Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy | Lex Fridman Podcast #310

1. 0:00 – 0:56

   Introduction

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante0:00

      Mossad will do anything. Mossad has no qualms doing what it takes to ensure the survival of every Israeli citizen around the world. Most other countries will stop at some point, but Mossad doesn't do that.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:17

      The following is a conversation with Andrew Bustamante, former CIA covert intelligence officer and US Air Force combat veteran, including the job of operational targeting, encrypted communications, and launch operations for 200 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. Andrew's over seven years as a CIA spy have given him a skill set and a perspective on the world that is fascinating to explore. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Bustamante.

2. 0:56 – 12:34

   CIA and the President

   1. LFLex Fridman0:56

      The Central Intelligence Agency was formed almost 75 years ago. What is the mission of the CIA? How does it work?

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:04

      The mission of the CIA is to collect intelligence from around the world that supports a national security mission and be the central repository for all other intelligence agencies so that it's one collective source where all intelligence can be synthesized and then passed forward to the decision-makers.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:23

      That doesn't include domestic intelligence. It's primarily looking outward, outside the United States.

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:29

      Correct. CIA is the foreign intelligence, uh, collection, uh, kingspoke, if you will. FBI does domestic and then Department of Homeland Security does domestic. Law enforcement essentially handles all things domestic. Uh, intelligence is not law enforcement, so we technically cannot work inside the United States.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:50

      Is there clear lines to be drawn between, like you just said, the FBI... CIA, FBI, and the other US intelligence agencies like the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security, NSA, National Security Ag- Agency, and, and there's a list, there's a list of-

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante2:08

      There's a list of about 33 different intelligence organizations. Yeah, you're exactly right.

   7. LFLex Fridman2:11

      So like the Army, the Navy has a, all, all the different organizations have their own intelligence groups. So is there, is there clear lines here to be drawn? Or is the CIA the, the giant integrator of all of these?

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante2:23

      Uh, it's a little bit of both, to be honest. So yes, there are absolutely lines, and more so than the lines, there are lines that divide what our primary mission is. Everything's gotta be prioritized. That's one of the benefits and the s- and the super powers of the United States, is we prioritize everything. So different intelligence organizations are prioritized to collect certain types of intelligence. And then within the confines of how they collect, they're also given unique authorities. Authorities are a term that's directed by the executive branch. Different agencies have different authorities to execute missions in different ways. FBI can't execute the same way CIA executes, and CIA can't execute the same way NGA, uh, ex- executes. But then at the end, (clears throat) excuse me, when it's all collected, then yes, CIA still acts as a final synthesizing repository to create what's known as the President's Daily Brief, the PDB. The only way CIA can create the PDB is by being the single s- source of all source intelligence from around the IC, the inter- the intelligence community, which are those 30 some odd and always changing, uh, organizations that are sponsored for intelligence operations.

   9. LFLex Fridman3:36

      What is the PDB, the President's Daily Brief look like? How long is it? What does it contain?

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante3:40

       (laughs)

   11. LFLex Fridman3:41

       Uh, is it-

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante3:41

       So first of all, it looks like the most expensive book report you can ever imagine. It's got its own binder. It's all very high-end. It feels important. It looks important. It's not like a cheap Trapper Keeper. Um, it's somewhere between, I would give it probably between 50 and 125 pages a day. It's produced every day around 2:00 in the morning by a dedicated group of analysts, and, uh, and each page is essentially w- a, a short paragraph to a few paragraphs about a priority happening that affects national security from around the world. The president rarely gets to the entire briefing in a day. He relies on a briefer instead to prioritize what inside the briefing needs to be shared with the president, 'cause some days the PDB will get briefed in 10 minutes and some days it'll be briefed over the course of two hours. It depends on the president's schedule.

   13. LFLex Fridman4:32

       How much competition is there for the first page? And, uh, so, uh, w- how much jockeying there is for attention, uh, for g- I, I imagine for all the different intelligence agencies, and within the CIA, there's probably different groups that are modular and they're all care about different nations or different, uh, cases, and h- how... Is there... Do you understand (sighs) how much competition there is for the attention, for the limited attention of the president?

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante5:01

       You're 100% correct in how the agency and how officers and managers at the agency handle the PDB. There's a ton of competition. Everybody wants to be the first on the radar. Everybody wants to be on the first page. The thing that we're not baking into the equation is the president's interests. The president dictates what's on the first page of his PDB, and he will tell them usually the day before, "I wanna see this on the first page tomorrow. Bring this to me in the beginning. I, I don't wanna hear about what's happening in Mozambique. I don't really care about what's happening in Saudi Arabia. I wanna see one, two, three." And regardless of whether or not those are the three biggest things in the world, the president's the executive. He's the one. He's the ultimate customer. So we do what the custo- what the customer says. That has backfired in the past. If you haven't already started seeing how that could go wrong, (laughs) that has backfired in the past, but that is essentially what happens when you serve in the executive branch. You serve the executive.

   15. LFLex Fridman5:55

       So what's the role, the director of the CIA versus the president? What's that dance like? So the, the president really leads......the focus of the CIA?

