Full transcript: Andrew Bustamante on London Real
3:45 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Andrew Bustamante, the decorated US Air Force combat veteran, former CIA intelligence officer, author, and award-winning speaker. You started your career in the US Air Force, specializing in nuclear ICBM operations and with tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. You then spent seven years working as a covert operative for the CIA, assuming many identities and working undercover to foil terrorist plots and steal foreign secrets.
4:15 Today, you use those same mental, physical, and social spy skills you learned at the CIA as a private intelligence consultant with your company, Everyday Spy. Andrew, welcome back to London Real.
4:25 Andrew Bustamante: I’m excited to be here, man. Thanks for having me, dude. I’m pumped.
4:28 Brian Rose: You were here, I think, a couple years ago for the first time when you were kind of just starting off. Since then, you’ve blown up. Every day I open up YouTube and you’re on like on another show and there’s another half million or a million views. So, look, congrats to all your success. I guess we should talk about what’s going on in the world because you have insights that a lot of people don’t.
4:46 And so, for people that don’t know, at this point, the US has bombed Iran with the bunker busters. We thought we think we have a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Iran, but we don’t know if that’s going to hold. I wonder if we could take it maybe back to October 7th, ’23 and get maybe your thoughts for maybe from there to hear what you see happening and then maybe what’s really happening behind the posturing and the headlines.
5:16 Andrew Bustamante: You know, that the idea of what’s happening versus what’s really happening is that’s the operative question.
5:23 That’s what everybody’s trying to figure out. And frankly speaking, I think that’s what is leading to much of the confusion that we’ve had probably for the last 5 to 10 years worldwide because we’re starting to wake up to the fact that there’s an intention that governments are taking. There’s an intention that leaders are taking that’s different from the stated intention that they’re telling the public. And then from that division, there’s a third narrative that comes out from media, right?
5:51 And that media narrative is partially crafted by big media and partially organic and undirected by all of the new media that’s coming up, right? So, we’re all swimming in information, but none of us f***ing knows the truth. And we all know that we don’t know the truth, which makes it worse. So, there’s like three narratives there, right? There’s the intentions.
6:13 Then there’s the public I guess expressions of those intentions. Then you’ve got mainstream media with their own, you know, biases and their own history. And then you got new media with their own biases and maybe lack of history. Correct. A lot of these podcasts are being accused now of having no journalistic skills and being responsible for these random narratives posing up.
6:36 They say, “Hey, bro, I’m just talking.” Right? Then the mainstream media says, “We’re journalists.” And it’s like, yeah, look how that’s worked out the last 10 years. And then the governments get accused.
6:45 And then people get mad at governments for advancing the interests of their people. And you’re like, well, isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? There’s a lot of weird things. So here’s what CIA teaches us, right? CIA teaches us that all stories are built of two parts.
6:59 They’re built of a message and a narrative. So when most average people talk about a narrative, what they’re actually talking about is a message, what’s known as messaging. The difference between messaging and narrative has to do with what levers you’re pulling on inside the person’s psychology. Right? If you’re pulling on emotional level levers, that’s messaging.
7:20 I tell you a message that’s emotional. But then after you receive my message, you will create a logical narrative for yourself. Right? So what happens all over the world and what’s happened all the way back to Roman before is people are feeding the public emotional messaging. Whether it’s a business, whether it’s a emperor, whether it’s a politician, they feed these emotional messages.
7:44 You see them in every commercial. You see them in every recruitment drive for the military. You see them in parades. You see them everywhere. Right?
7:50 Emotional, emotional, emotional message, right? From that groups of people then coalate around a narrative that they believe is logical, right? Army of one, be strong, be a marine, right? Army strong. You got all these military that’s all that’s that’s messaging that’s emotional like oh I want to be independent I want to be capable I want to be strong and then the narrative from that is oh America’s strong because our military is strong is our military is powerful from the message that’s the narrative that comes out and then that narrative is adopted by foreigners and Americans alike and interpreted in different ways because Americans feel yeah we’re powerful, and everybody else feels oh f***, America’s powerful.
8:30 Brian Rose: Yeah, and that’s what happens all over the world. It’s what the Ayatollah is doing right now in Iran. It’s what Netanyahu is doing right now in Israel. Messaging and narrative. And it was what Trump does as well, and that goes down to what he wears.
8:41 The recent military parade in the US, we hadn’t seen in a while. Every the way he interacts with the world is that I’m the new tough guy and I’m making America to be this Biden. We saw him on the beach falling asleep And so you can see the images combined with the emotions and then that story lands with people and then that can be augmented or taken down with social media and media on top that, and we saw that during lockdown and COVID. Safe and effective.
9:08 Safe and effective. That’s the mass psychosis you talk about a lot and we’ve seen it used in lots of ways. I’d say the public is getting more hip to that, I think. But then again, they say just when you think you know what’s going on, you know, maybe you actually don’t.
9:22 Andrew Bustamante: My hope is that the public is waking up to the fact that there’s a process.
9:26 I don’t know that they know the process yet, which is why I spend so much time in front of a camera trying to teach that process because let’s, we’ve talked about how governments create messages and narratives, right? And that’s very very real. I have been in meetings with congressional committees where they’re literally choosing what is our messaging and what is our narrative going to be about this topic. So, they already know they’re not being honest. They know that they’re shaping something to maximize the opportunity for a predictable narrative, right?
9:59 That’s just that’s the way the government works. When you layer on top of that journalistic intent, now I am a big fan of journalism. I want to say that outright. I like journalism. I think journalism had a place in the past that was critically important.
10:13 Yeah. But where it is now is a very different beast because journalism is about taking a series of narratives and weaving them together into a story. And every journalist listening is going to know this is true and it’s going to be absolutely damning on their face. If they don’t have a story, they can’t publish. So they have to create a f***ing story.
