Why America’s Enemies Smell Blood : CIA Secrets, Economic Warfare, and the Next World War | Andrew Bustamante PT 2

In the electrifying conclusion to Tom Bilyeu’s conversation with ex-CIA officer Andrew Bustamante, the lens widens to encompass today’s global flashpoints. Andrew applies his framework of power, leverage, and outcomes to the powder keg of present-day geopolitics. From Covid conspiracies and biological warfare, to the rise of China, the fate of the U. S. dollar, and the shifting allegiances shaping the 21st century, Andrew breaks down how world leaders really make decisions—far removed from conventional morality. This part takes a deep dive into modern conflict zones including Russia-Ukraine, the Israel-Palestine crisis, and the West’s declining grip amid new authoritarian contenders. Tom and Andrew wrestle with the hard questions: Are chemical and biological weapons just another leverage tool? Why are democracies struggling while strongman regimes rise? And what does the America-first, leverage-maximizing approach actually look like in real time? Buckle in for a rapid-fire tour through the next era of global power, what it has to do with everyday life, and why understanding the "spy playbook" has never mattered more. SHOWNOTES 41:06 South Africa, Racism, and the Realpolitik of Moral Authority 44:22 Mineral Rights, Intelligence, and Considering Long-Term Strategy 46:35 Gain of Function, Covid, and the Hard Truth About Bioweapons 52:21 Sacrifice and Power—Would Governments Trade Millions for Leverage? 56:29 The Powder Keg of 2024: India, Pakistan, Russia, Gaza, and Beyond 57:58 The End of American Supremacy and Rise of the New Power Bloc 60:11 Democracy vs. Strongman: The Global Leadership Struggle 62:19 Europe’s Identity Crisis: Allies, Dependency, and Internal Division 70:42 China’s Long Game, Rare Earths, and U. S. Manufacturing Dilemma 79:44 Porter's 5 Forces and The New Economic Wars 81:58 Iran’s Position, Proxy Wars, and Shifting Middle Eastern Power 86:24 Western Values: Will They Defend Them or Fade? 91:04 Trump’s Geopolitical Report Card and the Future of American Strategy 92:55 Where to Follow Andrew Bustamante CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to ⁠https://www.vitalproteins.com⁠ https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out ButcherBox: New users that sign up for ButcherBox will receive their choice between steak tips, salmon, or chicken breast in every box for a year + $20 off their first box at ⁠https://butcherbox.com/impact⁠ https://butcherbox.com/impact Monarch Money: Use code THEORY at ⁠https://monarchmoney.com⁠ https://monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year! Netsuite: Download the new e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at ⁠http://NetSuite.com/Theory⁠ http://netsuite.com/Theory iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at ⁠https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu⁠ https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Jerry: Stop needlessly overpaying for car insurance - download the Jerry app or head to ⁠https://jerry.ai/impact https://jerry.ai/impact FOLLOW ANDREW BUSTAMANTE: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EverydaySpy Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Website: https://everydayspy.com/⁠ https://jerry.ai/impact 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?

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby, and then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University, and the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Taylor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Taylor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to my conversation with former CIA covert officer Andrew Bustamante. If you haven't heard part one, go back and start there because what comes next will only hit harder once you know what this guy's really capable of. In part two, we're digging into the dark arts of persuasion, how power is wielded behind closed doors,

• 1:29Tom Bilyeu?

  and how you can start applying spy tactics to regain control of your own life. Let's jump right back in. According to Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the NIH, they probably funded the gain of research, gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, which is probably, according to Jay Bhattacharya, where COVID emanated from. And he's making it sound like that's a bad thing. But is it really a bad thing? According to this paradigm, if we could make a biological weapon that we could use to keep Americans safe? And should we surreptitiously run an experiment on the entire world population

• 2:14Tom Bilyeu?

  to see how well this stuff works?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Looking through the lens of right and wrong, everybody has their own opinion, right? But when it comes to long-term strategic benefit, the only reason chemical and biological weapons are wrong is because we have a treaty that says we won't, we won't do that. In reality, there's lots of situations where we have treaties and people are still developing options. Look at the whole idea of weaponizing space, right? Look at the idea of a space force. There was a time when we didn't want to weaponize space at all. Then we developed a space force.

• 2:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Them days is over.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Them days is over. We wanted, then we developed a space force and now the whole world is talking about like, is it the golden dome I think it's called now?

• 2:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Golden dome, yep.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Which is the-

• 2:55Tom Bilyeu?

  China's supposedly gonna get their quantum computers off the ground by mining helium on the dark side of the moon. This is all probably conjecture, but still.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  But don't, don't forget China was, China launched a missile to destroy satellites to create debris in space in, what was that, 2001, 2003, something like that, right? So it's already been kind of proof of concept about weaponizing spaces already taking place. I don't know why we would think that biological chemical weapons would be an exception, right? They're, they're in use in Sudan, for crying out loud.

• 3:23Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm not saying we're not doing it. I'm saying-

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Is it morally right or wrong?

