Andrew Bustamante

Andrew Bustamante

Stalking is just a derogatory word for what professionals do when they target. Yeah, exactly. Professionals target, creepy people's stock. So inevitably what happens whenever you see somebody multiple times is subconsciously you develop a trust for that person because you're familiar with seeing them in that situation.

So once I had seen him two or three times in that setting, then I went up and I introduced myself. And then after that, you know, we just started having things in common. We liked the same drinks, or I learned to like the drinks that he liked. We ate the same food. We talked about the same sports teams. And then inevitably it came up that he, you know, maybe five or seven meetings later, he didn't know I was looking for a job.

He just thought I was a nice guy and I was not just talking to him. I was targeting for. And I was just waiting for the first one to act on the targeting effort. And then one day he was just like, what do you do for a living man? Like my company could really use someone that's such a go getter and a, and a smart thinker like you.

And that's when I told him like, oh, I'm actually in the position of looking for a job right now. I just left service with the U S government. He was like, oh, let me put you in contact with this hiring manager. Tell them that. I think that you'd be a perfect fit in this department. And if they have any questions, just tell them to call me.

Well, if you talk to a hiring manager and you tell them that the COO of the company connected you to them to talk about this job, there's really no real interview that happens. They just, they send you a letter, they offer you a salary and then you start the.

I'm serine route. And

Srini: this is the unmistakable creative

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Srini: Andrew, welcome to the unmistakable creative.

Andrew Bustamante: Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Hey, I'm super happy to be here. Certainly. Thanks for that. I am beyond

Srini: excited to have you here. I heard about your work. I think by way of a publicist, you pitched me. And I was like, this guy was a CIA spy. I'm like, hell yes.

I want to talk to him. I'm like, I can only imagine the crazy stories that he has, but before we get into all of that, even your background and your work, I thought I would start with one of my favorite questions. That is what social group you're a part of in high school. And what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made with your life

Andrew Bustamante: and your career?

Yeah, absolutely. So shout out to all the marching band members out there. I was a proud, proud clarinetist in the marching band. And then I became the marching band drum major in 11th grade. And I carried that through to my senior year, man, that has shaped me in so many ways. We don't have enough time on 1 0 1 podcast to talk about that.

But yeah, but you know, everything from the friendships that you make in marching band to the, the fact that you have to put up with all the punches, all the social punches that you get being in Marshall. Yeah. So I'm super, super blessed and super thankful for that experience. And to this day, you will never hear me say a thing negative about anyone who chooses to spend time in the market.

Well,

Srini: like I said, you and me both, I played, I played the tuba and we hated clarinet players who wouldn't hold their clarinets properly, like idiots. So like, why are you not holding your instruments? Your instruments are so light, but I actually do want to dive a bit deeper into that. So I know what I learned from being in bed personally, I really actually preferred concert band over marching band.

You know, I always just liked that aspect of it much more marching band was kind of like the necessary evil, my band director, even I think my senior year, I was like, I'm quitting marching band. I'll still stay in the band cause I want to play. And he was like, what have you don't have to come to practice.

I was like, then people will think I'm an entitled prick. I'm like, so I'm not going to do that. But for you, like for me, it was an exercise in discipline practice, all those things that literally shaped my creative work, you know, to the letter, to this day, those are some of the most influential lessons I've learned.

But for you, like what were the key things that you took away, particularly as a drum major? Cause you're in this like, you know, position of leadership that people. See as the ultimate authority figure from a very

Andrew Bustamante: early yeah. You know, it's interesting. I would say that my walkaway messages were quite different than yours.

So even, even as a drum major, what I, what I learned from my time in marching band and I also enjoyed concert band, but it was the message that you see, you are just one piece of a much larger organism and no matter how good you think you are, no matter how much you like, the way you sound, when the organism does what it's supposed to do, it sounds so much better, so much richer, so much more full, so, so much more complex.

It can achieve things that you can't achieve alone. It's just one piece of a much larger project. And, and what's super powerful is that your piece is replaceable. If I choose not to come to practice or if I choose not to practice the piece, or if I choose not to try my hardest, that's cool. It's not going to stop the band from doing what the band is going to do.

Instead. I'm just going to find my. Sitting at home alone and somebody else is going to become the new first clarinetist and somebody else is going to try out and become the new drum major. I am not critical in any way instead, the organism lives on. And for me, that was a really powerful model as I went on to be in the military.

And I went on to be part of CIA. And even now in my business, I realized I'm just one part of an organism. And I get to be part of that organism. As long as I keep doing that.