10:35 They can’t just tell us the facts. They can’t just say this happened. Yeah. They have to say this other thing happened first. This thing happened next, and here’s what’s probably going to happen and here’s how everybody feel if it has to be a story, and their mission as journalism as journalists is to create a story that will hopefully do XYZ, make the better a better place, make the world a better place, inform nations, you know educate people, they have some sort of mission depending on their publication but they have to make a story.
11:03 How f***ing dangerous is that man without making the story, they’re not considered journalists.
11:09 Brian Rose: Right, and that’s where the new media comes in now because now new media doesn’t have that publishing impetus to create a story. So, they just, like you said, it’s all opinion. It’s opinion and observation and pontification and extrapolation, which isn’t necessarily any better or worse, but at least now they’re willing to have a conversation about facts and openly say, “We are speculating on what could happen next with these facts, but let’s focus on the facts,” which is something that neither media publishing format ever did before.
11:41 And they don’t have a big media company behind them that has to sell a bunch of ads, and although they have to probably sell their own ads, and they don’t have this legacy of probably be being infiltrated by the censorship industrial complex of the government for the past 100 years, right? So they’re a little bit more independent, and you know, Joe Rogan never got a call from somebody in government saying don’t print that, but the New York Times surely did 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. So they don’t have that bias.
12:05 Look, we make documentary films, and when you watch one of my documentary films, you’re like, oh, this is just, you know, like a camera follow Brian around when he went to South America and drank the ayahuasca and then went to talk to his parents about their divorce. No, it’s actually a crafted story to give you a hero’s journey because without that narrative, they won’t learn anything, right? So like we kind of know that you have to tell a story and most people just think stories are normal and that’s the way the world is.
12:30 This hero’s journey, when in fact it’s not that. Stories are an art form. Yeah.
12:35 Andrew Bustamante: And that’s what journalism used to be. It used to be a blend of art and fact that was regulated, that was regulated, so it had to be free and fair and unbiased, but all that melted away in the 70s, and now journalism is just competing for clicks the same way that any other influencer is competing for clicks.
12:54 So, how do you that? None of that is designed to serve the end user. Just like you said, it’s meant to serve the advertiser. Most of which don’t like advertising in mainstream media because what advertisers want is high quality, high highly vetted leads to come into their platform. Well, when you only have like four major publishing broadcasters, nothing’s quality.
13:16 You’re talking to the 17-year-old Republican just as much as you’re talking to the 80-year-old Republican. So do you put on the f***ing toenail fungus medicine ad or do you put on the gun ad? They don’t know. And advertisers hate that, which is a large part of why they’re migrating to new media, too, cuz new media is hyper isolated. Yeah.
13:34 Brian Rose: I was watching Steve Bannon’s war room on Twitter the other day and I saw his ads come up and they were like really old guys pitching gold and all this, and I was like, “Okay, I get the demo. It’s a very different demo, but obviously one that works really well for them, right?” All right. All that considered, what’s going on with the US, Israel, and Iran? Let’s talk about that from your perspective, with your background.
13:56 Andrew Bustamante: So, first of all, I want I want to say I think what’s happening is extremely rational, very logical, and it’s timed intentionally. So, what am I saying? I’m saying I don’t think Israel’s pulling puppet strings over Donald Trump, and I don’t think Donald Trump is making strategic decisions that are in the best interest of the United States. I don’t think any of those small things are happening. What I think is happening is that Netanyahu after the October 7th attacks realized that he has kind of a once in a generation opportunity to combat what is truly an existential threat for Israel.
14:35 Iran being that existential threat, he has an opportunity to kick them back decades or longer in terms of their ability to launch a realistic threat against Israel.
14:43 Brian Rose: Right. Great line in politics is never let a good crisis go to waste. And so it was a terrible thing that happened that day, but at the same time it gave him potentially the power to do things he couldn’t normally do.
14:55 Andrew Bustamante: Correct.
14:55 It gave him an opportunity, a window of time when he had the people behind him. He had his own war council behind him. He had the military behind him. So he had to act fast. Very similar to 9/11 when a divided a very complacent United States all of a sudden had everybody’s support to go do whatever you got to do.
15:11 Right? So Netanyahu realized that and moved on Gaza very quickly. Now, the narrative that came out of Gaza narrative that came out of Gaza is divided. Some people think it’s an ethnic cleansing or a genocide of the Palestinians. Other people think that it’s a validated hunt for Hamas that’s hiding among the population.
15:28 So there’s two different narratives that are in limbo. But from the lens of Netanyahu and the lens of Israel, they are depleting Iran’s capability to commit conflict in Israel. This is almost identical to what we’re seeing in Ukraine and Russia, right? Ukraine is systematically depleting Russia’s ability to do harm in NATO. Israel is systematically depleting Iran’s capability to cause havoc across the Middle East.
15:55 So in both cases, you have a proxy conflict that has many, many players involved even though only two countries are really committing resources.
16:04 Brian Rose: Okay, let me pause you real quick. Some say Netanyahu let it happen. Some say that it was just an opportunity. Do you have a comment on that without going too deep down the rabbit hole?
16:16 Andrew Bustamante: In my experience, the probability is that it is not any kind of conspiracy. The probability is that IDF forces identified the attack, escalated through internal communications, but IDF didn’t communicate well enough with Mossad and Shin Bet, and then as a result, a disaster happened. That’s only because 9/11 is an example of that. We have multiple examples of cross communication within a democracy not working effectively to secure the border. So I would say it’s 80% probability that happened, 20% something shady happened.
16:49 Now I’m not saying nothing shady happened after the attack. What I’m saying is in the leadup to the attack to believe that leadership would let their people get hurt, that’s a stretch compared to the idea that maybe people just weren’t very good at their job.
17:03 Brian Rose: But still shocking that it happened from all of your trade craft and everything, you know, still really a wild event that that could happen and then go on for so long, 6, 10, 12 hours, you know, without the response.