• 3:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it's not morally right or wrong. Like, I'm trying to find the edges of when we talk about moral flexibility. Remember, my goal, and this is more for anybody listening than just for you, but I am trying to figure out how the world actually works. Not how I want it to work, not how I think it ought to work, how it actually works. And every word out of your mouth while it is sinking my stomach feels like it has high predictive validity. And I just want to keep going and seeing like, uh, is that why COVID played out potentially, allegedly, the way that it did? Because this was people going, yeah, but this could be really useful to us. And if we can, uh, get China to run the risk for us, we'll fund it, we'll have them do it, but they have to worry about whatever

• 4:09Tom Bilyeu?

  mess comes out of this, but we'll get the information that we need.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  There's a sinister assumption there, right? That we knew and were actively funding their efforts to create a biological weapon.

• 4:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Is it sinister according to this framework if we think that it might help save American lives in the long run?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  That's where I think the intersection really lies. If NIH was intentionally funding-

• 4:32Speaker 01

  China's development of their own biological weapon to protect China, that's some sinister shit. That's we're spending American dollars, American time, American money to help them create something that helps them. Yeah. That's that's wrong. That's wrong morally. That doesn't serve the outcome of a greater national security for the United States. Yeah. However, I can see a lot of scenarios in there where they were funding some kind of research, but they were told the research was different than what it really was. I can also see situations where they were funding research, knowing that it was going into the biological development of a weapon, specifically because in parallel, we were creating a counter to that weapon. Right? That is something that we very commonly do in the United States.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  We allow bad guys to do bad shit because we know they're doing bad shit and we can develop the counter as they're developing the offensive weapon. Right? It's how we can height, we can counter hypersonic missiles, or we can counter biological weapons, or we can counter trade imbalances in foreign countries. Right? Because we let bad shit happen, knowing that we have intel on the bad shit and we can build, develop a counter now. So there could have been any combination of the three of those that went into the development if COVID-19 was created intentionally to be a biological weapon. There's also plenty of situations where it was, everybody was funding the development of a novel virus so that they could see, how would we combat a novel virus?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Well, we can't run simulations without having a novel virus that we created. And maybe they even created one that they knew was weak so that they could run successful tests in a limited population with a contingency plan for in case that thing was artificially released or accidentally released. I don't believe that we have enough information to say COVID was developed with nefarious intent and tested on the world population. I don't believe that. I do think that there's enough.

• 6:24Tom Bilyeu?

  We have enough information to validate it, but whenever one finds themselves in a situation where they're squabbling over facts, I always say eject out of that and just run it as a thought experiment.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Because I'm trying to map global power. How does the global power network? How do the men and women behind the scenes that truly wield power? What are they looking at? What moves are they making? Leverage was your first hypothesis. That makes a lot of sense to me because it maps to what I think about central banking and why they, what I call they steal just blindly. Because money is fake. That's going to catch people off guard, but just so I don't have to spend a ton of time explaining it. It really is true. But because it's fake, then you can just print, print, print, print, print, print. If you control debt and the money printer, you never have to worry about going broke. Everybody else does. You don't.

• 7:12Tom Bilyeu?

  So that all maps to that, but I had never considered before that something like what happened with COVID could have been intentional from a gain leverage perspective and that people are willing to sacrifice copious amounts of people if it protects the constitution or whatever country it is that you work for. So this is shockingly eye opening. I don't want people to think that I just run with it. So anyway, as a thought experiment within that framework, could you see a world in which power brokers go, all right, we're going to kill a few hundred thousand, maybe a million people with the vaccine, but we're going to understand how it works.

• 7:55Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm not saying they did. I'm just saying, does that track in terms of the type of thing that somebody in that position would be like?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. Yes, I think it does for a few different reasons. China and the United States at the time of COVID especially were not in good terms, right? This was the Trump trade war was active. Trump was at a high point in his, in his popularity. You know, China was trying to figure out what they were going to do next. So for China. The idea of developing a chemical agent, whether it's a weapon, or whether it's a defensive ploy, or whether it's just a experiment for someone's PhD. Lots of reasons there while they would be exploring medicine, right, to try to differentiate themselves and make them a world broker, at best, and at worst, with nefarious intents. It also makes sense for China to release said virus as a thought experiment.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  It makes sense to release it because China's biggest problem is excess population. China's biggest drag is an aging population that doesn't contribute and brings down the average per capita of the average productive individual. China knows they're not going to become the world's superpower if they continue to carry a population in the billions, right? There are two times as many people who make up the employment base of China than there are total population in the United States. So that means working age laborers, there are 736 million in China. Working age, right? People looking for jobs.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  That's more than two times the entire population of the United States. Children, elderly, working age. China knows that in order for them to have a per capita income that comes anywhere close to our per capita income, which is what's required to make a true middle class, they can't carry billions of people. So it makes sense in a thought experiment for them to say, well, if we create something and it accidentally gets out, what is the probability that it's going to be devastating to our population? What's the probability that it might even be beneficial to our population? And that's what we saw happen with COVID-19. That doesn't necessarily mean that the United States supported the release, or that the United States had anything to do with the release, but it makes sense as a thought experiment for China to say, if we develop it, we win.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  If we develop it and it leaks, we still win. And if we develop it and it leaks and it travels around the world, that would be the only place where we might lose unless we're also the ones that have the vaccine for it. And then we win again. What I don't think anybody calculated was the fact that when COVID-19 spread, governments shut down. And when governments shut down, we all started to see that our, that all of our line of logistical supply chain went through China. That's where COVID-19 really changed the world. It wasn't in the fact that it killed a bunch of old people and sick people. I know a lot of people won't like that, that I said that. COVID changed the world because it showed the entire fucking world. We had let China become the center of the hub and spoke model for the entire globe. And now we've all, since then, we've all been trying to fix that.