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante6:06

       The president is the commander-in-chief for the military. But the ch- the executive, the president is also the executive for the entirety of the intelligence community. So he's the c- the ultimate customer. If you look at it like a business, the customer, the person spending the money is the president, and the director is the CEO. So if the s- if the director doesn't create what the president wants, there's gonna be a new director. That's why the director of CIA is a presidential appointed position. Sometimes they're extremely qualified intelligence professionals, sometimes they're just professional politicians or soldiers that get put into that seat because the president trusts them to do what he wants them to do, another, uh, gaping area that causes problems, but that's still the way it is.

   17. LFLex Fridman6:54

       So you think this is a problematic configuration of the whole system or-

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante6:58

       Massive flaw in the system. It is a massive flaw in the system because if you're essentially appointing a director to do what you want them to do, then you're assigning a crony, and that's what we define corruption as within the United States. And inside the United States, we say, "If you pick somebody outside of merit, for any other reason other than merit, then it's cronyism or it's nepotism." Here, that's exactly what our structure is built on. All presidential appointees are appointed on something other than merit.

   19. LFLex Fridman7:25

       So for an intelligence agency to be effective, it has to discover the truth and communicate that truth. And maybe if you're appointing the director of that agency, you're not, they're less likely to communicate the truth to you unless the truth aligns perfectly with your desired world view.

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante7:41

       Well, not necessarily perfectly because there are other steps, right? They have to be a, they have to go in front of Congress and they have to have the support of, of multiple legislatures, uh, or legislators. But they, they're, th- the challenge is that the short list of people who even get the opportunity aren't a meritorious list. It's a short list based off of who the president is picking or who the would-be president is picking. Now I think we've proven that an intelligence organization can be ex- an intelligence organization can be extremely effective even within the flawed system.

   21. LFLex Fridman8:12

       Yeah.

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante8:13

       The challenge is how much more effective could we be if we improved? And that's, I think that's the challenge that faces a lot of the US government. I think that's a challenge that has resulted in what we see today when it comes to the decline of American power and American influence, the rise of foreign influence, the ty- uh, authoritarian powers, um, and a s- a shrinking US economy, a growing Chinese economy, and it's just we have questions, hard questions we need to ask ourselves about how we're gonna handle the future.

   23. LFLex Fridman8:45

       What aspect of that communication between the president and the CIA could be fixed to, to help, um, fix the problems that you're referring to in terms of the decline of American power?

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante8:57

       So when you talk about the president wanting to prioritize what the president cares about, that immediately shows a, a break between what actually matters to the long-term success of the United States versus what happen, what benefits the short-term success of the current president.

   25. LFLex Fridman9:16

       Because any president is just a human being and has a very narrow focus. A narrow focus is not a long-term calculation.

   26. ABAndrew Bustamante9:24

       Exactly. What's the maximum amount of years a president can be president? Eight.

   27. LFLex Fridman9:28

       Yeah.

   28. ABAndrew Bustamante9:29

       He has to be re- he or she.

   29. LFLex Fridman9:30

       In the United States.

   30. ABAndrew Bustamante9:31

       (laughs) In the United States, according to our current Constitution.
3. 12:34 – 53:30

   War in Ukraine

   1. LFLex Fridman12:34

      It seems like authoritarian regimes or regimes throughout history, if you look at Stalin and Hitler, if you look at today with Vladimir Putin, the negative effects of power corrupting the mind of a leader, uh, manifests itself is that they start to get bad information from the intelligence agencies. So th- this kind of thing that you're talking about, over time, they start hearing information they wanna, they want to hear. The agency starts producing only, um, the kind of information they want to hear, and their, the leader's worldview starts becoming distorted to where the propaganda they generate is also the thing that the intelligence agencies provide to them. And so they start getting this, they start believing their own propaganda and they start getting a distorted view of the world. Sorry for this sort of, uh-

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante13:25

      (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman13:26

      ... walking through in a weird way, but I guess I wanna ask, do you think, let's look at Vladimir Putin specifically, do you think he's getting accurate information about the world? Do you think he knows the truth of the world, whether that's the war in Ukraine, whether that's the behavior of the other nations in NATO, the United States in general? What do you think?

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante13:49

      It's rare that I'll talk about just thinking. It's, I, I prefer to share my assessment, why I assess things a certain way, rather than just what's my random opinion. In my assessment, Vladimir Putin is winning. Russia is winning. They're winning in Ukraine, but they're also winning the battle of influence against the West, they're winning in the face of economic sanctions, they're winning. Empirically, when you look at the math, they're winning. So when you ask me whether or not Putin is getting good information from his intelligence services, when I look at my overall assessment of multiple data points, he must be getting good information. Do I know how or why? I do not. I don't know how or why it works there. I don't know how such deep cronyism, such deep corruption can possibly yield true real results, and yet somehow there are real results happening. So it's either excessive waste and an accidental win, or there really is a system and a process there that's functioning.

   5. LFLex Fridman14:50

      So this winning idea is very interesting. In what way, short term and long term, is Russia winning? Some people say there was a miscalculation of the way the invasion happened. Uh, there was an assumption that you would be able to successfully take Kiev, you'd be able to successfully capture the east, the south, and the north of Ukraine, and with what now appears to be significantly insufficient troops, spread way too thin across way too large of a front. So that seems to be, like, an intelligence failure, and, uh, and that doesn't seem to be, like, winning. In another way it doesn't seem like winning, if we put aside the human cost of war, it doesn't seem like winning because the hearts and minds of the West were completely on the side of Ukraine. This particular leader in Volodymyr Zelensky captured the attention of the world and the hearts and minds of Europe, the West, and many other nations throughout the world, both financially, in terms of military equipment, and in terms of sort of social and cultural and emotional support for the independence fight of this nation. That seems to be like a miscalculation. S- so against that pushback, why do you think there's still kernels of, uh, winning in this on the Russian side?