17:14 Andrew Bustamante: It’s still fascinating because it really demonstrates the difference between the idea that we all have of Israel and the reality of Israel. Yeah. Right. And that’s every time we have that juxtaposition, it’s really important. The idea we had about Russia, the realities of Russia, the idea we had about Ukraine, the truth about Ukraine.
17:30 And we all have to understand what we believe to be true is an image that is crafted over time just like Mossad has crafted an image and they are currently trying to recraft that image with these wild exploits all over the world.
17:43 Brian Rose: Even the belief in US military power versus the reality in Afghanistan or Iraq. That was another big one. And again, the US is trying to repair this with this B2 bomber.
17:53 Andrew Bustamante: Yes, the 12-day war.
17:54 Again, that’s a part of the narrative. Not a single, you know, American died. They’re trying to build that back up, right? We launched 13 Tomahawk missiles from underwater in a submarine. Why the f*** would we do that?
18:04 We already knew the Tomahawk missile wasn’t going to penetrate deep enough to cause damage. So, we did it really just to show the world, hey guys, we can launch cruise missiles that are highly targetable, that are almost impossible to shoot down from a submarine underwater. And they launched it after the B2 raid. So, mission accomplished. And now it was just like fireworks at the end.
18:26 Brian Rose: Yeah. Bannon said the same thing. So that that was just, yeah, that was just a little bit of a showoff move but didn’t seem to really be have the point. Okay. So you set the scene Bibi has this opportunity and he decides to take it all the way and that’s what’s happened over the last almost 21 months.
18:42 Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. Cuz if you think about it if you look at it through the lens of strategic intent, right? Yes, Netanyahu is in trouble in his own country. He’s got a population that only partially believes in him. He’s got corruption charges.
18:54 He’s got all sorts of legal issues. So the longer a war lasts, the longer he gets to let delay punitive action. Plus, if he’s the guy that saves them against Iran, maybe then the courts will go easy on him. So yes, all that’s true. All that exists.
19:08 We can’t ignore that. However, you also have to acknowledge the fact that up until October 7th, you had Houthis threatening Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, both threatening Israel and Iran threatening Israel. And three of the four of them had all promised to destroy the Israeli state. That’s existential, right? Existential threats are threats that truly will destroy your existence, the existence of the Jewish without question.
20:23 He has gutted Hezbollah leadership. He has gutted Hamas leadership. And he has basically shut down any air defense in Iran at all. And we’re all wondering whether or not he’s going to gut Iranian theocracy leadership as well. What that means for the people of Israel is they have breathing room.
20:40 Whether they put him in jail or not, whether this ends tomorrow or ends in another two years, they have breathing room before they have to worry about any existential threat actually rising to a place where they can truly snuff out the Israeli state. That’s the hope. But the challenge is we don’t know if that’s the reality because the fact that they destroyed C the fact that they we are claiming to have obliterated these facilities in Iran doesn’t account for the fact that we also have always believed that they have secret smaller facilities separate from these three enrichment locations where after they enrich to 60% in one location they relocate the uranium to enrich at the final 30%.
21:17 So, nobody really knows publicly if we are actually safe or whether we’re just giving ourselves a pat on the back for destroying these centrifuges.
21:25 Brian Rose: All right. Did they have the bomb or were they close to having the bomb or does it matter? Marco Rubio is on there, and he’s quite a great speaker, probably a future president, and he just said, “Look, they got 60% uranium. You don’t need that.
21:39 They’re building it underground in a mountain.” He’s like, “That’s enough for me. We got to go in there.” Obviously, Iran has been death to America for the last 45 years. What do you think?
21:49 Is that a debate worth happening or not? Did the US have to go in?
21:54 Andrew Bustamante: My line on what we did in Iran is that we did the right thing at the wrong time. We did the right thing at the wrong time. Nobody wants a nuclear capable theocracy in Iran.
22:06 And I want to specify that because nobody hates Iran. What we don’t like is the Ayatollah and the theocracy that’s taken hold of Iran. Iran was a friend of the United States, a friend of Israel, I mean, 50 years ago. So, it’s not like we have a vendetta against Iran. It kills me whenever I see pundits and, you know, hard rightsiders come out and say that there’s something evil about Iran.
22:29 There’s nothing evil there. There’s a Shia state that’s a theocracy that wants to expand and run Shia ideology throughout the Middle East and like make it a new kingdom again, right? But that’s specific to the theocracy. We needed to destroy their nuclear capability, their nuclear weapons capability. We believed that they were enriching up to 60%.
22:57 Brian Rose: Yes, it’s the same equipment that takes something from 60 to 90%.
23:01 Andrew Bustamante: But 90% makes it weapons grade, not weapons capable. Right. I spent a lot of time in the nuclear missile forces of the Air Force. To actually have a nuclear weapon, you need enriched uranium.
23:11 True. And a delivery vehicle and a triggering mechanism and some kind of consistency in deployment. They didn’t have any of the other three. We watch North Korea launch missiles that blow up in the sky all the time. Yeah.
23:23 Brian Rose: They still don’t have that, do they?
23:25 Andrew Bustamante: Correct. Iran has none of that. So what we have is a convenient excuse to make a show out of, you know, out of blowing up these three nuclear facilities that may or may not even be where the 60% uranium is being saved or preserved.
23:39 Brian Rose: What about a suitcase bomb though?
23:41 That kind of changes it.
23:42 Andrew Bustamante: Well, that’s a suitcase bomb can be done with dirty, nasty nuclear material. Okay. Right. Right.
23:48 If you think about it, think about how much damage comes from a nuclear meltdown of a civilian plant. And all of that enrichment is only up to 3 and a half%. Okay. Right. So, Chernobyl, for example, so we’ve really not protected anything.
24:00 All we’ve done is made sure that they can’t take the next steps in creating a delivery vehicle for a clean atomic weapon immediately. This is my big concern. My big concern is that by bombing by bombing Iran, what we’ve done is send a message not just to Iran, but also to China and to North Korea and to Russia that the United States is willing to exercise questionably legal tactics to make sure that you don’t compete with us. Which all that does is create a window for them to use questionably illegal tactics to bring us down as well.