Srini: Oh, there's just so much to unpack there. I want to come back to that, but as far as juggling all the crazy personalities of a marching band, what did you learn about navigating the dynamics of human relationships?

Because my, my best friend Gareth and I, co-host a segment every Wednesday called the unmistakable creative ha happy hour, creativity hour. And he and I became friends because of marching band. And the funny thing is we didn't reconnect until 20 years after we graduated because our band director was an idiot.

He made us sit at attention in the stands, so we weren't allowed to talk to each other. But you know, we w we always joke about the, the sort of, you know, different characters in our band was like, yes. And these guys were like Beavis and Butthead. Like how, what did you know, as the drum major? I'm sure you had to deal with a wide range of personalities ranging from people who were easy to people who were a pain in the

Andrew Bustamante: ass.

Yeah, it's true. And and you have, you know, you had banned bullies and at least in our band, I remember there were band bullies. And how, how pathetic do you have to be, to be a. In the marching band where you're bullying other people in the marching band, like that's just silly. But but yeah, the, the big lesson for me, when it came to managing personalities was exactly that personalities can be managed no matter how hard-headed or how simple or how ignorant or angry somebody is, there's always a way that you can manage them.

And what's fascinating about that is as I went on again, as I went on to grow from those lessons in high school and apply them to the real world, it's we like to use the word manipulation at CIA. You manipulate people to get them to give you secrets. We don't like the word manipulation in the regular world.

So in the regular world, we use the word motivation. Instead, I would argue that motivation and manipulation are just two sides of the exact same coin, but you're managing personalities to get them to do something that benefits you, whether you're motivating them or manipulating. That's the end goal. And in many ways, that's what leadership is and that's what parenting is.

And that's what that's what everybody really wants to achieve. What they're trying to achieve in their business or their life. They want people to do what helps them make their goals happen. And you just choose to do that either by manipulating or motive.

Srini: Speaking of parenting. Did yours encourage you to pursue any particular career paths?

Were they encouraging discouraging the military? Because I mean, I grew up in an Indian family. If I told my parents I'm going to go to the military, they would lose their mind. And I remember this because there was a Navy recruiter who kept coming to my school to talk to me every day. And I was like, shit, I need to tell this guy I'm not joining the

Andrew Bustamante: Navy.

Yeah. My, my parents were both former military, but they didn't necessarily encourage me to take a military career. They were of the G F O generation, the, the get the F out. And all they wanted was for me to get the F out at 18, whether that was with the military or college or whatever else. That's what they wanted me to do.

They didn't have any money saved for college and they didn't encourage me to take on college debt. So they kind of only left me one option outside of getting scholarships. And that's, that was really what shaped my college decision to.

Srini: Okay. So you ended up going straight to the military from

Andrew Bustamante: high school.

Yeah. I went into the air force academy, so I got a full ride scholarship to the United States air force academy. I had the grades and I had the brown skin that was important in rural Pennsylvania at that time, but I knew I was going military one way or the other, and I just didn't really want to go. I wanted to take the road that got me the most opportunities.

I that's kind of my mantra man, is I want to go. And every decision I make, I want those decisions to bring me more opportunities. Not.

Srini: Really brothers from another mother, because like my, my friend Garrett, that I was telling you about, he was going to go to the air force academy he wanted to, and then he got in a horrific car accident his senior year.

Andrew Bustamante: But

Srini: so I think that you mentioned something interesting that caught my attention about being this brown skin person in rural Pennsylvania, at least brown skin. People like me were probably very rare in the military. I think I know two Indian people who have gone to the military and they've both been guests on this podcast

Andrew Bustamante: and success rate.

Srini: Yeah, exactly. But as a minority in the military, what does that like? Because I, you know, I think for an Indian person, it would be like, I would feel like a fish out of water in the military. I don't know if it's like that for you. Does it, does that play a role at all in the way it shapes your military experience?

Andrew Bustamante: Like your risks? Yeah. You know, what's funny is I find that the military is a great equalizer and any veteran out there I think would agree, the military does a fantastic job of stripping everything that is distracting about, you know, human beings, it strips it all away and it boils us down to our core elements.

What's your grit, what's your self worth? What's your discipline? What's your, what's your loyalty to your fellow military member? So the military does a great job of that, but I would go a step further to actually say that when, when people talk about minorities in the United States, at least in the Western context, oftentimes what we're talking about, isn't a minority in terms of the number of people like that.

Because for example I'm Latino and Latinos, according to demographics, Latinos are the largest. So are we really a minority? If we're just, if there's just less of us than there are white people, then are we really a minority at all, compared to, like you were saying to Indian people that, that you know of who have ever been in the military, instead of what I find is so fascinating that the military is the military attracts people often who don't have any other opportunity except the military.