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante16:20

      What you're laying out isn't incorrect, and the miscalculations are not unexpected. Anybody who's been to a military college, including the Army War College in Pennsylvania where so many of our military leaders, uh, are brought up, when you look at the conflict in Ukraine, it fits the exact mold of what an effective long-term military conflict, protracted military conflict, would and should look like for military dominance. Now, did Zelensky and did the, did the Ukrainians shock the world? Absolutely. But in that, they also shocked American intelligence, which, like you said, miscalculated. The whole world miscalculated how the Ukrainians would respond. Putin did not move in there accidentally. He had an assessment, he had high likelihood of a certain outcome, and that outcome did not happen. Why did he have that calculation? Because in 2014, it worked. He invaded, uh, he took Crimea in, in 14 days, he basically created, uh, a, uh, an infiltration campaign that turned key leaders over in the first few days of the conflict. So essentially there was no conflict. It worked in 2008 when he took Georgia. Nobody talks about that. He invaded Georgia the exact same s- same way and it worked. So in 2008 it worked, in 2014 it worked, there was no reason to believe it wasn't going to work again. So he just carried out the same campaign. But this time, something was different. That was a miscalculation, for sure, on the part of Putin, and the reason that there was no support from the West... 'cause let's not forget, there is no support. There is nothing other than the Lend Lease Act, which is putting r- Ukraine in massive debt right now to the West. That's the only form of support they're getting from NATO or the United States.... so if somebody believed Ukraine would win, if somebody believed Ukraine had a chance, they would have gotten more material support than just debt. And we can jump into that anytime you want to. But the whole world miscalculated, everybody thought Russia was going to win in 14 days. I- I said that they would win in 14 days because that was the predominant calculation. Once the first invasion didn't work, then the military does what professional militaries do, man, they- they re-evaluate, they re-or- reorganize leaders, and then they cha- they take a new approach. You saw three approaches. The first two did not work. The first two campaigns against Ukraine did not work the way they were supposed to work. The third has worked exactly like it's supposed to work. You don't need Kiev to win Ukraine, you don't need hearts and minds to win Ukraine. What you need-

   7. LFLex Fridman18:57

      What's the third then?

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante18:57

      Yeah, what you need is control of- of natural resources, which they're taking in the east, and you need access to the heartbeat, the- the blood flow of food and money into the country, which they're taking in the south. The fact that Ukraine had to go to the negotiation table with Russia and Turkey in order to get exports out of the Black Sea approved again demonstrates just how much Ukraine is losing. The- the aggressor had a seat at the negotiation table to allow Ukraine the ability to even export one of its top exports. If Russia would have said no, then they would not have had that. Russia has... That's like someone holding your throat, it's like somebody holding your jugular vein and saying, "If- if you don't do what I tell you to do, then I'm not gonna let you breathe, or I'm not gonna let blood flow to your brain."

   9. LFLex Fridman19:50

      So do you think it's possible that Russia takes the south of Ukraine, it takes, um... So starting from Mariupol, the Kherson region...

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante20:03

       All the way to Odesa.

   11. LFLex Fridman20:04

       All the way to Odesa.

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante20:05

       And into- into, uh, Moldova. I believe all of that will happen before the fall.

   13. LFLex Fridman20:12

       The fall of this year?

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante20:13

       The fall of this year. Before winter hits Europe, NATO wants, Germany needs to be able to have sanctions lifted so they can tap into Russian power. There's no way they can have those sanctions lifted unless Russia wins, and Russia also knows that all of Europe, all of NATO is the true- the true people feeling the pain of the war outside of Ukraine are the NATO countries because they're so heavily reliant on Russia and as they have supported American sanctions against Russia, their people feel the pain. Economically, their people feel the pain. What are they gonna do in the winter? Because without Russian gas, their- their people are gonna freeze to death.

   15. LFLex Fridman20:56

       Ukrainian people?

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante20:58

       People all over NATO. I... U- Ukraine, everybody knows Ukraine's at risk, everybody knows Ukrainians are dying. The game of war isn't played just, it isn't even played majoritively by the people who are fighting. The game of war is played by everyone else. It's an economic game, it's not a military game.

   17. LFLex Fridman21:16

       The flow of resources and energy, attention-

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante21:19

       Exactly right.

   19. LFLex Fridman21:21

       I was on the front, in the Kherson region, this very area that you're referring to and I spoke to a lot of people and those, the morale is incredibly high and I don't think the people in that region, soldiers, vol- volunteer soldiers, civilians, are going to give up that land without dying.

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante21:47

       I agree with you.

   21. LFLex Fridman21:48

       I mean, in order to take Odesa, it would require h- huge amount of ar- artillery and slaughter of civilians essentially.

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante22:00

       They're not gonna use artillery in Odesa because Odesa's too important to Russian culture. Um, it's gonna be even uglier than that. It's going to be clearing of streets, clearing of buildings, person by person, troop by troop. It'll be a lot like what it was in Mariupol.

   23. LFLex Fridman22:16

       Just shooting at civilians?