24:36 Whether that’s messing with our economy, messing with our currency, dirty bombs, biochemical weapons, etc. And that’s what scares me the most. Iran promised a response. They didn’t promise it’s going to be in 5 days, right? The symbolic response that we saw with the Iraq with the with the rockets that launched on Iraqi bases housing US military personnel.
24:57 That’s just symbolic. That doesn’t mean that in 3 years there’s not going to be a f***ing dirty bomb that goes off in New York City. And Iran already knows that there have been other bombing attempts in Boston, in Central Park, in New York that have been either barely prevented or not prevented at all.
25:15 Brian Rose: Yeah. So, it’s not over.
25:16 Are there sleeper cells in America?
25:18 Andrew Bustamante: Absolutely. There are sleeper cells all over the world. A big part of the American defense against sleeper cells, this is comical in my opinion, the big defense that we have against sleeper cells is actually human behavior. When you are a Shia Islamist from Iran and you go to a sleeper cell into whatever Madison, Wisconsin, three, five, seven years you live undercover there until you start to be like, “Well, f*** this is way nicer than living in Tehran.”
25:46 And then they just get complacent like most Americans do and then they just don’t activate. That is the most effective means that we have found to protect against sleeper cells because otherwise there’s no communication, there’s no footprint, there’s no digital back and forth. How do you find them? You don’t find them until they’re activated and actually active. And ISIS is showing us that lone wolf operations across the US are more effective than actually organized long-term sleeper cells.
26:14 So, are there sleeper cells? Yes. Will they activate is questionable, because we haven’t seen an RN sleeper cell activate. Right. Right.
26:21 Brian Rose: Okay. Now, that strength move that Trump did also has upsides, right? Because you could argue we were previous administration didn’t show any strength. And so maybe it also shows the world that we have limitations, we have boundaries. So, you know, I guess it’s yin and yang there, right?
26:36 Andrew Bustamante: And I do I am I am supportive of what Trump did in terms of engaging our air force to carry out a very sophisticated strike against Iran at a time when their air defenses were weak. Like there’s, I can go on and on about why it was a smart move. Okay. Right. Smart does not make it right, because now what he also did is he sent a message that said, “Hey, we have this power, and we’re willing to exercise this power outside of the UN, outside of NATO, outside of what our friends and allies have to say, you know, even outside of our own demonstrable interests because the US can’t really make an argument that bombing Iran was in America’s best interest, which is why Trump’s base is divided.”
27:19 Yeah. Right. So, it’s it was really just a strong man move. It’s very Trump to make that move because Trump understands he needed a victory. He’s had too many losses in the last few months as a public figure.
27:31 He needed a victory to kind of demonstrate his strength again. Yeah. And midterms are creeping up and he’s got to be very cognizant of that. The Fed’s not doing what he wants and like you’re the time is ticking. He knows that.
27:42 The courts are working against him and the courts are winning. He’s got his own politicians working against him and the politicians are gaining favor, right? He had this giant parade to increase recruitment in the military when recruitment in the military was increased before he ever had his parade. Like there’s just there’s issue after issue where he’s failed to negotiate peace between Israel and Hamas, failed to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia.
28:05 These were all things that he promised. So he needed something to be like to show that he’s a strong president.
28:10 Brian Rose: Okay. Interesting. Let’s fast forward 5 years.
28:12 Where do you think Iran is at that point? Some people are saying, “Yeah, topple the, you know, the religious leader, but now you’re going to have, you know, the Republican Guard guys come in. It could be worse.” And that’s probably what’s going to happen next. I listened to a really interesting commentary the other day on, I’m watching too much Bannon’s war room, where the guy said, “It’s usually, unfortunately, the power player that takes the reins.
28:35 It’s not the people’s uprising with this benevolence. It’s actually usually a strong man that comes in and replaces that.” So, what do you think happens? I mean, obviously we want to see Abraham Accord signed by everybody, kumbaya, the whole region gets along. I mean, I think a lot of people want that.
28:51 We see signs of that already in the region. But what do you think is going to happen?
28:55 Andrew Bustamante: You know, it’s hard to make those predictions for sure. What’s the next few months and years are going to kind of define what happens next. I don’t think we’re any closer to the Abraham Accords between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
29:05 Really. Saudi Arabia is probably very happy that Iran’s been knocked back. But people forget that Iran is also the breadbasket to the Middle East. So the Middle East needs the Strait of Hormuz to get their oil out. And Iran controls 50% of that.
29:18 Almost all of your fresh food all across the Middle East comes from Iran. So Iran can quickly put a vice grip on this on all of America’s closest allies in the Middle East and just funnel all of their energy and food up to Russia and China, right? They can easily switch and bring great pain across the Middle East. If they did that because of Israel and US actions, that’s going to put a serious damper in the Middle East supporting Israel through the Abraham Accords.
29:47 But we have yet to decide exactly how Iran’s going to move next. So what’s it look like in 5 years? There’s reason to believe that there could be a regime change, but that doesn’t necessarily, like you said, mean it’s going to be a good regime change. If there’s anything the US learned in our 20 years that we lost in a global war on terror, it’s that when you cut the head off of a f***ing hydra, two nasty heads grow in its place. So what nasty heads are going to grow if the Ayatollah comes down?
30:15 Yeah. And it’s there’s no reason to believe that they’re going to become wonderfully democratic. If anything, they elected a Democratic president on their f***ing own a year and a half ago, two years ago, and we just completely disregarded that. So they’re internally, you can understand how the Iranian people, not the Iranian regime, but the Iranian people are going to start seeing for themselves a narrative that they believe is that the West is trying to oppress us.
30:38 Russia went from being a paper tiger to being a strong and flourishing economy. Not a stable economy, but a flourishing wartime economy. And now everything we did to try to make Putin look bad has worked against us. So why would we believe that everything we do to try to make the Ayatollah look bad is somehow going to work against us too?