• 10:59Tom Bilyeu?

  We'll be right back with more from Andrew Bustamante. Luxury brands are not charging you more for better cashmere. You're paying for the storefront, the ad budget, the name on the tag, but Quince cuts all of that out. They work directly with ethical factories. They skip the middlemen and sell 100% Mongolian cashmere, starting at just 60 bucks. 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Now, I gave one of these as a gift last year. It was a big hit and gifting is really the test of a brand. You might tolerate a lot of stuff in your own closet that you would never give to somebody else. I've got their joggers and a couple of their tees as well. And I can tell you their whole line is

• 11:40Tom Bilyeu?

  high quality. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now also available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, make sure you tell them that it was on Impact Theory. That's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about something that genuinely keeps me awake at night. My team at Impact Theory gets hit with phishing scams from bad actors pretending to be me all the time. And they keep getting more sophisticated attacks with details specific enough to look legit. AI has made a lot of things possible, including scams like this, but AI still needs

• 12:25Tom Bilyeu?

  raw material.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Gets it from data brokers who sell your name, address, phone number to anyone willing to pay. Incogni goes after that supply. They handle removal requests across 420 plus harmful broker sites. And they keep checking back as brokers constantly try to relist you. On the unlimited plan, the exposure scanner hunts down your information. Send a link and their privacy experts handle the takedown. Track your progress in the app and get a monthly risk assessment showing exactly where you stand. Go to incogni.com/impact and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan. Incogni is I-N-C-O-G-N-I dot com slash impact.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Promo code IMPACT. It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee.

• 13:19Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, let's dive right back in. You said earlier that this moment is a powder keg. What is going on? India, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Sudan, China, absolutely, Iran, Middle East.

• 13:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, Iran hiding in the background. What is happening?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  We have, we are sitting at such an intensely interesting time in our history. And I am so happy that I get to be an adult, watching it happen, right? Because in multiple data points, we are watching the decline of American supremacy. We're watching the dollar become less popular. We're watching American influence, international influence reduce itself. We're watching the rise of a new anti-Western power base, right? With the, with the combination of China, Iran, Russia and other Iranian, North Korean and Iranian counterparts, all coming together to create a counterbalance to the West? What a fascinating time to be alive. It does not mean we have a pleasant few decades ahead of us. It doesn't mean that.

• 14:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  But it does mean that the world that you and I will see from our deathbed is going to be so different than the world that we see today and the world that we saw when we were brought into this world, right?

• 14:33Tom Bilyeu?

  How dare you?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And that change, I find change to be a necessary fact of life. It's certainly a fact. Yeah, change is something that that will happen. And the people who succeed are the people who can adapt and evolve with that change the most effectively. So essentially, what we're seeing, in my opinion, essentially, what we're seeing around the whole world is a question of whether democracy is truly what serves governments. You think that's what's driving? That's the question. Really? And you can see, and here's why I say that. Most people would say that Donald Trump is a populist and or possibly authoritarian type of leader. Right? I think even Donald Trump would say that he's somewhere in the mix.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Right? He is not a professional politician democratically elected through blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? He's a, he's something else. We have literally watched the recent elections in Canada and Australia. Both elect far left leaning leaders. Specifically because those leaders were anti-Trump and the populations of those countries in the moment were also anti-Trump. They didn't have high chances of winning. These are two strong American allies, Canada and Australia. Right? They're part of the Five Eyes networks, the five countries that share all intelligence. Right? And these, these left leaning leaders were elected exclusively in a final push because they were like, we don't believe in Donald Trump. And their numbers soared and they were elected.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  So now these countries are stuck with these leaders. Not because of their policies or their backgrounds or their histories of success, but because of their political stance against Donald Trump. Simultaneously, we see a leader in Romania, a leader in Portugal. We see continuing growth across, we see Germany. We see these countries that are quote unquote democracies doing the opposite. Voting in strong right leaning authoritarian leaders, specifically because they are pro-Trump. Right? Germany's different because they dissolved their parliament, they dissolved their office of the chancellor. And then they couldn't come to a conclusion on the next chancellor. And then when they did come to a conclusion on the next chancellor, the parliament didn't endorse him and he had to go through a second round of voting. Germany's all fucked up right now.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And that's Germany, man. One of the wealthiest state, most stable, strongest countries in Europe can't get their shit together. Portugal's had multiple. Prime ministers in the last three years. The UK only recently landed on a prime minister that they have let sit for longer than a year. Like, Europe is all fucked up and for the same reasons, because the people can't decide. Do we want democracy? Or do we want strong man leadership? Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia flourishing under strong man leadership. Russia having the best years of the last decade under strong man leadership. Really? You think this is the best? They what? The best for them in the last 10 years. Really? I thought their economy was like getting hammered.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Even as it's getting hammered now, it's still better than it was five, seven, 10 years ago. They, yeah. Wow, I'm mismapping Russia. The war in Ukraine has created a wartime economy in Russia and people are getting paid more. They're producing more. Their economy isn't happy, but it's better than it's been, right? China's in the same place. China's struggling with their economy, but they have, they have a collective enemy right now with the West. So, especially with the terrorists that are happening right now, right? Every Chinese working age person is looking at the United States thinking you are an enemy of China. Because you're taking away my job. You're shutting down my factory. You're making it hard for me to feed my kids. You're the enemy, you're the enemy. What's, what's that person going to be in two years?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Three years, four years? If they're not a direct soldier, they're going to be somebody who's looking for ways to get into some military role that creates revenue from a wartime economy. You were mentioning this during your Lusitania example. Governments have learned through the lens of history, wartime is a huge economic boost. The big concern that Europe has with Russia is that Russia's not going to stop after Ukraine. Not because Russia actually has ambition beyond Ukraine, but because they can't. They can't stop. Now that that engine has been developed, now that they're creating 1,400 missiles, right? Why would they stop? Instead, they would find little, small ways to keep the conflict going and further test NATO, right? That's what Europe is most concerned about.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  So, we live in this world where, where this is not just happening in one or two pockets. It's happening everywhere, right? Do you think Putin is so incentivized to keep it going that the war just isn't going to end? So I think Putin is incentivized to take what he wants in Ukraine. No reason for him to back out of Ukraine now. No reason for him to stop and even come close to accepting Zelensky's terms. Because he's, he is doing what intelligence officers do. He is systematically. Degrading the influence of Zelensky and trying to degrade the influence of Donald Trump. The difference being that Donald Trump knows how this game works, so he knows how to extricate himself from the degradation and save his own reputation. But Zelensky's fucked, right? Zelensky once said, "I will never sit at the table with Putin."