It's like, what am I going to do next? That's better than what I'm doing now. If the only thing that you can think of, that's better than what you're doing now is to give away your freedoms and your, and and promise yourself in obligatory service to your country. Usually that means you're coming from pretty you're coming from a foundation that is common with every other brother and sister.

You're going to meet in the middle. For me, that was certainly the case. I didn't have the opportunity to go to an Ivy league school. I didn't have parents that had money that could put me into a college, even with a state, a state school. And I, I was just smart enough to not take on, you know, $120,000 in debt.

Because again, my parents told me not to. So all that was really left for me was either going to a nine to five job on minimum wage or going into the military. And the day that I started at the air force academy, I was surrounded by, you know, 4,000 other students who had all essentially made the same decision.

Very few of them had any opportunity better than the one that they took. So we were all common.

Srini: So I'm curious what the college experience of somebody who goes to the air force academy is like in contrast to the cultural experience of somebody like me, who went to Berkeley, which does come with the debt that you're talking about, which I'm feel like I'm going to pay off until I die, or, you know, become, you know, fuck you money rich and pay it off.

But one thing I wonder is what that experience is like, because I had a friend who I think it wasn't Annapolis. And one of the things he told me was that he spent, he was like, when you're in a college like this, he's like, you know, skipping class is not an option. He was like, I went to every single class.

He's like, I basically milked it for all it was worth. And he said, you come out with a level of discipline. That's so different than the average college student. Is that the case in the air force academy to,

Andrew Bustamante: yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to piss off a lot of military academy graduates. So let me just say that outright because what ends up happening is we're all indoctrinated to say these wonderful things about our academy.

But the truth is that it's a miserable college experience compared to the typical college experience. You know, your average 18 year old, who goes to college, they're faced right away with having to make their own decisions. They have to deal with freedom. They have to manage risk. They have to demonstrate their own personal responsibility.

They have to take accountability of their health and their rest. That's oftentimes why you see some of the same repeat mistakes, like the freshmen 15, where people gain

,

15 pounds their freshman year, or you start to see the mistakes where people flunk out of their first semester, where their second semester, these are repeat errors because people college students don't have a lot of experience in managing their time, managing their discipline or making their own decisions because mom and dad did it the whole time when they were in high school.

Well, when you go to the air force academy, it's the exact same thing as being in high school. Somebody else manages all of that. Yes, you do have to exercise a certain amount of discipline to go to every class. Every time you have to wake up every day, a certain way, you have to go through your own boot camp.

You have to deal with certain weekends that you're not allowed to go off base. And other weekends that you spend drilling and polishing and going through inspections, but you don't have any choice. If you don't have any choice, you're not actually learning discipline at all. You're just learning to take the crap that someone else tells you to take.

And that's really what the military thrives on. It thrives on people who will follow orders, no matter how uncomfortable those orders are, no matter how much sacrifice is required because their loyalty is to the institution. This was something that CIA drilled into me as well, because when we make spies in the field, when you make an asset in the field, you try to institutionalize that asset.

So they know that they're giving secrets to the U S government and they're so loyal to that relationship that they're willing to continue doing it anyways. So that institutionalization is a super powerful model. That the government knows works. And that's what they try to do to us starting in in the military academies, whether it's an Apolis or west point or the U S air force academy, nobody goes there to have fun.

We go there for opportunity. We go there to have a headstart in our careers. We go there for for an awesome set of experiences. If you continue to do what other people tell you to do, then they reward you by giving you more opportunity. You get to fly on airplanes and you get to jump out of airplanes and you get to do survival school in the Colorado Rockies.

Right. Some really cool stuff, but you have to eat a lot of shit on your way there.

Srini: How does that change you as a person in terms of your just worldview and relationships with other people? We'll definitely get to the CIA part, but it just the experience that you had in college, how did that shape the way that you think about the world and your interpersonal relationships?

I

Andrew Bustamante: mean, one of the things it does for sure is it teaches you that the world really is a hierarchy. There's the world that we all wish was real. And then there's a world that is actually real. And I'm sure there are people, excuse me. There are people who will disagree with me all day on this. My, my stepdad used to say perception is reality.

I don't know if you've ever heard that, but he used to say to me all the time perception is reality. Perception is reality. And, and if you show up late, then someone could perceive that you're not dedicated to your job. And then that's going to be their reality. You're not a dedicated person. In reality.