30:55 Brian Rose: Plus they have their own media.
30:57 The internet shuts down. They got their state sponsored stuff and they’ve been brainwashed for a long time. It’s hard to undo that. And that hatred for America has been taught since they were little kids. It’s hard to undo that.
31:07 Andrew Bustamante: And not only that, but it’s beyond hatred for America used to be very easy. And I would argue as an American who’s traveled the world, there’s, there are no friends to the United States. The United States has people who are conveniently friends with us, but as soon as we are not convenient to them, they’re going to move on and be conveniently friends with somebody else. And that’s just survival instinct. That’s just human nature.
31:28 But on top of that, the question is be it’s bigger than America. It’s become the question of democracy, right? Democracies are being on shaky ground all through Europe, through the United States, through the Five Eyes, right? People can’t seem to agree. They can’t seem to come to negotiating tables.
31:44 So all these authoritarian or strongman regimes, the people within those strong man regimes are watching as strong men take over democracies, right? Trump is just a strong man. He’s just, he has more authoritarian techniques than he does political democratic techniques. But the same thing is true, you know, in Portugal. The same thing is true in France and Germany right now.
32:06 The same thing is true in some of the biggest democra has a president that’s, you know, being reviewed for impeachment. [expletive] the Philippines has a vice president who’s trying to go through a legal process to become president instead of go to jail. I mean, come on. Netanyahu is on charges for corruption. You’ve got the most talked about democracies of the world are failing.
32:31 Not failing critically, but failing enough that the world, the rest of the world has to be asking themselves, like, is democracy really what it is trumped up to be?
32:39 Brian Rose: Yeah. I spend now 6 months a year in Dubai and I ask that question every day because here is something that functions incredibly with a, I would say, a benevolent strong man leader, a strong family with like a 100-year vision for this country that delivers, and they make Western democracies look like a joke.
32:55 When I come back to London, I’m like, what the hell is going on here? This is a city and a continent in decline and there’s no turning it around. There will be no Trump of the UK. There will be no Trump of the Europe. I don’t believe America kind of got that.
33:09 We’ll see where this goes. But, you know, you can’t make this argument anymore that democracy is the best for everyone.
33:15 Andrew Bustamante: I never believe that anyways. But you’re right. It’s now the narrative that’s of question right now.
33:20 And some people are really showing that you don’t need that democracy. And think about even just 10 years ago. Yeah. 10 years ago, people would just blindly say democracy is the best. Yeah.
33:30 20 years ago, people, we were still trying to export, forcibly drive countries to adopt democracy. Democracy is a few hundred years old. Yeah. Right. And democracy didn’t serve Rome.
33:41 So, you know what? What is really going to be the government of the future? And that’s why I think it’s such an exciting time where we are right now because we are literally watching as technology and education and the reach of information expand and this idea of democratic equality shrinks, right? We’ve got huge socioeconomic divides, huge political divides. It’s a very small part of the population that makes a very large impact.
34:11 And we’re all realizing that, and it’s making it so that even young people who have predominantly been the progressive liberal voices of the world, even young people are saying, “Well, f*** that.” Like, I’d rather be one of the few that’s rich rather than one of the many that’s poor in pursuit of equality or democracy. And that’s going to get even more polarized with artificial intelligence, I believe. Absolutely. The people at top are going to use that to get even more power and wealth.
34:34 And the people at the bottom are going to get less and less opportunities. People who adopt AI are going to use it for innovation and opportunity. People who delay the adoption of AI are going to be left behind. And then you’ve got the people who are going to try to adopt AI for partially for reasons that somebody else has come up with and they’re going to never break out of a certain level of wealth or capability.
34:55 Brian Rose: I’ve had all the AI experts in here and they say pretty much the same thing.
34:59 I’m not scared of the AI. I’m scared of the people that are going to use AI to dominate the world. And we already see this crazy scramble going on in Silicon Valley because they all can see this is the this is the technology to scale.
35:11 Andrew Bustamante: I’m also scared of AI too, because once they it gets done with them, it’s going to have its own voice. But that’s another story.
35:17 Brian Rose: Just finish up with the Middle East. From pure tradecraft perspective, what did you personally think when you woke up and saw that Mossad had detonated those beepers or some of these incredible feats, you know, the falling of Syria or some of these other things that I don’t think anybody ever saw coming. What did you make of that? Because I’m guessing the CIA couldn’t have done something like that. Yeah.
35:38 Andrew Bustamante: So, it’s funny because CIA has a lot of priorities. The whole world is of interest to the CIA. So, because of that, you take your multi-trillion dollar budget and then you split it out over 163 countries and all of a sudden you don’t have very much capability in any specific country. And people don’t understand that the CIA is directed based off of intelligence policy makers who are elected officials. So as we elect idiots into office, whether you think Trump’s an idiot or not, we all know that the senators and congress people under Trump are various levels of idiocy, right?
36:14 So you’ve got all these people who are have a voice in what is the national security priority data set. So CIA has to follow whatever those directions are according to where the budget comes from. The budget comes from Congress. So why do I say all that? I say all that because for sure what you see with Mossad can’t be replicated by CIA.
36:31 Mossad has one primary threat, Iran. And then its second primary threat is Iranian proxies. So everything that they’ve ever focused on, all their money, all their capability, everything is really focused in almost one exclusive direction. And as they’ve had success with the Abraham Accords across, you know, parts of the Middle East, they’ve been able to reduce what they’ve had to put into protecting themselves against Sunni Muslims. So you’ve got this focus, and on top of that focus you have a very risk-tolerant intelligence service because the people will tolerate things that Mossad does where Americans would never tolerate if CIA acted the same way that Mossad acted.
37:11 Right? Americans would not be proud if we sent an agent on a motorcycle to strap a bomb to someone’s car in public. They would not be proud if, you know, an AT van or an A team van had a panel drop and a machine gun that was mounted there to assassinate engineers, civilians around the world. Americans would have a problem with that that Israelis don’t have. Right.
