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CIA Spy: "Leave The USA Before 2030!" Why You Shouldn't Trust Your Gut! - Andrew Bustamante

Andrew Bustamante is a former covert CIA intelligence officer and US Air Force combat veteran. He is the founder of EverydaySpy, an online education platform that teaches real-world international espionage techniques that can be used in everyday life. 00:00 Intro 02:47 Your Time At The CIA 03:15 What Is The CIA? 03:57 You've Got It Wrong About Spies 06:43 Applying Real Spy Skills To Overcome Any Barrier In Our Lives 08:13 How To Manipulate People 18:15 The Psychological Profile Of A CIA Agent 21:13 I Held The Key To Nuclear Missiles 23:15 It Was A Horrible Job 25:00 Would You Have You Pressed The Nuclear Button? 27:18 The CIA Message That Changed My Life 29:13 The Interview Process For The CIA 31:31 How Did You Feel When You Received That Letter? 33:54 Did The CIA Tell You To Cut Off From Your Social Circle? 34:44 Your Ethnicity Factor To Be Recruited By The CIA 36:03 Do You Have To Change Your Identity? 37:14 How Expensive Is To Train A CIA Agent? 37:21 What's The CIA Training Scheme? 38:04 Do They Show You How To Kill? 39:06 How You Teach The Art Of Lying 41:00 Body Language & Lying 42:46 Demystifying Lying Signs 45:44 How To Tell If Someone Is Lying 47:34 Human Psychology 50:32 The Essence Of Manipulation 52:09 How To Find Someone's Ideology To Manipulate Them 56:12 Have You Changed The Way You Look At The World? 01:00:01 Perception vs Perceptive 01:01:59 Leaning Into Objective vs Subjective Feelings 01:03:25 How To Train Yourself To Apply Rational Objective Perspective 01:05:54 Your Business Success 01:09:01 What Is SADRAT? 01:11:07 Change The Game When Selling Your Products 01:13:13 What Is Espionage? 01:14:08 What Is Our Secret Life? 01:18:16 How To Enter Someone's Secret Life 01:23:33 How To Apply It To Business 01:26:19 Adapting To Change Faster Than Your Opponent 01:29:18 Were There Times Your Life Was At Threat? 01:31:43 Sexpionage, What Is It? 01:33:49 Disguise, Did You Ever Do It? 01:38:44 Do CIA Agents Get Trained To Not Feel Fear & Anxiety? 01:41:23 How Do They Train You To Slow Down Your Emotional Brain? 01:47:28 Your Wife & You Leaving The CIA 01:48:55 America Is Going Through A Hard Period 01:54:15 What's The Advice For Everyone To Make That Change? 01:56:27 How Does Your Identity Stop You From Evolving? 01:57:39 What Is Something You Used To Believe That You No Longer Do? Want to learn more from Andrew? Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Explore Spy School: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the podcast: https://youtube.com/@EverydaySpyPodcast Follow Andrew Twitter - https://bit.ly/49AI9qT Instagram - https://bit.ly/4bTOIqf YouTube - https://bit.ly/3IkEhOY Follow our Shorts channel for more content: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDiaryofaCEOShorts Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGq-a57w-aPwyi3pW7XLiHw/join Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Sponsors: Whoop: https://join.whoop.com/en-uk/CEO This episode of The Diary Of A CEO was filmed at Gold Tree Studios, located in the heart of the Sunset Strip, West Hollywood, California

Andrew BustamanteguestSteven Bartletthost
Mar 4, 20242h 2mWatch on YouTube ↗

CHAPTERS

  1. 0:00 – 25:20

    Intro, CIA Background, and Everyday Spy’s Mission

    Bustamante briefly introduces his CIA past and frames the episode’s purpose: to show how spy skills can be used to break everyday barriers in life and business. He explains what the CIA actually is, the difference between ‘spies,’ handlers, and assets, and why he built Everyday Spy.

