinking is what that is, now you can iterate very, very quickly. And I'm saying, okay, well, thinking is super powerful, but you know what's even more powerful? Let everybody else, treat them like a bunch of AI, that they all have a simulation inside of their minds, that's very unique to mine, they're gonna run all these simulations, and they're gonna tell me what they think is the right idea. And the vast majority of them will sound stupid, the vast majority of them will be terrible ideas, as the vast majority of my ideas will be terrible. But I want everybody to put their ideas out, and I'm willing to accept that in battling those ideas, there's gonna be a ton of confusion, but ultimately,

• 1:17:20Tom Bilyeu?

  the ideas that survive will allow us to go forward a lot faster than saying, okay, I wanna siphon off 1% of the population and say, you guys think through everything for us.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  So there was this, there was this pastor that I had when I lived in Florida, very shortly after I left CIA, 2014, and he was a young pastor, seeding a new church. And he used to have this saying, and his saying was, I have a, let me share, let me tell you my bad idea. Like, that's what he would, that was his saying, let me tell you my bad idea. He was young enough to understand that he was never gonna make a living for himself and his two kids and his wife off of a pastor's salary, that he had to find a way to have some sort of entrepreneurial endeavor as well, writing books, public speaking, something, right? So we used to always have these back and forth dialogues about entrepreneurialism and business ideas and book ideas and study ideas, right? So he would constantly say,

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  let me tell you my bad idea, because he would, he would, he believed that no good idea can happen unless it starts from a bad idea first. And you have to be able to say your bad idea to a group of people who can help you hone your bad idea, cut out the bad parts, and find that core good idea that's inside, that you can't see for yourself, because it's like a seed wrapped around like a nut, and all the meat of the nut is bad idea, but the seed is a good idea. And it wasn't until talking to him at 34 years old, I was 34 years old, outside of CIA, that I finally started to understand what we had always heard in government, which was there are no bad ideas. That, that became cliche, right? There are no stupid questions, there are no bad ideas. I never understood what that

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  meant until sitting on this small table with this pastor who was like, let me tell you my bad idea, and just calling it bad from the start. And I've picked that up on my own, I do that with my company now, I do that with my clients now. Let me tell you my bad idea, so that you already know that I'm not in love with this idea. I'm just throwing it out there to see if we can all work together to find the seed, the kernel inside it that's good.

• 1:19:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Totally agree. If I could get people to do adopt that, their lives would be a lot better. That's it for part one of my conversation with Andrew Bustamante, but there's so much more. Make sure you come back tomorrow for part two, where things get even more tactical. Until then, my friends, be legendary.

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