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Now, Zelensky's bitching about the fact that he went to a table and Putin didn't show up, right? That makes Zelensky look like an idiot, as if he doesn't do enough to make himself look like an idiot. That does not help. He has insisted on 1991 borders. His own, like, senior liaisons for diplomacy around the world are saying that's an unreasonable expectation. So what kind of leader is it when, you know, you're head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United States is saying that the president's goals are unrealistic? It's a complete meltdown of any kind of reputation. Putin understands it. All Putin has to do is keep launching ammunition and flying drones. Fucking dude, this pisses

• 20:21Speaker 01

  me off. Zelensky launched one of the largest drone strikes on Russia in advance of the May 9th celebration. The May 9th celebration is Russia's annual celebration to celebrate the end of World War II and the destruction of the Nazi Party. Do you remember what his original terms were for invading Ukraine? Yeah. That they were still Nazi. So somehow this country that's trying to make itself look like it's the victim, literally attacks Moscow the eve of a celebration that's there to celebrate the defeat of the Nazi Party, when the original reason Putin went into Ukraine was because he said there were Nazis there. Right.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  These are horrible strategic decisions made over and over again. If not by Zelensky, then by the advisory board that he's taking information from, assuming that that advisory board is even trying to help Ukraine. So my point is... That's more terrifying. Yeah, we have this incredible world that is a powder keg working around us. You have Trump in the Middle East to decide whether or not Sunni Islam is going to support the Palestinians, or whether they're going to try to bring Israel to the table. You've got Netanyahu doing shit on his own that the world disagrees with. Counting on America to back him up, but Trump is distancing himself from Netanyahu. And that's before you start getting into the stuff like, like the military.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Pete Hegseth, our current Secretary of Defense, has set only two priorities in motion for the entire DOD. Only two. One, protect the homeland. Do you know what the second priority is? Degraded China. That's it. Right? That is the memo directing all of DOD. Two priorities, nothing else. Defend the homeland, which basically means put missiles on our shores. And degrade China. Nothing else. Not degrade adversaries, not counter, you know, political, whatever dissidents or influence from the East, none of that. It specifically says degrade and deter China. It's amazing. That is our world right now. How do you degrade China with the DOD?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Lots of different ways. I mean, some of it's denying their access to technology. Some of it is actively seeking areas to frustrate or waste their resources in third country locations. Right? Countering their influence with the Belt and Road Initiative, countering their support to Iran or Russia or North Korea. Right? Taking, taking action with special forces in zones where you know Chinese interests are at play. Some of it is cyber attacks. Some of it is space-based assets. Some of it is information warfare. Like, there's lots of different ways that you can degrade. And I think what's happening is the United States is understanding that China is a major threat.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  That no one has been calling China. They've been calling it Asia-Pacific, Pacific Rim. The East Asia pivot is what Obama called it. Right? And that was 2008. It's 2025 right now. So we've been, we've been sugarcoating this threat for a long time. But now Hegseth is saying, let's just call it what the fuck it is.

• 23:30Tom Bilyeu?

  How serious do you think the threat of China is? When I look at Thucydides' trap, when I look at the realities of geopolitics, when I look at being in second place is a lot worse than being in first place, just like, yeah, we've got to be looking there. When I look closer at the corporate espionage stuff, it's like, it's actually pretty serious. When I look at that they're the hub and spoke of the entire world's manufacturing and you can't have an adversary who might become your rival, sorry, a rival who might become your adversary, you can't have them control your drones when drones are how the war is going to be fought. Am I just being overly paranoid? Or is this really where we're headed?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  You're not being paranoid, you're being pragmatic right now. China is the single largest threat to the United States. If, that's not an opinion. That's laid out in the Director of National Intelligence Intelligence Estimate, that's laid out by the Secretary of Defence, that's been communicated by, by the President in multiple policies that have been set forth. Like, it's not paranoia. There's a huge narrative bias that happens in media and other places where they try to reduce it and they try to soften it, right? They try to talk about decoupling, et cetera, et cetera. But they're our largest threat. And keep in mind that this same conversation is happening somewhere in China, where that conversation is saying the same thing about us.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Where they say, the United States is the single largest threat to China, right? And the success of our people and the success of our long-term growth and success is being hampered and reduced by American influence and American activity. The fact that those two conversations are happening in both countries just goes to show where the future is truly headed, right? And all the examples you say are exactly right. The, the thing that has me the most kind of unnerved is that since about 2015, there have been multiple economists who have come out and said that the dollar is losing its influence as the central currency of the world, right? Not losing quickly necessarily, but there's absolutely a shift happening.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  When we then froze assets from Russia because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that was like $300 billion worth in assets. That was a huge signal to China that said, hey, if we're willing to do this to them, guess what we're willing to do to you? So now China started decoupling from us. China has its own issues that it's dealing with, but let's not like be coy. We have our own fucking issues that we're dealing with too.