Reality is reality. Perception is only reality in the person's head. Who's perceiving it. So it's not really relevant. My experience in college started shaping me for the fact that there really is a hierarchy at all times, all around us forever. That hierarchy is something that we opt. We volunteer ourselves into whether you're lawfully following the rules of the country that you choose to live in, because guess what?

You can always choose to live in a different. Or whether you choose to obey the rules of the family, that's putting a roof over your head because you can always choose to leave the house. I'm not saying that those choices are something that's feasible to you. If you want to maintain the same quality of life.

But if you wanted to leave your parents' house tomorrow, you could, you may not have any place else to stay, but it's up to you to decide whether leaving the house and living on the streets is better or worse than staying in the house and following their rules. You actually get to choose that in this country, inside the United States of America.

The other thing that's fascinating about the United States, military is in other parts of the world, you don't get a choice. You have to become part of the military. You have service. Yep, exactly. Right. So those were my big world shaping points of view. Thanks to the air force academy.

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Srini: Wow. So how in the world do you go from that to CIA and how does something like the CIA shape, your relationships influence your relationships? Because at least based on my sort of perception, I actually want to ask you a few more questions about the military policy in general. But you know, it's not what we see on TV and in the movies, it's kind of like, you know, the personality, they look for somebody who doesn't have a lot of friends and is willing to be isolated from their family.

How much of that is real and how much of that is just, you know, basically dramatization for the sake of entertaining us.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, no, it's actually very accurate. That part is very accurate. They're looking for people who the CIA is always on the hunt for people who are high functioning, essentially, you know if you think of it like the autistic spectrum, they're looking for people who are very high functioning, autistic.

People who can, who don't have a lot of, they don't put a lot of stock in social relationships and social networks or social accountability. I call the, the phrase that we're taught to use as moral flexibility, people who kind of always break everything down to the ways and the means and one justifies the other.

So they found me because I was a government, I was a government military officer. They had my entire record, my entire history all the way back to 18 on file. They knew what languages I spoke. They knew what my security clearance was. They knew that I was trying to leave the U S military and go into another government organization.

So they just kind of intercepted me along the way. It was very similar with my wife. My wife is also former CIA. We met at CIA. She was coming from a state school experience and she was going into a nonprofit experience, but we were both trying to get into a specific governor. Job out of our previous experiences and, and they just see, I intercepted as both in our application process to that government job.

Wow.

Srini: So is it difficult to have relationships with people outside of your line of work, particularly when you're in a job? That, from what I hear and see requires a tremendous amount of secrecy and you know, how accurate is, what I see on 24 is Jack Bauer like extremely traumatized or is there any level

Andrew Bustamante: of accuracy to that?

Well, there's a little bit of accuracy and everything you see in fiction, right? Because good, good storylines always have a modicum of. That's what makes them so relatable, but what, what Jack Bauer and what a lot of the spy Phi and spy film industry shows you, they do show you the loneliness. They do show you the intense stress and the intense pressure that you really are under.

And they do give you a sense of the fact that those people are not, they're not like mentally stable. We're not the kind of people that you want to hang out with. Seriously. We're not the people you want to hang out with on a Sunday brunch. Right? I was actually just having dinner yesterday with a good friend of mine.

We had sushi the other day and there was this moment at dinner where I started really opening up about my opinions on people. And I could literally see in his face because I was trained to see it in people's face. I was true. I literally saw his face go from comfortable to uncomfortable, to mildly fearful.

And I knew that I was going too deep. I was talking about something that was too sensitive for him to be able to consume at the time. So then I had to back back the intensity and watch his face transform back to an area where he was more comfortable. That's just, that's the world that we live in and we're trained to accept that we're trained.

They, they don't beat around the bushes when they bring us in. And they're like, Hey, you guys are here. Yes. Because you're smart and yes, because you're intelligent and yes, because you're capable, but you're also here because you're a little jacked up in the head and you, you, you are looking for a challenge that borders on illegality, and that's why we're here to basically legalize the things that you want to do.

You can't steal from the United States, but we're going to make sure that you can go steal from every other country.

Srini: Sorry, we'll come back to that. Because there there's a lot there. One thing that I wonder about, and I have always wondered about this, and I've had conversations about this with the handful of people who are ex-military, who've been here like Chris Fussell.

I had a listener who runs a nonprofit called the station foundation where he helps retired special forces guys, transition to civilian careers. And the guy who picked me up from the airport was from joint special operations. Don't you guys take orders from the president, at least based on the hierarchy that I know I might be wrong, like correct me if I am, but you said, I said, I'm not asking this out of disrespect.