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante22:18

       Because they can't afford to just do bombing raids, because they're gonna destroy cultural, uh, significant architecture that's just too important to the Russian culture, and that's gonna demoralize their own Russian people.

   25. LFLex Fridman22:29

       I have to do a lot of thinking to try to understand what I even feel. I- I don't know, but... In terms of information, the thing that the soldiers are saying, the- the Russian soldiers are saying, the thing the Russian soldiers really believe is that they're freeing, they're liberating the Ukrainian people from Nazis.

   26. ABAndrew Bustamante22:52

       Mm.

   27. LFLex Fridman22:54

       And they believe this. They...

   28. ABAndrew Bustamante22:56

       (laughs) .

   29. LFLex Fridman22:56

       Because I visited Ukraine, I spoke to over a 100, probably a couple of 100 Ukrainian people from different walks of life. It feels like the Russian soldiers at least ar- under a cloud of propaganda. They're not operating on a clear view of the whole world, and, uh, given all that, I just don't see Russia taking the south without committing war crimes, and if Vladimir Putin is aware of what's happening in terms of the treatment of civilians, I don't see him pushing forward all the way to take the south because that's not going to be, um, effective strategy for him to win the hearts and minds of these people.

   30. ABAndrew Bustamante23:54

       Autocracies don't need to win hearts and minds. That's a staunchly democratic point of view. Hearts and minds mean very little to people who understand core basic needs and, uh, and-...true power. You don't see Xi Jinping worrying about hearts and minds in China. You don't see, uh, you don't see it in North Korea. You don't see it in the, in Congo. You don't see it in most of the world. Hearts and minds are a luxury. In reality, what people need is food, water, power. They need income to be able to secure a lifestyle. It's, it is absolutely sad. I am not, in any way, shape, or s- uh, form, saying that my assessment on this is, is enriching or enlightening or, or, uh, hopeful. It's just fact. It's just calculatable, empirical evidence. If Putin loses in Ukraine, the losses, the influential losses, the economic losses, the lives lost, the power lost, is too great. So it is better for him to push and push and push through war crimes, through everything else. War crimes are something defined by the international court system. The international court system has Russia as part of its board. And the international court system is largely powerless outs- when it comes to enforcing its own outcomes. So the real risk/gain scenario here for, for Russia is, is, is significantly in favor of gain over risk. The other thing that I think is important to talk about is we, everybody is trapped in the middle of a gigantic information war. Yes, there's battlefield bullets and cannons and tanks. But there's also a massive inf- informational war. The same narrative that you see these ground troops in Ukraine, these Russian ground troops in Ukraine believing they're clearing the land of Nazis, that information is being fed to them from their own home country. I don't know why people seem to think that the information that they're reading in English is any more or less true. The enti- every piece of news coming out of the West, every piece of information coming out in the English language is also a giant narrative, being shared intentionally to try to undermine the mor- the morale and the faithfulness of English-speaking Russians, which somebody somewhere knows exactly how many of those there are. So we have to recognize that we're not getting true information from other side, because there is a strategic value in making sure that there is just the right amount of mis or disinformation out there. Not because someone's trying to lie to Americans, but because someone is trying to influence the way English-speaking Russians think. And in that world, that's exactly why you see so many news, uh, articles cited to anonymous sources, government officials who do not want to be named. There's no, nothing that links back responsibility there, right? There's nothing that can go to court there. Uh, but this, the information still gets released, and that's, that's enough to make Ukrainians believe that the United States is gonna help them, or that the West is gonna help them. It's enough to make Russians think that, that they're going to lose, and maybe they should just un- they should just give up now and leave from the battlefield now. We have to understand, we are in the middle of a giant information war.
4. 53:30 – 1:00:40

   Most powerful intelligence agencies

   1. LFLex Fridman53:30

      Let me ask you about intelligence agencies outside of the CIA. Can you illuminate, um, what is the most powerful intelligence agency in the world? The CIA, the FSB, formerly the KGB, the MI6, Mossad. Uh, I've gotten a chance to interact with a lot of Israelis, uh, while in Ukraine. Just incredible people, (laughs) you know, in terms of both training and skill and just all, uh, uh, every fron- American soldiers too, just, um, American military is incredible. I just, uh, the- the competence and skill of the military, uh, in the United States, I- Israel I got to interact, in Ukrainian as well, it's just-

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante54:13

      It's striking.

   3. LFLex Fridman54:13

      It's striking. It's beautiful. I- I just love people, I love carpenters, or people that are just extremely good at their job, and that take pride-

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante54:20

      Mm-hmm.

   5. LFLex Fridman54:20

      ... in their craftsmanship. It's, uh, it's beautiful to see. And I imagine the same kind of thing happens inside of intelligence agencies as well, that we don't get to appreciate because of the secrecy. Same thing with like Lockheed Martin. I interviewed the- the CTO of Lockheed Martin. It breaks my heart, as a person who loves engineering-... um, because of the cover of secrecy, we'll never get to know some of the incredible engineering that happens inside of Lockheed Martin and Boeing-

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante54:45

      Boeing. Raytheon.

   7. LFLex Fridman54:46

      Yeah. Um, you know, there's kind of this idea that these are, uh, you know, people have conspiracy theories and they kind of assign evil to these companies in some, to some part. But I think there's beautiful people inside those companies, brilliant people, and, uh, some incredible science and engineering is happening there. Anyway, that said, the CIA, the FSB, the MI6, Mossad, China. I know very little about the...