• 25:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  They have their economic issues, we have our economic issues. They have their real estate issues, we have our real estate issues. They have their whatever, we have our whatever. The difference is they have a shit ton of people and their primary target is like 150 miles off their southern shore, where our primary threats are thousands of miles away from us. And it's going to take a whole hell of a lot of professional military organization to do anything against those threats. Imagine a world where Russia launches a limited campaign against Estonia, a NATO country, at the same time as China launches any kind of cyber attack or aggression against Taiwan. What's the United States gonna do? What's NATO gonna do?

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Are we going to act on Article Five and go to Estonia's aid? Are we gonna let Estonia defend itself for a little while to watch what happens? Are we gonna rush to Taiwan to give Taiwan aid? Are we gonna let Taiwan work on its own for a little bit to see what happens? Are we going to divide our forces and go in two different directions? That have an entire continent between them? What are we gonna do? This is what's happening at the boardroom tables in Moscow and Beijing. Thoughts like this, conversations like this. Probability and reliability matrix.

• 27:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you see them as working in any sort of coordinated fashion in that way? Or you're just saying if China saw that Russia made that move, that they might do something?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  I would say coordinated, but not necessarily collaborative. Right? Because what we're seeing is that the cooperation that's growing between Russia, Iran, North Korea, fundamentalist Islam, China.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  They're not agreeing on an ideology. They're not collaborating on ideas. When it's pragmatic, they're sending some of their advisors to go help the other country, like we're seeing with North Korean troops fighting in Russia, right? But we're also seeing China sending troops to fight, like mercenary troops, to fight both for Ukraine and for Russia. You've got lots of opportunity for countries to get involved in Sudan and Syria, where they can test their technology, they can test their tactics. Everybody understands, all of our adversaries understand, the United States is second to none when it comes to real-time war conflict experience. We know what it's like to get shot at in real time. We know what it's like to run coordinated operations in real time. NATO countries don't know how to do that.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  China doesn't really know how to do that. Russia has been learning it for the last almost three years, right? So that's a very valuable skill to have, and that's a skill that everybody's very eager to develop. So what I would say is because we see such pragmatic cooperation between them, I could see a phone call between Xi Jinping and Putin where they say, hey, this is what I'm gonna do on this day about. If you see it happen and it benefits you, it'd be really helpful to me for you to do that thing, right? Or just giving you a heads up, I'm not telling this to anybody else, but this is gonna happen. Maybe it'll happen in July, right? And then they can plan, and they can plan in separate silos to help keep compartmentation going, but for sure, we are seeing that all of those countries are benefiting from the

• 29:03Speaker 01

  cooperation with each other in a collective push against Western power.

• 29:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Up next, how to apply spy tactics to everyday business and relationships. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review. And approve. So there's less admin and more selling.

• 29:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14 day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes. And we're back. Let's pick up right where we left off. The geopolitics, the strategy of this moment where we no longer feel like a hegemon is

• 30:28Tom Bilyeu?

  it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. If we, if I'm running the scenarios and I'm China, I realize that I'm in a stronger position now than I probably will be down the road. So that's the part that that unnerves me. That's an excellent observation that people don't say enough. This is something that people have ridiculed a bit strong, but they think I'm off the mark by thinking that we need to bring some manufacturing back to the US, but it just seems self evident. The one that I always focus on is drones. Right now China just controls that. Rare earth minerals being actually processed, China is like 95%. Yeah. And the amount of the modern world that that controls. And there's something interesting going on with the conflation of we want to be good people.

• 31:14Tom Bilyeu?

  And therefore we, we don't want to do anything that would hurt China. And honestly, I don't want to do anything that would hurt China if we weren't in the scenario that we're in. Right. It's like, I think so much of the American psyche is built on, certainly people my age, is built on this idea that we won World War II, the Russians who? We won World War II. We did it by, the Japanese were dumb enough to strike Pearl Harbor and we just on a dime started making ships out of nowhere. And we feel like, oh, we can still do that because it's the American spirit, not realizing, no, no, no, this is, that was the American manufacturing pipeline that we just aimed at something else. We no longer have that pipeline. It's all been outsourced to China. China is anything but dumb.

• 31:55Tom Bilyeu?

  And so they understand we can make everything for everyone. That was the game plan.

• 32:02Tom Bilyeu?