And I'm like, I just want to know why we spend so much fucking money on military when we've got so many problems here at home. And he told me everything this country does is for political risk or political gain. He said, well, you have to remember is that the people in the military are just taking orders from politicians it's the politicians were causing all of that.

I want to hear your perspective on this as a former CIA

Andrew Bustamante: person. Yeah, no, I actually agree. I agree with them about 98%, the only place where I would kind of put a finer, a sharper edge on his feedback is that I would say that our country's politicians only make decisions that are based on economic benefits, not necessarily like gross domestic product, economic benefit, making our businesses more benefits.

But the policy politicians know that if they want to secure their own job, their own success, they have to secure the long-term stability and success of the state. So even though, you know, even though it's the electorate that votes them into office, once they're in that office, they need to preserve their office.

It's the, it's the big catch 22 in all government service, whether you're in the military or CIA or sitting on Capitol hill, once you're in that position, there's a certain element where you have to sustain the institution because without the institution, you're nothing, you have no job. You have no title, you have no position.

And the way the institution gets sustained is by sustaining the tax base. You sustain the tax base by sustaining, by making economic based decisions, things that will benefit you in the long run economically. Unfortunately, most social issues. Whether you're talking about homelessness or whether you're talking about environmental ism or whether you're talking about you know, the rights of individuals to self identify as gay, straight lesbian, or otherwise, those just don't drive an economic power.

They don't drive an engine with enough economic power to make them a priority at that level.

Srini: Well, it's kind of funny because that almost conflicts with the thing you said in the beginning of our conversation about how the single organism doesn't work as well without all the other ones surrounding it.

So basically at least my sort of interpretation of what you've said is that we're willing to make economic progress at the, you know, cost of social wellbeing.

Andrew Bustamante: Well, I don't see, I don't think it's that simple. I would also say a platitude, but I would also say that I don't really feel like our organism of the United States is functioning very well.

I don't know if you think that it is no, not at all.

Srini: That's why I wanted to. That's why I said that, but

Andrew Bustamante: yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly right. There's I think there is an economic value to be S to be discovered in in better aligning our social priorities, but instead of trying to align our social priorities, the politicians that we've put in place like to fight about our social priorities, they like to constantly debate those social priorities.

So instead you see progress happening slowly and over conflict instead of everybody agreeing, Hey, let's, let's fight the big fight and leave these smaller things. Let's let's see what happens. If we give them some valid support, we give them some financial support and we kind of focus on the bigger threats that are out there.

That conversation doesn't happen. We're too busy, fighting about. Well,

Srini: I remember reading Barack Obama was biography. And I remember talking to an old friend about this, one of my former business partners and you and I were talking about like, what is it like to run for president? And we thought about it, like, yeah, okay.

You know what, when you're on the campaign trail, it's great. You go out and you say all these things to get elected and people love what you have to hear. And then you're Barack Obama. You get into your first day of office, somebody handed you your first intelligence briefing and you're like, holy shit.

These are the fires that it's like, these are the fires you have to put out. You might as well put all that crap. You said on the campaign trail, on hold for

Andrew Bustamante: the next three years. Exactly. Right? Yup. That is very real. That is extremely real. The day that the candidates get their intelligence briefing is a day that we often joke about on, on the inside because everything, all the promises they've made, all the things that people believe they're not, they're not being lied to.

There's just there's a lack of knowledge. It's just like. When you think that, like, when you think that an auto dealership is the richest guy or the richest business in the street corner or whatever, and then you actually get a chance to peek at their books and you're like, oh wow. They only exist on like a 7% margin.

It's, it's just, once you need more knowledge before you can reach a different conclusion. And all the stuff that happens in a classified world is knowledge. Nobody gets until they have a need to know,

Srini: speaking of a classified world. I, I, I, that, that's something I wondered and I'm guessing there's probably stuff you can't tell me, but I'm guessing there are a lot of things that are happening on a daily basis that would make almost all of us lose our minds that we would never know about.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. I wouldn't say that you would lose your mind, but I do think that you would feel quite a bit less safe in the life that you live. Yeah, for sure. So just as an example, there's a, there's an unclassified number out there that says that inside the United States at any given time, there's about a hundred thousand undercover foreign.

100,000 undercover foreign operatives operating inside the United States at any given time. Now, according to the seven levels of Kevin bacon, if you played that in high school, which I'm pretty sure

,

you did, if you were in marching band, that means that you have most likely come in contact in close proximity of a foreign operative.