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante55:13

      MSS, Ministry of State Security.

   9. LFLex Fridman55:14

      I don't, I don't know how much you know. (laughs)

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante55:17

       (laughs)

   11. LFLex Fridman55:17

       Uh, or just other intelligence agencies in India, Pakistan. I've also heard-

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante55:21

       Yep. RAW is powerful and so is ISS, or, uh, ISSI.

   13. LFLex Fridman55:26

       And then of, of course European nations and Germany-

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante55:29

       Right.

   15. LFLex Fridman55:29

       ... and France. And, yeah. So, um, what can you say about the power, the influence of the different intelligence agencies within their nation and outside?

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante55:37

       Yeah. So to answer your question, uh, your original question, "Which is the most powerful?" I'm gonna have to give you a few different answers. So the most powerful intelligence organization in the world in terms of reach is the Chinese MSS, the Ministry of State Security. Because they have created a single solitary intelligence service that has global reach and is integrated with Chinese culture. So that essentially every Chinese person anywhere in the world is an informant to the MSS because it all, that's their way of serving the s- this, the Middle Kingdom, Zhōngguó, the Central Kingdom, the Chinese word for China. So they're the strongest, they're, they're ex- the, the most powerful intelligence service in terms of reach. Most assets, most informants, most intelligence.

   17. LFLex Fridman56:27

       So it's, it's deeply integrated with the citizenry.

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante56:29

       Correct. With their culture. You know what a Chinese person who lives in Syria thinks of themself as? A Chinese person. Do you know what a Chinese person, a Chinese national living in the United States thinks of themself as? A Chinese person, right? Americans living abroad often think of ourselves as expats, expatriates, living on the local economy, embracing the local culture. That is not how Chinese people view traveling around the world.

   19. LFLex Fridman56:52

       And by the way, if I may mention, I believe the way Mossad operates is similar kind of thing because people from Israel living abroad still think of themselves as Jewish and Israeli-

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante57:07

       First.

   21. LFLex Fridman57:08

       ... yeah, first. So that allows you to integrate the-

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante57:11

       Culture and yep, the faith-based aspects. Exactly right.

   23. LFLex Fridman57:14

       But the number of people-

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante57:15

       Bingo.

   25. LFLex Fridman57:15

       ... in Israel is much, much smaller (laughs) than-

   26. ABAndrew Bustamante57:17

       Exactly right.

   27. LFLex Fridman57:17

       ... the number of people in China.

   28. ABAndrew Bustamante57:18

       So when it comes to reach, China wins that game.

   29. LFLex Fridman57:21

       Yeah.

   30. ABAndrew Bustamante57:21

       When it comes to professional capability, it's, it's the CIA by far because budget wise, capability wise, weapon system wise, modern technology wise, CIA is the leader around the world, which is why every other intelligence organization out there wants to partner with CIA. They want to learn from CIA, they want to train with CIA. They want to, they wanna partner on counter-narcotics and counter-drug and counter-terrorism and counter-Uyghur, you name it. People wanna partner with CIA. So CIA is the most powerful in terms of capability and wealth. And then you've got the idea... You've got, uh, tech. So tech alone, meaning, uh, corporate espionage, uh, economic espionage, nothing beats, nothing beats DGSE in France. They're the top. Uh, they've got a massive budget that almost goes exclusively to stealing foreign secrets. They're the biggest threat to the United States, even above Russia and above China. DGSE in France is a massively powerful intelligence organization, but they are so exclusively focused on a handful of types of intelligence collection that nobody even really thinks that they exist. And then in terms of just terrifying violence, you have Mossad. Mossad will do anything. Mossad has no qualms doing what it takes to ensure the survival of every Israeli citizen around the world. Most other countries will stop at some point, but Mossad doesn't do that.
5. 1:00:40 – 1:10:17

   David Petraeus

   1. LFLex Fridman1:00:40

      and it seems like the CIA...... also has, has a lot of, kind of, myths about it, conspiracy theories about it, but much less so than the other agencies.

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:00:52

      CIA does a good job of playing to the mythos. So when, uh, General Petraeus used to be the director of CIA, 2010-

   3. LFLex Fridman1:00:59

      And, and your workout partner.

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:00

      And my workout partner.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:01:01

      I, I read about this.

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:02

      So I, I loved and hated those workouts with Petraeus because he is a physical beast. He's a strong, fit, a- at the time, 60-something-year-old man.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:01:11

      Let me take a tangent on that-

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:12

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:01:13

      ... because he's coming on this podcast.

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:14

       Oh, excellent, man.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:01:15

       (laughs) So, uh, can you say what you learned from the man, uh, in terms of ... Or like what you think is interesting and powerful and inspiring about the way he sees the world, or maybe what you learned in terms of how to get, uh, strong in the gym-

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:32

       Yeah. Two, two things.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:01:33

       ... or anything about life? Yeah.