  So is it just that China can print their way out of this better than we can? That they're more poised to, uh, they certainly don't mind depressing the value of the yuan. And if they just print, print, print, print, print to keep their economy going, yes, they're, um, inflating, but they've, like you said, they've got such a massive working population that it's like, yeah, sorry, guys, over the next five years, you're going to take a 25, 30% hit. It is what it is. And, uh, I welcome you to come tell me your, your negative feelings and, uh, we've got a nice camp for you.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, so, yeah, I don't know what they're waiting for. I don't know if it's that, um, they don't want it either. And that's just, uh, that's too messy. And if we can just calmly take over the world, then we will. And so that's strat number one. Um, and maybe it is Trump is just a loose cannon enough. It's like, nah, we'll wait this out. Like waiting 10 more years is not a big deal for us. Uh, and so we're gonna be obviously aggressively trying to build alliances with other countries because you're doing all this dumb shit with tariffs. And so we're going to build alliances, free trade. Look at us, China, free trade. Who said anything different?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, man, it'll be interesting, but my gut instinct is that's what's playing out, that they've got a long game in mind. They're willing to be patient. They want to get Trump out of office. They want to see if they can, uh, get the, um, real estate problem a bit more under wraps, uh, build more alliances, beat the West in the trade game. And then, man, if, if Trump's gambit doesn't work, I mean, look at it two ways. And now I'll speak this directly to all the people that think I'm dumb for this position. Look at it this way. Uh, Trump loses the trade war and China continues to offer trade to the rest of the world. How is that good?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Whether you're Europe or the US, how's that help you exactly? Not, not tracking that. Uh, you get cheap shit. I'll give you that. But China then becomes the number one power. And the only read I can have on that is they just go, yeah, to your point, I'm cool with the strong man thing. I'm tired of this democracy bullshit. Like I'm here for it. Let's go China. That, otherwise I'm just like, what are you thinking? Like this is the away team. Uh,

• 34:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's bananas. Alternatively, he wins. You may think he's Trump with the trade war. You may think he's a maniac. But if he can go in, destabilize things enough that he can rejigger everything so that we're in a better position and can afford. And this is the part, I don't think people understand economics well enough to understand what's really fucking going on. When you've got China that can produce everything so cheaply, you can't afford to do your own manufacturing. You literally can't get people to do it. You can't get the entrepreneurs to build the factories, building these fucking factories. It's hard as hell. Like, you have to convince a lot of smart people to go, ooh, I can make a lot of money doing that. And with China driving the prices down, you can't. So you literally can't bring the manufacturing back without becoming dictatorial.

• 35:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And so now you're stuck. Like, they will literally boil your frog simply by going, we now manufacture everything and fuck you. Like, we're gonna go take Taiwan because Taiwan can't resist. You can't help them because, sure, you've got your crazy Lucky Palmer and all of his microwave technology and you could try to take down our drones. But like, we're going to hit you with so many waves of different things, down to dudes with sticks if we have to. And we will just overwhelm you.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Just like Russia is surviving the tech war in Ukraine, right? They're proving that concept is viable, that you can take a protracted approach and you can at least maintain initial lines of demarcation just with a war of attrition, right? A rapid blitzkrieg style approach. And then, once you have the lines, it's only changed like between 1 and 3% since the start of the war, right? With all the technology and all the intelligence and all the money that's gone into that, Russia, isolated and abandoned for, you know, a better part of the first year, still maintained their lines of attack, right? Plus or minus 3%.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  So absolutely, China's watching that. The only thing I would add to what you're saying.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  I live, and my whole company lives, to bring spy principles into everyday life. Right? Sometimes it's everyday life principles that come into espionage. And people don't realize that. One of the foundations for what informs national security policy is actually an economic concept called Porter's Five Forces. So Porter's? Porter's Five Forces, right? Porter's Five Forces is an economic principle that has to do with industry. Right? And those five forces are the, you've heard of them before, most likely. There's buying power, selling power, the power of substitution, the power of new entrance, and the power of existing competition. Right? These are the five powers that shape business.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  If you want to make more money, or if you want to start a business, or if you want to grow your business, you're always looking for the balance of these five forces. Are you a buyer, a seller? Are you a competitor? Are you a new startup? Are you something else? Trump and all of his tariffs have to do with buying power. He knows that America buys the most shit at the highest premium, that any one of the people who sell to us could sell to someone else, but they would sell and they'd get a smaller margin, and they would sell to a smaller audience that wouldn't have the same appetite. So he's gambling on that. Big gamble, like you said, but he understands, like, hey,

• 38:00Speaker 01

  selling to one American is the equivalent of selling to five different countries in South America. So how long before someone says, fuck trying to market, increase my marketing costs, increase my advertising costs, increase my shipping, to sell to five different countries in Latin America, or I just accept whatever the demands are to lower my tariffs so I can work with the United States? That's the game for Trump. It's just like whenever you mark up the prices on your product, and then you offer a special rebate. Right? It's the same thing that he's doing. That's buyer's power. China is leaning into seller's power and new entrance. They're trying to offer everything at the lowest possible price because they're a very capable seller, and they're also trying to outpace the United States by being a new, a new alternative,

• 38:43Speaker 01

  a substitute or a new alternative for what the United States has. That's why they're trying to get involved in tech. That's why they're trying to get involved in so many other industries, from electric vehicles to telecommunications, etc. They're trying to say, hey, you don't only have to buy from America, world. You can also buy from us. Right? And there's a lot of the world that's saying yes to that, right? Trade from Mexico down. Trade has increased by like 38% with China in the last 12 months. It has decreased by 24% with the United States. Right? So now China is gaining more trade ground in South America and Central America. And the United States isn't keeping the same. The America is losing its trade ground. Another thing that the Secretary of Defense is highlighting.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Why is China so interested in gaining more trade with South America and Central America? Because that's going to allow more Chinese infrastructure, more Chinese presence. All of that can be flipped and dual purposed into intelligence and military ambition. Because China has something called a state-run enterprise, right? Meaning the state runs the commercial business. So they can put a military antenna on the back of a fucking ice cream truck if they want to. Because it's it's one in the same. Where here in the United States, we divide military from commercial.