At some point in your life, probably within three or four layers. You knew somebody who knew somebody who actually met a foreign operative at some point that's how close and how wide or the United States is. And that's for you. And you know, you and me and every other normal person who doesn't even have access to sensitive classified data, the higher up you get when you work for Google or Facebook or the us government or the U S military.

Now you become an active target of those foreign intelligence operatives. So now not only do you have the, the probability that they'll come within close, close proximity of you, but now you actually have a reason to expect that they are actively seeking you out. And that's just an example of how not necessarily infiltrated, but how well covered our country is how much of a priority we are to every other hostile intelligence service out there.

Yeah. Well,

Srini: just out of morbid curiosity, how much does the CIA know about me? That I'm kind of like, you know, completely

Andrew Bustamante: oblivious to, well, they probably know less about you than whoever owns your cell phone in your pocket. If you've got an iPhone, apple knows more about you than your government does, but you know, we can leave that for a different day.

Yeah, absolutely.

Srini: All right. Well, talk to me about the actual training that goes into, like, what was your actual job in, you know, what struck me most was what you said about, you know, this conversation with your friends about how you've been trained to read people. So what goes into that and how does that happen and how does it go from being something that you have to practice do?

Something that you just kind of, you know, unconsciously.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's interesting that you asked the question. I, my worldview was really transformed most, most apparently it was most obvious to me that I saw the world in a different, a different lens after CIA. The military was partially responsible for that, but it was really like night and day difference.

When I started with CIA, CIA puts all of their field officers. I was a field officer. There's multiple disciplines and there's multiple directorates and there's all sorts of, it's still a giant government organism at CIA, right? So they break down different disciplines. My sub-discipline was operations and specifically field human intelligence collection operations.

So they put all of us through a training course. That's often called the farm. And when you go to the farm, you learn everything there is to learn about how to execute trade craft, and how to read people's behaviors, how to anticipate their questions, how to essentially manipulate a human being. To turn them from being a Patriot for their own country, to turning them into a trader who gives secrets to your country.

That's the purpose of the farm and the process by which you do. That is a surprisingly simple process. And it's a surprisingly useful process because it's all about empathizing relating and essentially gaining the trust and loyalty of the person that you're talking to. And then intentionally twisting that loyalty and twisting that, that relationship so that you are in a in a controlling position.

And that's the terminology that we use. We want to be in control of the asset. So then we can institutionalize the asset. And now you have a long-term reliable intelligence source. It's not healthy by any normal societal standards, which is why we're all a little messed up in the head, like I said, but it's an extremely functional, extremely useful process.

Srini: So this is at a morbid curiosity. Are there things that you can tell about me just from the sound of my voice? Not seeing me face to face, like, can you gather certain things about me just based on what you're hearing in the

Andrew Bustamante: conversation or having? Yeah. I mean, if you don't, if you don't mind being called out a little bit on the, on the phone, right.

Literally I w I wanna, I

Srini: want to hear what it is cause I'm so

Andrew Bustamante: curious. So I would anticipate that you've, that you struggle with anxiety a little bit. I would also anticipate that you have either been accused or you have suspected that you have ADHD at some point in your life. I'm guessing that you've struggled with with like institutional work, because you probably get bored working on a single task over and over again, repetitively, and you probably instead prefer to have tasks given to you that offer some kind of immediate challenge.

But once you figure out the challenge, you kind of get bored with it and then you move on to the next thing. How, how on point am I from reading your voice? Okay, wait.

Srini: That's that's insane. Okay. Well then you have to tell me how, like, what is it that gives that away?

Andrew Bustamante: So part of it is the way that you interrupt your own self.

When you talk, you talk and then you break off your own sentences to start new questions. You jump around on your own questions, not just on my answers, but in your own dialogue, yourself monologue. And that is kind of a very strong indicator of someone whose brain is working faster than their mouth, which tells me that you're thinking in a, in a very conceptual way.

And you're trying to take these, these complex concepts and break them into something that can be communicated verbally. That is an ADHD trait. That's why many people are accused of having ADHD or suspect that they have it. It's not that they actually have the inability to remain attentive it's that their brain works faster.

Their their left brain works faster than their right brain can find words to communicate something. And then you've got when you have that history of ADHD oftentimes with that fast brain, that fast processor, it also makes you hyper aware, which is sometimes called paranoia, hyper aware of what you can't control or what you don't control.

And that leads to anxiety. And then when you have that constant fear of of what you don't know or what you don't understand playing on your brain and your brain is always moving so quickly, then that's what leads to the idea that, that you, you want to be able to do lots of new things, because you want to basically gather experiences because experiences will keep you.