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:34

       Two things right away, and one of them I was going to share with you anyway, so I'm glad that you asked the question. So the first is that, uh, on our runs, and man he runs fast, and we would go for six-mile runs through Bangkok, and, uh, and he talked openly about ... I asked him, "How do you keep this, this mys- this mystery, this epic mythology about your fitness and your strength, how do you keep all of this alive with the troops?" And he had this amazing answer, and he was like, "I don't talk about it. Myths are born not from somebody orchestrating the myth, but from the source of the myth simply being secretive." So he's like, "I don't talk about it. I've never talked about it. I've never exacerbated it. I just do what I do, and I let the troops talk." And he's like, "When it's in favor, when it goes in favor of, of discipline and loyalty and commitment, I let it run. If it starts getting destructive or damaging, then I have my, my leadership team step in to fix it." But when it comes to the, the mythos, the myth of him being super-powered soldier, that's what he wants every soldier to be, so he lets it run, and he was fanta- ... It was so enlightening when he told me, "When there's a myth that benefits you, you just let it go. You let it happen, because it gets you further without you doing any work. It costs no investment from you."

   15. LFLex Fridman1:02:56

       So the catalyst of the virality of the myth is just being mysterious and ...

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante1:03:00

       And that's what CIA does well, to go back to your first question. What does CIA do? They don't answer any questions. They don't say anything. And wherever the myth goes, the myth goes, whether it's that they sold drugs or used child prostitutes or whatever else. Wherever the myth goes, they let it go, because, at the end of the day, everybody sits back and says, "Wow, I really just don't know." Now the second thing that I learned from Petraeus, and I- I really am a big fan of Petraeus. I know he made personal mistakes. You don't get to be that powerful without making personal mistakes. But when I worked out with him, the one thing that, that my, uh, the one thing that my commanding officer told me not to ask about ... He was like, "Never ask the general about his family." I'm a family guy, so as soon as I met General Petraeus, one of the first things I asked him was, "Hey, what was it like raising a family and being the commander of forces in the Middle East? Like, you weren't with your family very much." And the thing I love about the guy, he didn't bite off my head, he didn't snap at me, he didn't do anything. He openly admitted that he regretted some of the decisions that he made because he had to sacrifice his family to get there. Relationships with his children, uh, a- absentee father, missing birthdays, missing ... We j- we all say, we all say how sad it is to miss birthdays and miss anniversaries, yada, yada, yada. Everybody knows what that feels like. Even businesspeople know what that feels like. The actual pain that we're talking about is when you're not there to handle your 13-year-old's questions when a boy breaks up with her, or what you're, when you're not there to handle the bloody lip that your nine-year-old comes back with from their first encounter with a bully. Those are the truly heartbreaking moments that a parent lives and dies by. He missed almost all of those because he was fighting a war that we forgot and we gave up on 20 years later, right? It's ... He's so honest about that, um, and it was really inspiring to me to be told not to ask that question, and when I broke that guidance, he didn't reprimand me. He just, he was authentic, and it was absolutely one of the big decisions that helped me leave CIA on my own in 2014.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:05:10

       And he was honest on the sacrifice you make, an-

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante1:05:14

       The, the same man, the same man who just taught me a lesson about letting a myth live, that same guy was willing to be so authentic about this personal mistake.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:05:27

       I like complicated people like that.

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:05:30

       (laughs)

   21. LFLex Fridman1:05:30

       So what did you, um, what do you make of that calculation of family versus job? You've given a lot of your life and passion to the CIA, to that work. It, uh, you've spoken positively about that, that world, the good it does, um, and yet you're also a family man and you value that. What's that calculation like? What's that trade-off like for you?

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante1:05:56

       I mean, for me, the calculation is very clear. It's family. I left CIA because I chose my family, and when my son was born, my, my wife and I found out that we were pregnant while we were still on mission. We were a tandem couple. My wife is also a former CIA officer undercover like me. We were operating together overseas. We got the positive pregnancy tests like so many people do, and, uh, and she cried. My wife was a badass. I was just ... (laughs) I was like the accidental spy, but my wife was really good at what she does, and, uh, and she cried, and she was like, "What, what do we do now? Like, it's what we've always wanted, a child, but we're in this thing right now. There's no space for a child." So long story short, um...... we had our baby, we- the CIA brought us back to have the baby. And when we started having the conversations about, "Hey, what, what do we do next?" 'Cause we're not the type of people to want to just sit around and be domestic. Uh, "What do we do next? But keep in mind, we have a child now. So here's some of our suggestions. We could do this and we can do that. Let us get our child to a place where we can put them into an international school, or we can get him into some sort of program where we have the- we can both operate together again during the day." Um, but CIA just had no, they had no patience for that conversation. There was no... Family is not their priority. So the fact that we were a- a tandem couple, two officers, two operators trying to have a baby was irrelevant to them. So when they didn't play with us, when they did nothing to help us, uh, prioritize parenthood as part of our overall experience, that's when we knew that they never would, and what good is it to commit yourself to a career if the career is always going to challenge the thing that you value most? And that was the calculation that we made to leave CIA. Not everybody makes that calculation. And a big part of why I am so vocal about my time at CIA is because I am immensely appreciative of the men and women who, to this day, have failed marriages and poor relationships with their children because they chose national security, they chose protecting America over their own family, um, and they've done it even though it's made them ab- you know, abuse alcohol and abuse substances, and who, and they've gotten themselves, they've got periminal g- permanent diseases and issues from living and working abroad. It's just ins- it's insane the sacrifice that officers make to keep America free, and I'm just not one of those people. I chose family.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:08:41

       You said that your wife misses it. Do you miss it?