  2. 25:20 – 47:00

    Childhood, Emotional Wiring, and Why CIA Recruits the ‘Slightly Broken’

    Bustamante recounts his father’s murder, being raised by a cold, career-driven mother, and growing up feeling unloved and unable to trust his family. This environment normalized secrets and lies, created sociopathic tendencies around truth, and laid the psychological groundwork that later made him attractive to intelligence services.

  3. 47:00 – 1:08:00

    From Nuclear Missile Officer to CIA Recruit

    He describes his Air Force career as a nuclear missile officer, the psychological toll of sitting underground waiting for a war that never comes, and the algorithmic pop-up that quietly redirected his online Peace Corps application into CIA recruitment.

  4. 1:08:00 – 1:11:40

    CIA Training: Tradecraft, Lying, and Human Psychology

    Bustamante outlines the immersive, controlled training environment where officers are taught alias living, surveillance detection, and psychological tools. He clarifies that not all officers are trained to kill, but all field operators are trained to manipulate, lie, and understand human motivations in a structured way.

  5. 1:11:40 – 1:23:40

    How to Lie, Spot Liars, and Build Trust

    He breaks down concrete markers of bad liars and the behavioral tactics that good liars—and good interviewers—use. Mirroring body language to trigger subconscious trust and using questions instead of statements form the foundation of his ‘spy toolkit’ for conversations.

  6. 1:23:40 – 1:39:10

    Core Motivations (RICE) and Messaging vs. Narrative

    Bustamante introduces RICE as the four universal drivers of human behavior and ranks their power. He then distinguishes between emotional ‘messaging’ and logical ‘narrative,’ showing how spy agencies and politicians use this stack to move populations—and how businesses largely fail to use it well.

  7. 1:39:10 – 1:50:50

    Perception vs. Perspective: Why Your Gut Is Often Wrong

    He explains how CIA inculcates distrust of perception—our emotionally charged, single-source view—and pushes officers to seek perspective, an evidence-based, multi-angle understanding. This reframing underpins his advice to stop romanticizing ‘trusting your gut’ as a default strategy.

  8. 1:50:50 – 2:03:00

    SADRAT: Turning Espionage Recruitment into a Sales Machine

    Bustamante maps the CIA’s asset recruitment process—SADRAT—onto customer acquisition, emphasizing the neglected step of assessment. He and Bartlett compare notes on how filtering for high-lifetime-value customers transformed profitability and how his firm automates emotional listening to scale this.

  9. 2:03:00 – 2:21:40

    Public, Private, and Secret Lives: Accessing the Deepest Layer

    He outlines the three-layer model of human life and explains how espionage operations deliberately move targets from public to private to secret life access. He then shows how carefully structured vulnerability and question patterns can open ‘windows’ into someone’s secrets.

  10. 2:21:40 – 2:30:00

    Anxiety, Fear, and Stress Inoculation: Training the Emotional Brain

    Bustamante reframes anxiety as a tactical advantage—heightened observation and caution—that intelligence services actively seek. He details how CIA training uses repeated exposure to fear to slow emotional overreaction and accelerate rational processing, and how ordinary people can borrow the same method.

  11. 2:30:00 – 2:40:00

    Disguises, Sexpionage, and Operational Risk

    In a more ‘spy movie’ section, he demystifies disguises and sexpionage, explaining their real-world constraints and risks. Hollywood staples—perfect masks and seduction operations—are rarer and more problematic than people assume.

  12. 2:40:00 – 2:49:40

    Family, Leaving CIA, and America’s Coming Crisis

    Bustamante explains why he and his CIA-officer wife resigned together to prioritize family over 16-hour classified workdays. He then pivots to his belief that the U.S. is in a turbulent adolescent phase and why he plans to move his children abroad before America hits parity with China.

  13. 2:49:40

    World War III by Proxy and Final Advice on Action and Identity

    He argues that World War III is already underway as a network of proxy conflicts (e.g., Ukraine-Russia, future Taiwan-China) backed by competing great powers. The conversation closes with his practical advice for ‘average’ people: take action, challenge identity assumptions, and accept that equality is not truly what most people seek.

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