But you live in a world where the world wants you to just do the same mundane thing one time over and over again, because that's what makes an economically viable resource.

Srini: Wow. Okay. Yeah. No, I mean, that's, that's insane that

Andrew Bustamante: you can still be friends. I feel like,

Srini: no, no, I am not offended at all because nothing you said is untrue.

I have legit been diagnosed with ADHD. I take medication for it and yes, like spot on. There's nothing that you said that was inaccurate. I've been fired from every

Andrew Bustamante: job I've ever had. That's why I love that you host your own podcast, man. When everybody else tells you, there's something wrong with you, the only way to prove them wrong is to go do it yourself.

Srini: Okay. So talk to me about what it's like to actually go out and be in the field and convince somebody to become a trader to their country. And at the same time, how do you maintain any semblance of a normal life or is that

Andrew Bustamante: not possible? Yeah, you give up on normal life. That's for sure. Nobody that's something that the movies don't don't do a very good job of showing you the, we have this constant balance between convenience and security.

It's something everybody has. You have it. I have it. Girlfriends, boyfriends, families. Everybody has this constant balance between convenience and security. The more secure you are, the less convenient your life is. If you turn off locating services on your phone, it's never going to be able to tell you the right distance you are from, you know, some GPS coordinate or some location, some dinner, some restaurant you're trying to find on Google maps or apple.

So you're always trading security for convenience. Similarly, if you want convenience, you turn on all of your location services. You turn your cell phone into a giant beacon that tells everybody who you are, where you are, what you're interested in. Now you're giving up security in favor of convenience.

So in order for us to operate in the field, we have to maximize security, which means that we minimize convenience and living undercover literally means you spend eight hours a day doing your cover job, and then your undercover job, your real actual mission. You don't even start on that until after your cover day is over.

So it's an extremely exhausting, frustrating, tiring, a career path to go down. And somehow in all of that pain in all of your exhaustion and your frustration. That's one of the superpowers that allows you to make a connection with someone else who is also feeling tired and frustrated very often and convince them that they can, they can trust themselves to tell you secrets.

That's it's not that different from how adultery happens. It's not that different from how people start using drugs. It's not that different from how people abuse, alcohol. They just, you are already tired and exhausted and somebody else out there is equally as tired and exhausted, but they have secrets and you know how to collect them.

Srini: Let's talk about this idea of moral flexibility briefly. Did you ever feel conflicted about the things that you had to do knowing that potentially people are giving you secrets that could cause people in their lives tremendous harm?

Andrew Bustamante: I wouldn't say that it was a feeling where I was conflicted because at the end of the day, this is what moral flexibility is.

Right. It's the ability to. To ethically align yourself to other priorities priorities, besides just the ethics of the thing. So for example, nobody wants to hurt a dog. Nobody wakes up thinking to themselves, I'm going to kick a dog. I'm going to hit a dog with a stick. I'm going to punch a dog in the face.

I'm going to kick it while it's down. Nobody has that thought. We're all ethically compelled not to do that. But as soon as that dog growls at your child, I dare you to find one parent down there who isn't thinking, I'm going to punch that dog. I'm going to kick that dog. If I had a stick, I would hit that dog.

What our world is all about taking that kind of flexibility and, and making it more nuanced. So now yes, we may have, you know, a positive relationship with Uzbekistan today, but that doesn't mean that we're going to have a positive relationship with Uzbekistan two years from. So I need to start collecting secrets on his Becca Stanny military today.

So that when they're an enemy two years from now, we know everything there is to know about them. That's the kind of flexibility that we have. Hmm.

Srini: So it sounds like what you're talking about in a lot of ways is when you make decisions you're making them based not just on first order consequences, but second, third, fourth, 20th order consequences.

Ray Daleo talks about this in this book principles that every decision has more than one consequence, but most of us only ever think about the. Absolutely.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. The multiple, multiple order multiple orders of outcomes, multiple multiple orders of consequences to control outcomes. That's exactly what we're doing.

And a lot of that is driven by the national security infrastructure above us. So the president and the policy makers, they all set the direction of the country and then whatever direction they send or whatever direction they identify is broken down into intelligence collection priorities. And CIA has given some of those priorities, just like NSA, just like FBI, just like DIA.

We are all part of an intelligence community. That's there to protect the longterm national security. I think. So when

Srini: we see, for example, the president on TV, like Obama with Trump, whoever it is, and you see all these sort of crazy conflicts in, in some of the craziness, what do we not see? Because I feel like, you know, citizens for the most part seem perpetually pissed off at politicians, regardless of what party they're in.