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante1:08:45

       We both miss it. We miss it for different reasons. We miss it for similar reasons, I guess, but we miss it in different ways. The people, the people at CIA are just amazing. They're, they're people that... They're everyday people, like the guy and the gal next door, but so smart and so dedicated and so courageous about what they do and how they do it. I mean, this, the sacrifices they make are massive. More massive than the sacrifices I made. So I was always inspired and impressed by the people around me. So both my wife and I absolutely miss the people. My wife misses the work because you know, everything, when you're inside, it's all... I mean, we had, we had top secret, we had TS/SCI clearances at the time. I had a CAT VI/CAT XII, which makes me nuclear cleared. My wife had other privy clearances that allowed her to look into, you know, areas that were, uh, specialized. But there was not... There wasn't a headline that went out that we couldn't fact check with a click of a few buttons.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:09:43

       Yeah.

   26. ABAndrew Bustamante1:09:44

       And she misses that 'cause she loved that kind of knowledge.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:09:46

       And now you're just one of us living in the, you know, the cloud of mystery-

   28. ABAndrew Bustamante1:09:51

       Exactly.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:09:52

       ... not really knowing anything about what's going on.

   30. ABAndrew Bustamante1:09:54

       Exactly. But for me, I've always been the person that likes operating. And you know what you still get to do when you leave CIA? You still get to operate. Operating is just working with people. It's understanding how people think, predicting their actions, driving their, their direction of their thoughts, persuading them, winning negotiations. Like, it's... You still get to do that. You do that every day.
6. 1:10:17 – 1:23:16

   Undercover disguises

   1. LFLex Fridman1:10:17

      of domains. Well, let me ask you on that, you were a covert CIA intelligence officer for several years. Maybe can you tell me the story of how it all began? How were you recruited and what did the job entail, to the degree you can speak about it?

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:10:34

      Feel free to direct me if I'm getting too boring or if the-

   3. LFLex Fridman1:10:36

      No.

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:10:36

      ... if the conv- (laughs)

   5. LFLex Fridman1:10:37

      Every aspect of this is super exciting.

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante1:10:40

      So, uh, so I was leaving the United States Air Force in 2007. Uh, I was a, uh, I was a lieutenant getting ready to pin on captain. My five years was up, and I was a very bad fit for the US Air Force. I, I was an Air Force Academy graduate, not by choice, but by lack of opportunity, lack of, lack of options otherwise. So I forced myself through the Academy, barely graduated with a 2.4 GPA, and then went on... The Air Force taught me how to fly, and then the Air Force taught me about nuclear weapons, and I ended up, uh, as a, as a nuclear missile commander in Montana, and I chose to leave the Air Force because I didn't like shaving my face, I didn't like having short hair, and I most definitely didn't like shining my shoes, and I did not want to be one of the people in charge of nuclear weapons. So when I found myself as a person in charge of 200 nuclear weapons, I knew that I was going down the wrong road.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:11:34

      I have questions about this, and more importantly, I have questions about your hair. So you had short hair at the time?

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:11:40

      (laughs) I had... Yeah, you have to. Military regulations, you can't have hair longer than one inch.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:11:44

      Okay. And this, the beautiful hair you have now, that, that, that came to be in the CIA or after?

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante1:11:52

       This... So I discovered I had messy hair in CIA 'cause I used to, uh, I used to go muj. We called it muj. I used to go Mujahideen style, big burly beard and crazy wacky hair-

   11. LFLex Fridman1:12:03

       Yeah.

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:03

       ... because an ambiguously brown guy with a big beard and long hair can go anywhere in the world without anyone even noticing him. They either think that he's a janitor or they think that he's, like, some forgotten part of history, but nobody ever thinks that that guy is a spy. So it was the perfect... For me, it was one of my favorite, uh, disguises. It's what's known as a level two disguise. One of my favorite disguises to don was just dilapidated brown guy. (laughs)

   13. LFLex Fridman1:12:35

       (laughs) Uh, can you actually... We'll just take a million tangents. What, what's a level two disguise?

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:40

       (laughing)

   15. LFLex Fridman1:12:40

       Uh, what, what's a... What are the different levels of disguise? What are the disguises?

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:44

       Yeah, there's three levels of disguise, by and large. Level one is what we also know, what we also call light disguise. So that's essentially......you put on sunglasses and a ball cap and, and that's a disguise. You look different than you normally look.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:12:57

       Mm-hmm.

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:57

       So it's just different enough that someone who's never seen you before, someone who literally has to see you just from a picture on the internet, they may not recognize you. It's why you see celebrities walk around with ball caps and oversized jackets and baseball hats, 'cause they just need to not look like they look in the tabloid or not look like they look in TV. That's level one.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:13:17

       Mm-hmm.