37:30 Brian Rose: That happened a few years ago, right? To the Iranian scientists.
37:33 Andrew Bustamante: Correct. So Mossad does incredible things because they have a population that supports them and the rest of us get to watch with clean hands and say, “Wow, it’s like the movies.” But if we did that kind of s*** there’d be riots in the street like we see in California.
37:47 Brian Rose: That being said, the plastic on the beepers is pretty phenomenal.
37:51 Andrew Bustamante: Pretty phenomenal. Phenomenal. And I think what you’re seeing, what people also need to understand is one of the reasons that Mossad is so capable is because they’re always innovating new kind of cutting-edge high-risk operations and they’re planning them and they’re wargaming them and they’re setting them in motion as precautions just in case they choose to exercise it in the future. So it’s not like they’re sitting around a table and they come up with this idea and then two days later it’s executed.
38:18 They thought about this years ago. They thought about this three, five, twelve years ago. Back then, Netanyahu and the Security Council were like, “This is not the right time. This is not the right time.” But after dropping the ball on October 7th, this is a time when they need to win some WASA back.
38:33 So, they’re like, “Let’s launch our big showy stuff just like our Tomahawk missiles from the United States. Let’s blow up pagers just to show the world that we can. Yeah, there’s collateral damage. No one’s going to focus on that. Yeah, we’re also blowing up kids in some places.
38:46 No one’s going to focus on that. And now let’s launch drones from inside Iran. Let’s, just, let’s do, we don’t have to, but let’s do it anyways just to show that we can because Netanyahu wants to put fear. He wants to use that psychological warfare to keep Hezbollah and keep Hamas from counterattacking when they’re focused on Iran, which is just as important part of warfare as the actual warfare.
39:09 Brian Rose: There was this conversation, I don’t know if it was real or not, on Twitter.
39:13 Of course, we’re now seeing this on our social media of a Mossad guy calling up one of the is Iranian generals saying, “You got 12 hours to publicly come out with a video and say, “I’m giving up. I’m walking out.” He’s like, “We already killed this guy, this guy, this guy, and you’re next, and you’re going to take your wife and your kid and these things with you.” And the guy’s like listening, and he’s asking some questions, and he’s like, “How you going to, how do you want me to send it to you?”
39:36 He’s like on Telegram. He’s like, “Well, do you want my number?” He’s like, “I have your number.” And so it’s just this scare tactic they probably used on all of them. But when you’re there, you know, 12 days in and all these things are happening and maybe some of that stuff works and alongside with all of the SCOPS, it works even on people that are used to scops.
39:52 Andrew Bustamante: So think about the fact that, you know, the cartels in Mexico have had a long history of success by convincing parents that their children are in cartel custody when they’re not, right? They just call up a parent and they say, “Hey, we have your child. We have them tied up. We know what hotel they’re staying in and we’ll kill them in 12 hours if you don’t give us $30,000. Right?
40:14 And then they’re on the phone with the child on the other side and they’re like, “Hey, we’re this high-end prostitute and we’re going to come visit you. All you need to do is take a picture of of yourself in your hotel room in your underwear.” And then they send the picture of the person in their underwear to the parents. They say, “See, we’ve already stripped them down.” And they can extrapolate money from the fear tactic of literally just playing emotions off of each other.
40:36 That’s messaging and narrative. Again, right? So, of course, Mossad, a trained organization, can do it even better than the cartels.
40:44 Brian Rose: Are you surprised how quickly this happened since October 7th? I mean, Hamas, Hezbollah, follow Syria inside Iran, you know, on the boots on the ground infiltrating.
40:53 I mean, wow.
40:57 Andrew Bustamante: You know, if you go all All the way back to 2022, really with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. You can see the tempo of war changing. It used to be that these things took months or years. It used to be that even before that there were these limited conflicts, right?
42:08 And limited conflicts would kind of burn out because nobody would support them. Well, now what’s happening is these limited conflicts are getting the world support, financial, weapons, intel, strategy, and they’re burning longer. And then as they burn longer, more people get involved, and then there’s more politics that come into play as well. You know, people need victories. People want to capitalize on distraction.
42:28 That’s a lot of what we’re seeing right now. So, the tempo is absolutely speeding up. Does that. I say that because I am surprised in a way that we’re seeing conflict increase at a rapid pace even while everybody says they want peace. But I’m not surprised that conflict is escalating in the way that it is because human nature is such that, like you said, don’t let a good crisis go to waste.
42:52 So everybody’s looking at every new crisis and saying, can I use this? How can I use this?
42:58 Brian Rose: Man, what a crazy world to be a part of. And also you’re seeing the narratives of like the Hezbollah strength or the Syrian regime or the Iranian regime also the narrative gets decimated too, you know, and then it’s much easier to just keep continue to plow through. Yeah.
43:14 Andrew Bustamante: You brought up Syria a few times now. What’s impressive to me about Syria is Turkey going back on the world stage again, right? And yes, Israel had a role, but their role was very limited and really it was serving Israeli interest in the Golan Heights. That was their primary focus. The rest of Syria is a victory for Turkey and a very pragmatic victory for Turkey because Turkey needed a f***ing trading partner.
43:38 That was the next neighbor over and they lost that with the previous regime. So Turkey has been heavily engaged in this work across Syria, and the fact that the United States is even meeting with the current leader of Syria who’s a former extremist, right? These are all signs to show just how powerful Turkey is still as a world player, as a political and diplomatic world player, not just a strong man, even though obviously there’s some very strong man tendencies in Turkey.
44:06 Brian Rose: Yeah, you’re right. It’s a whole chessboard over there. And I heard, you know, that I was a Turkish victory as well. Is there anything else in the world that maybe keeps you up at night or that you think about? I guess we’re talking less about Russia, Ukraine now because of the Middle East.