• 39:57Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we've got one more piece we've got to deal with. Where's Iran hiding in all of this? Um, so much what's going on in the Middle East is proxy. Uh, is China connected to Iran in any way? What's that game?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  So Iran is a really interesting animal right now because for about the last 20 ish years, it's survived on this idea of an axis of resistance. Where it is the moneymaker and it's a huge moneymaker. People don't realize Iran is the breadbasket of the of the Middle East. Everybody buys all their agricultural goods from Iran. It's green, it's lush, it's got active farms and agriculture. So Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, all of our American allies all buy. They're all enemies to Iran, but they have carve-outs where they buy from Iran. So they have fresh vegetables and produce, right? So Iran is the breadbasket. And then it sends those funds to these radicalized

• 40:56Speaker 01

  proxies to carry out Iranian interests abroad, like Hamas and Hezbollah.

• 41:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Do they just want a caliphate? Like, they want an Islamic state as far as the eye can see?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 41:06Tom Bilyeu?

  That's it.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  It's called the Shia Crescent. What they want is the expansion of Shia belief and ideology throughout the Middle East with Iran at the center of it. That's the concern that all of the Middle East, that all the Sunni Muslims have, is that Iran wants a Shia caliphate again, right? The larger thing that Iran is looking for is to become a sphere of influence that counters Western influence, and they consider Saudi Arabia to be Western influence. So it's really a constant game between Iran and Saudi Arabia. When we talk about the United States being involved, that's just, that's kind of like lip service. The United States isn't really involved in Iran. Iran doesn't wake up every day and think about the United States. They wake up every day and think about Saudi Arabia, right? That's their primary problem in their region.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  So they have all these proxies that they support, and the proxies get confusing because the proxies have their own priorities. Hamas wants to counter Israel. Hezbollah wants to counter Israel. Houthis want their own independence. So there's all these different kind of split priorities among the proxies that Iran supports. But your original question is, where does it fit into all this? Iran's actually on its heels right now. Hezbollah's been mostly dismantled. Hamas has been heavily dismantled. The Houthis somehow are the shining, like, silver badge right now for Iran. That's not a good sign, right? But Iran's own internal military capability is still largely unknown. They couldn't defend themselves well against the airstrike that came from Israel, but

• 42:34Speaker 01

  we don't know how much they can actually organize and carry out their own IRGC efforts. And most people think the IRGC is very capable, the Iranian Guard, right? So we don't know what Iran actually can do. And Iran's in a position now where it might see benefit from cooperating with Trump on a nuclear deal, because then that takes the heat off of them, allows them to gain more money, more power, more influence in the region, especially as Saudi Arabia is distracted with what's going on in Israel. Right now Saudi Arabia has to protect Sunni Islam. And the biggest enemy against Sunni Islam right now is not Shia Islam, it's the fucking Netanyahu war. War going on in Gaza.

• 43:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  So Iran's in this great position where it's been hit hard. But no one's really looking at it right now. So it could rebuild, refund those proxies and never has there been a better time to refund proxies. Because Netanyahu's war against Gaza is radicalizing, could radicalize every Palestinian in existence, not to mention any Sunni Islam member. Who's outraged by the fact that that Israel's been allowed to do what it's doing. Right? So Iran knows that. So all it needs is money and time and it can rebuild more proxy forces.

• 43:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, do you know of any connection between China and Iran?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  There are a number of connections. Um, China is getting most of its oil from Iran right now. Iran gets a lot of its technology from China. There's pragmatic relationships between the two. Not to mention that Iran understands that it needs to be aligned with some sort of first world or quickly developing country. And the only two options out there are the United States and China. And you can't really become an ally of the United States unless you follow American ideology. But anybody can be an ally with China as long as you're pragmatically collaborative or cooperative with their economy.

• 44:19Tom Bilyeu?

  So interesting, man. The US, the West is gonna have to figure out if they're willing to defend their values or not.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Correct. And decide what those values are.

• 44:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Because even Europe, even NATO can't fucking agree right now. Not, not America to Europe and most definitely not within Europe itself. Even like bastion European powers like Germany and Spain and Portugal and France can't get on the same fucking page.

• 44:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. What do you think is pulling them apart?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  I think it's this question of how much do we adhere to democracy and how much do we adhere to?

• 44:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Democracy? That's interesting.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  I don't think it's purely that. I think that's a big part of it because.

• 44:51Tom Bilyeu?