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:18

       Uh, let me jump from level one to level three. Level three is all of your prosthetics, all the stuff you see in Mission Impossible, your fake ears, your fake faces, your fat suits, your stilts inside your le- your feet. Uh, all that's level three. Whenever they make any kind of prosthetic disguise, that's a level three disguise because prosthetics are very damning if you are caught with a prosthetic. If you're caught wearing a Sudden, wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses, nobody is gonna say you're a spy. But when you're caught with a custom-made, you know, nose, uh, prosthetic that changes the way your face looks, or when someone pops out a fake jaw and they see that your top teeth don't look like they did, uh, in this prosthetic, then all of a sudden you've got some very difficult questions to ask or to answer. So level three is extremely dangerous. Level one is not dangerous. Level two is long term disguise. Level two is all the things that you can do to permanently change the way you look for a long period of time so that whether you're aggressed in the street, or whether someone breaks into your hotel room or whatever, it's real. So maybe that's, uh, maybe you get a tattoo. Maybe you cut your hair short. Maybe you grow your hair long. Maybe you go bald. Maybe you start wearing glasses. Well, glasses are technically a prosthetic, but, uh, uh, you can... You... If you have teeth pulled, if you gain 20 pounds, really gain 20 pounds or lose 15 pounds, whatever you might do, all of that is considered level two. It's designed for a long term mission so that people believe you are who you say you are in that disguise.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:14:53

       A lot of that is physical characteristics.

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:55

       Correct.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:14:55

       What about like, um, you know what actors do, which is the, um-

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:01

       Method acting?

   25. LFLex Fridman1:15:02

       Yeah, the method acting sort of developing a backstory in your own mind and then you start, um, you know, pretending that you host a podcast-

   26. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:13

       (laughs)

   27. LFLex Fridman1:15:14

       ...and teach at a university and then do research and so on j- just so that people can believe-

   28. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:19

       Yeah.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:15:20

       ...that you're not actually an agent. Uh, what, what... Is that part of the disguise levels or no?

   30. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:24

       So yes, disguise has to do with physical character traits. That's what a disguise is. What you're talking about is known as a cover legend. When you go undercover, what you claim to be, who you claim to be, that's called your legend, your cover legend. Every disguise would theoretically have its own cover legend. Even if it's just to describe why you're wearing what you're wearing-
7. 1:23:16 – 1:32:36

   Human nature

   1. LFLex Fridman1:23:16

      methods, when you talk to people, especially in civilian life, how do you know who's lying to you and not?

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:23:22

      That gets to be more into the trained skill side of things. There's body cues. There's micro-expressions. I'm not a big fan of... I don't believe that micro-expressions alone do anything. I also don't believe that micro-expressions without an eff- without an effective baseline do anything. So don't for a second think that I'm... All the people out there pitching that you can tell if someone's lying to you just by looking at their face, it's all, it's all baloney. In my world, that's baloney.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:23:47

      Like the way you move your eyes or something like that?

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:23:50

      Without knowing a baseline, without knowing-

   5. LFLex Fridman1:23:51

      For that individual.

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante1:23:52

      ... for that individual, then you actually don't know. And an individual's baseline is based on education, culture, life experience, you name it, right?

   7. LFLex Fridman1:23:58

      Yeah.

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:23:58

      So this, it's huge. But when you combine facial expressions with body movements, body language, non-verbal cues, and you add on top of that effective elicitation techniques that you are in control of, now you have a more robust platform to tell if someone's lying to you.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:24:16

      So there, there's like a set of like interrogation trajectories you can go down that can help you figure out a person.

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante1:24:26

       Technically, they're interview, interview-

   11. LFLex Fridman1:24:29

       Interview. Like this podcast.

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante1:24:29

       ... concepts. Correct. Because an interrogation, an interrogation is something very different than an interview. In, in the world of professionals, an interrogation is very different.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:24:37

       What's the difference? The, the nature of how relaxed the thing is, or what?

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante1:24:40

       So in an interrogation, there's a clear pattern of dominance. There's no equality.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:24:45

       Got it.

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante1:24:45

       Also, there's no escape. You are there until the interrogator is done with you, right? Anybody who's ever been reprimanded by mom and dad knows what an interrogation feels like. Anybody who's ever been called into the principal's office or the boss's office, that's what interrogation feels like. You don't leave until the boss says you can leave. And you're there to say, to answer questions the boss asks questions. An interview is an equal exchange of ideas. You are in control of this interview....for sure. But if we were having coffee, I could take control if I wanted to take control. If I wanted to ask you personal questions, I would. If I wanted to talk to you about your background, I could.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:25:17

       Why am I in control of this interview exactly?

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante1:25:19

       Because the person in control is the person asking questions.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:25:23

       Ah.

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:25:23

       Always.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:25:23

       I'm sitting here, as you've spoken about. Uh, my power here is I'm the quiet one listening.

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante1:25:29

       (laughs) You're exactly right.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:25:31

       Yes. Yeah.

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante1:25:31

       Guess where this conversation goes?

   25. LFLex Fridman1:25:33

       Yeah.

   26. ABAndrew Bustamante1:25:33

       Anywhere you choose to take it, because you're the one asking questions. Every time I answer a question, I am creating a pattern of obedience to you, which subliminally, subconsciously makes me that much more apt to answer your questions.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:25:45

       Of course, you can always turn that and ask, start asking me questions that should, you know... Uh, so but you're saying that there's through this con- this, through conversation, you can call it interviewing, you can start to, you can start to see, um, see cracks in the story of the person, and the degree to which they exaggerate or lie or, uh, to see how much they could be trusted, that kind of stuff.

   28. ABAndrew Bustamante1:26:13

       What I'm saying is that through a conversation, you develop a baseline, right?

   29. LFLex Fridman1:26:16

       Ah.

   30. ABAndrew Bustamante1:26:16

       Like, even just in the last, the last, the first part of our conversation, we've-

Episode duration: 3:53:08