44:19 Is it, you know, elections in Europe? Is it the economy? Is it tariffs? Is there anything else that you try to get people to pay attention to?
44:28 Andrew Bustamante: Every time I’m, I get an opportunity to tell people what I’m focused on, I tell people I’m focused on Europe because Europe is trying, Europe is a, is one of the few places in the world where you have a concentration of multiple independent countries that have to cooperate for their own economic and military welfare.
44:47 And they’re not. It’s still undecided if they’ll find a way to cooperate or not or whether they’re going to break into even further, you know, subcompacted groups, but the idea of NATO is struggling. The UN is struggling like international law and international justice, all these things are, they’re rocky right now. People are just selectively choosing to disregard, right? The International Criminal Court puts warrants on the arrest for both Putin and Netanyahu.
45:16 And both Putin and Netanyahu still travel to UN countries and get passes, right? So, what does it all mean? Are we actually with, like, upholding the justice and the law and the promises that we make to each other or are treaties just empty? And that’s really what we’re seeing across Europe. The United States has always been its own beast.
45:39 And the United States 100% is falling victim to celebrity politics right now. It’s been falling victim to celebrity politics since Barack Obama, right? Barack Obama was elected because of popularity, because of celebrity, right? And then Trump came in because of celebrity. And then Biden came in off of Obama celebrity and now Trump’s back in again.
45:58 I don’t see that I don’t see celebrity politics changing in the US anytime soon. You were just talking about Marco Rubio, right? That’s all celebrity. That’s all. And he’s just trying to gain more.
46:07 So our age of the professional politician has passed and our age of the statesman has long passed. So who the f*** knows what’s coming up next for the United States? But Europe is still at a place where it gets to decide. It’s still dissolving parliaments and revoting politics and trying to bring prime ministers in that are proper and appropriate. But is it going to fall victim to celebrity politics, too?
46:29 Because right now, a lot of politicians in Europe are essentially choosing pro-Trump or anti-Trump as their platform. Yeah. Well, if all you’re going to do is make your country pro or counter America’s populist ideas, that’s not independence at all. So, I’m keeping an eye on Europe because Europe is really going to set the temperature for whether democracy has a place in the future or whether it really is a thing of the past.
46:51 Brian Rose: Do you think this inherent socialism that Europe is founded on that actually a lot of people don’t know until you visit here and you start seeing it everywhere?
46:59 And look, the UK is somewhere in between, you know, the US and here, but the UK definitely has these socialist tendencies just from the attitudes of people. But you go to Europe and it’s just, it really is this old socialism. And I just see that and I see these kind of broken, somewhat bankrupt, you know, classical democracies that hold their head up high with this pride, but when you dig down, it’s just a mess underneath it. From the health services to the public transport to the everything.
47:26 Does it have a chance of turning that around?
47:28 Andrew Bustamante: You know, I don’t. It’s a good question. And when you walk through certain streets in Portugal and Italy and Spain, you definitely feel like there’s no hope here, right? When you can literally see the lack of ambition in people’s faces.
47:40 You can see the hopelessness in their face because they know I was born and I’m going to die and I’m going to work in between and that’s all there is to it and I’m going to pay 45% taxes along the way. Like that’s just life, right? You can see by the lack of billionaires. You can see by the lack of innovation. You can see by all these things that socialism has taken root in many, many cultural elements across the democracies of Europe.
48:06 It can always change. It can always change because it’s really just a matter of policy and a matter of meritocracy for the few that make a substantial impact. But when you can’t inspire a child to innovate because you tell them from the beginning you’re a cog in a wheel and the best you can be for your country is to be that cog in the wheel. It’s very hard to innovate and excite those people. But there’s always outliers, right?
48:30 So, it’s going to take an outlier to allow the other outliers to blossom. But there’s still more hope there, I would say, for them to turn around their democracies than the direction the United States is going right now with their heavy bipolar populist attitudes. I mean, we’re going to have to essentially forget about 30 years of history in the United States to get back to a proper democracy. It’s wild times.
48:57 Brian Rose: You know, it’s interesting.
48:59 Just to finish this off, you know, I go from here and to Dubai and Dubai is a wild place because it attracts people who are there to do something. Matter of fact, you can’t even come there unless you’re going to do something. And so, the energy is just completely different. And I always describe this to people when I’m in London, central London. And again, look, London is in France.
49:17 It’s not the US, but you know, it’s more capitalistic than Europe. You look around and two-thirds of the people here are, like you said, just blank-faced. They’re phoning in. They’re walking around. They’re collecting a check in one way or the other from a government or from a job they don’t really care about.
49:33 They’re not even really engaged. And you just see this kind of a zombie factor. Whereas, when I go to Dubai, everyone is there as hustling and everyone there has the energy and everybody wants to change something. And if you, unless you’re. Yeah.
49:43 Andrew Bustamante: Unless you’re Emirati, although the highest levels of Emirati, they’re they got to fight under their butts, too. But yeah, maybe that’s true. Maybe. That could be changing, but maybe.
49:51 Brian Rose: And it’s refreshing to be around if you’re one of those people and you’re around people like, “Wow, these things are happening.
49:56 These people are going.” And I remember I got back to London recently and I was like, “Wow, there’s an old person. There’s no old people in Dubai, at least tourists. There’s just no old people. There’s no handicapped people.”
50:06 I mean, there’s some, but not really. There’s nobody that moves slow there. And the Sheikh Maktoum has an expression. And he says, you know, when you wake up in the morning, whether you’re a lion or whether you’re a gazelle, you run. And so, everybody wakes up and runs.
50:22 And it’s a great vibe to be around and they innovate like crazy and they built something amazing. But that’s not here and it’s maybe never going to be here.
50:32 Andrew Bustamante: It is, it’s interesting because we all, the idea that individuals can succeed independently in many ways is a stark contrast to democracy. So how do we, we have to depend, we have to choose which side we want to support. Do you want to support the individual who could independently become wealthy and create a company and create jobs and change the future?