  How has this come up?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  The world really does take its dance steps from the United States. Right? So when the United States has a healthy democracy, when it's left leaning, when it's focused on social issues, then the rest of the world focuses on the same kind of thing. Right? If you recall, most of the world didn't take action on COVID until the United States took action on COVID. China did its own thing, but the Middle East and Europe really didn't take action until the United States took action. So the world follows the US lead.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  When the US, when the world started to see that the US was having its own internal conflicts, do we go far right or do we go far left? But we've gotten away from this idea of center government. Boy, have we ever. Right? So then Europe had to start asking themselves the same question. Do we go far right or do we go far left? Especially since far-left leaders in Europe were staunchly opposed to far-right leaders in the United States. But Europe is heavily dependent on the United States and they're waking up to that fact. Trump has helped Europe to understand, holy shit, we have exported so much of our health and well-being to the United States. There they supply our weapons, they supply our medical technology, they supply our financial institutions, they supply everything. And now if the United States just shut the door on Europe, Europe would be fucked.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  And they know that, which is why you saw the previous German chancellor start talking about, you know, Germany becoming the new center of NATO and decoupling from the United States and investing more in their own internal defense. But you haven't actually seen- Would that be good or bad for us? I think it'd be good for us. Really? Here's the problem, when we came out of World War II, we had an attitude, which was appropriate at the time, that we had to dominate everything. We had to dominate our enemies and our allies. Because today's allies can turn into tomorrow's enemies, right? That's what happened basically from World War II to World War, or World War I to World War II. Everybody thought Germany was defeated. And then all of a sudden, it had a war machine going, right? Talk about a war, building an engine for an economy?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  That's exactly what happened in Germany, right? So the United States oppressed everyone economically, educationally, behaviorally. We made slave labor in Japan, that's why Japan has the work culture it has. Because coming out of World War II, America basically put every working-age Japanese person to like, to work 12 hours a day, six days a week relentlessly. And now they have a culture where they're just, they work all the time. That's all Americans, American influence coming out of World War II. That strategy isn't working so well anymore. That strategy of oppressing your allies has just made our allies weak. Which means if we wanna, if we wanna support our allies, it really means we have to do it for them, which is what we're seeing in Ukraine, right?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Poland sees that, they understand that.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Germany sees that and they're all thinking, holy shit, if Russia actually does become more aggressive against Europe, how long before the United States can't support all of us? Like, there are 10 countries that are NATO countries that are within striking distance of Russia. If Russia attacks one, two, three of them at once, it's all coming from one country to one border. But for the United States and for the rest of NATO, there's different contingents and different countries and different bylaws and different weaponry that are all available and there's different priorities. How do you compare Estonia or Lithuania against, you know, Romania or Poland? Who gets priorities first? Who's more important? Who's of greater strategic significance? Who can actually handle enough

• 48:26Speaker 01

  airplanes to defend themselves? Right? It's a nuts situation. And the old way of business, of doing business, doesn't work anymore.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Not to mention the fact that our adversaries have learned from us and they are doing something similar and hybrid of their own. That's what you see with China. China is now building commercial ports in Central and South America for commercial purposes, but they're also deep enough and industrial enough to take military-grade hardware if it's ever needed. And who controls that port? Not the country where it was built, China, because they have a 100-year lease on the port, like what they're doing in Panama or what they're doing in Brazil. Right? So now we have to sit there and wonder, is it really commercial use? Or is it just waiting to be, a flip of a switch, now it can take military ships?

• 49:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. Give Trump a report card in the first 120, 30 days, whatever it is.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  I think he's doing more for us than we give him credit for.

• 49:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think he's doing more for America than America gives him credit for. And I think a lot of it's because Americans have been systematically made ignorant of what actually matters. What actually matters is not the words that come out of somebody's mouth. What actually matters is not whether or not they have like... They like to look at themselves in the mirror, or whether or not they change their mind, or whether or not they sound foolish. That's not what actually matters in the person who leads a country. What actually matters is, is that person willing and able to leverage the capabilities of your country to give you a better probability of success in the future? I think Donald Trump is doing that. He's testing it with tariffs.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  He's testing it with, with his executive orders. He's testing it with new relationships. I mean, the fact that, the fact that the fucking dude is meeting with Saudis and, and using that meeting as a chance to show Netanyahu, hey, I'm willing to meet with the largest, strongest Sunnis in the region of which are very upset with you, by the way, Netanyahu. And after I meet with them, I'm gonna take a trip over to meet with some folks in Iran about their nuclear capability that I might green light, even though I know it threatens you. Like, that's shit that Biden and Obama would have never done. They'd be, oh, we can't do that, right? We're too afraid of upsetting the Jewish diaspora in the United States. Trump is like, well, let's see what actually happens.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Let's see if this helps America. Well, let's see whether this hurts America, but someone's gotta at least try it.

• 50:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Give it a grade?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Eighty-five percent. Solid B.

• 50:56Tom Bilyeu?

  All right.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  But what's cool about that is sometimes your B can turn into an A, but I've been a student and Bs can turn into Ds too.

• 51:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, ain't that the truth? Brother, this has been amazing. We're gonna people follow along with you.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  If anybody wants to find me, they can find me at Everyday Spy on any social media platform. I have my own YouTube channel and podcast. If you follow me at Andrew Bustamante, or if you look up the term Everyday Spy, you'll find your way to me pretty fast.

• 51:19Tom Bilyeu?

  You are killing it on YouTube.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 51:21Tom Bilyeu?

  I hope that people find you there. And speaking of finding amazing channels, if you haven't 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,

• 52:06Tom Bilyeu?

  nutrient-dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements, and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts with your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2, and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.com/impact to claim this offer.