50:55 Because if you support that person, then you don’t really want equality for everyone. You don’t really want equal opportunity. You don’t really want to take this person’s resources and feed it across the group because all you’re doing is slowing this person down. And if you do want to do all of this, then you’re not going to be breeding people like this. And the world is finally waking up to the fact that we have to choose.
51:17 I think 20 years ago, we thought we could have both because there was a lack of insight into the other’s plight. But now that we have so much information, now that you can literally watch a far-left and a far-right podcast back-to-back and, you know, in two 45-minute segments on YouTube, you can hear what they both truly believe in, and you can see that there’s not a lot of middle ground there. You look at the United States, you got LA is a visionary capital, New York is a visionary capital, and everything in between is just trying to feed off of their success.
51:50 Brian Rose: Well, that’s democracy, but that also prevents breakout success. And breakout success is what you need if you’re going to be ready for the future. And those two groups are going to get more polarized, you believe, over the next 10, 20 years.
52:03 Andrew Bustamante: Oh, for sure. Because it’s going to continue to be this doubling down on our way is the right way and you’re evil and the same, the opposite side saying the same argument.
52:12 And that’s not an argument. That’s just messaging.
52:15 Brian Rose: Is that why you’re taking the family and leaving?
52:17 Andrew Bustamante: That is why we have plans to leave the United States because it’s in the United States, being an American is difficult, but being an American outside the United States still comes with unique opportunities. So if I’m as a parent, as a business owner, and as a parent, when I think about the impact that I want to make in the world, I want to shape for my children because I can’t shape the world, but I can shape the world for my kids.
52:40 I can give them a better life, better opportunities, and better world view outside of the United States than I could ever give them inside of the United States.
52:48 Brian Rose: Is that the main driver? You don’t like the narratives they’re getting at school, from friends, from the media. You don’t like the feeling because, you know, you can out parent that, you know, you and your wife and do have, you know, this incredible podcast and all these other things. I mean, you know, it’s interesting that you would just say, you know what, I can’t do it here.
53:06 Andrew Bustamante: So, the one of the big things that CIA teaches all of its officers is that you can’t will success. You can’t will a change. You have to change the environment. If you’re in an environment that believes the world is flat, no matter what you believe, the environment will eventually wear you down because the environment never gets tired. The environment never takes a break.
53:28 The environment never needs more energy, right? So, if you live in a dark place and it’s dark all the time, you’re going to get depressed. If you live in a sunny place and it’s sunny all the time, you’re going to get sunburned, right? You can’t you have to change the environment if you plan on changing what happens psychologically inside. So, it’s not that I want to leave the United States because I’m afraid of my kids’ narrative, right?
53:47 I can change their school. I can change their teacher. I can change the city that we live in. We’ve done all of those things. What I need to do is I’m trying to create global citizens, not blind, hard-headed Americans with their blind, hard-headed opinions.
54:02 I can try to parent intelligence into my kids, but again, their exposure to me is counted in, you know, a few hours. Their exposure to their environment is counted 24 hours a day every day. Right? If I pull them out and I put them in a different environment, now they adopt what’s in that new environment. If I pull them again and move them again, now they get a different environment.
54:23 Imagine being a child that spends two years in five different countries. How broad are you in 10 years? You start to develop your own opinions and your own perspective. And that’s really what I want to give them. If I keep them in the United States, I’m gonna I’m gonna precondition them to think like whatever the predominant political party is in whatever city or state we live in, and I can’t even give them diversity there because I can move them California to Florida to Texas to New York.
54:48 I can do that, but then they’re just going to get two extreme political opinions instead of any kind of well-rounded worldly view.
54:56 Brian Rose: Maybe it’s the CIA family coming up. All right. Yeah, I know you can’t comment on that. Final question is what’s next for Andrew?
55:03 You know, what do the next five years look like for you and your wife and your family? You know, you’re obviously having a tremendous success with your business and you’re on so many amazing media channels as well, but what’s important to you?
55:16 Andrew Bustamante: What’s important to me is shaping the future for my children. So, the success that I have in business, the success that we have with Shadow Cell, the success that we have on the internet is all secondary to the life I’m trying to give them.
55:28 We have plans to immigrate and leave the United States. We’ve talked about that and other folks know that that’s coming. My plan is to build a life for them someplace where we can enjoy some anonymity again. Because right now I mean I travel the United States. I travel any English-speaking country.
55:44 And I’m noticed I’m observed everywhere. People recognize the hair. They want selfies. They want to have a conversation about geopolitics. And I welcome that conversation for now.
55:54 But the next five years is going to look like me intentionally creating more isolation and more distance from the American public.
56:01 Brian Rose: Are you going to do media still?
56:02 Andrew Bustamante: I’ll still do media, but I’ll be very selective about where I do media.
56:06 Brian Rose: But you’ll still run your business.
56:08 Andrew Bustamante: And I’ll pour myself.
56:09 Correct. And I’ll pour myself into the few clients that I have and I’ll pour myself into my children in a way that I haven’t gotten a chance to do for the last few years.
56:17 Brian Rose: You’re going to have to cut that hair, young man. Otherwise, it’s a giveaway for sure. Absolutely.
56:21 And congrats on all your success. I mean, literally I just love it when I see you out there and like you just rack up the views and I don’t know, something about you. You just connect with all sorts of people and all sorts of audiences with all sorts of interviewers and you always crush it whether you’re on Freriedman or you’re with Patrick Bet-David or on all these places like it always crushes and I end up watching you myself even though I’ve talked to you three times now.
56:44 So Look, that’s amazing and congrats for making the bold move to get out of the US. You’re going to get a lot of hate for that. But congratulations for doing that and it sounds like you got everything of interest. So there you go. Shadow Cell, an insider account of America’s New Spy War.
56:58 Grab a copy and then come back and see us again sometime in the next couple years.
57:18 Andrew Bustamante: All right, you got it, Brian. Thank you.