It's like, you know, Republicans are pissed off at Democrats and Democrats are pissed off at Republicans. So what we not seeing, what are the nuances that we miss when we're civilians?

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big things that civilians don't get to see is the fact that the president's plate is always full whatever you are interested in, whether it's a domestic issue or an international issue, whatever you're interested in, for sure the president is interested in that also, but he doesn't have the luxury or she, they don't have the luxury of only doing what they're interested in.

That's something you and I have the luxury of doing. They have to prioritize constant. There's a limited number of, of dollars that they can spend. There's a limited number of weapons that they can use. There's a limited number of alliances that they can either leverage or violate in pursuit of whatever their national security ambition is.

Once you have to prioritize how you spend your money, how you use your resources, all of a sudden you're going to piss people off because there's going to be people who want you to use your resources a different way. And that's just part of the disappointment that always comes about with being the president.

I'm sure you've noticed a serine. When you look at presidents, they always get gray fast. Their hair goes from rich, dark, something to platinum white within about four years. And then if they stick on for a second term, they just go even grayer, they age at an incredible rate. And it's because of the constant pressure, the constant cognitive demand that they're under.

To make decisions to make, to make policies, to manage reputations, to manage political relationships diplomatic relationships with other countries, as well as maintain their own personal family life. That is an incredible amount of, of strain for anything. Yeah, I've

Srini: read both the Michelle and Barack Obama biographies.

And it, it, she was, I remember the chapter in Michelle's by R where she specifically talks about the election night, where suddenly the roads are all cleared, you know, the sea, I think it was the secret service, all surrounds them, puts them into a limo and her daughter's like, Hey, nobody's coming to your thing.

The roads are all empty. And then they finally realized the roads are empty because he's the president.

Andrew Bustamante: Exactly. Right? Yeah. It's a fascinating, it's a fascinating position and it's a true public servant position. And I'm one of those people who will say that I've, I've disagreed with certain decisions that every president has made, but I always respect and honor the office of the president.

I don't care if Obama sat there or if Trump's that there, if Bush sat there, or if Biden sits there, they are offering a tremendous service to us. We should honor the office, even if we disagree with some of the principles or some of the personality traits of the. Well, I feel like just from what I've seen in the conversations, I've had, that there is no way that you could take do that job without ending up

with blood on your hands.

Yeah, it's true. Because you know, the, in all of the intelligence community has they all fall under one of the three branches of government, CIA falls directly under the executive branch. The executive branch is overseen by the executive of the United States that the presidents, so anything that happens good or ill at CIA, when we make a mistake about how the Taliban is going to overrun Afghanistan, when we depart, when we underestimate the Ukrainian military he's ability to defend itself against Russia, when we are incorrect about what's going to happen with chemical weapons in Syria, anytime CIA makes a mistake, the president wears that mistake on his hands or her hands.

And the same thing happens whenever we have a success, we have a success that nobody else knows about. Well, that's a success that the president can't take credit for. So there's, there's no way to escape at least than just that one relationship alone. There's no way for them to escape me blood on their hands.

Just like you said what do questions specifically about intelligence? When you, as a former CIA person sees somebody like Edward Snowden, who has a whistleblower sharing things that, you know, nobody should ever know, or nobody, you know, wanted to know, like, what do you think of that?

,

Is that a bad thing?

Srini: Yeah. Is he a Patriot or is he a trader?

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, there's there's in our world. We don't believe in good and bad. We don't believe in right and wrong that doesn't really exist at the most elite levels of service, whether you're a tier one operator or whether you're a field operative with. Or if you're in, if you're a federal marshal enforcing the law, there is no right or wrong, good or bad that's that is an oversimplification that is appropriate for the average person, but not for an elite service person.

So when I see someone like Snowden, what I see is I understand his intentions and I understand his, his motives and they're all valid. The thing that is a struggle for me is how he chose to make this series of decisions that he made when he made to go public, when he decided to go public. And then he chose to go public with the guardian first, a UK organization.

And then when he kept pursuing escaping into hostile nations seeking sinking protection, these are all decisions that he had to make. And when I look at them, I can't support those decisions. Can I support the motive? Can I support the, the incentive and the intent behind what he did for sure, but he did it all the wrong way.

And, and what am I supposed to do? What can anybody. If you do the right thing, the wrong way, it's always going to be interpreted as the wrong thing. And no amount of people can come out and say, well, it was the right thing because there is no right thing. And there is no wrong thing. He just, he tried to be productive in a nonproductive way and the outcome had a little bit of productivity to it.

And we did change some laws. Courts did come in and say that that the Pfizer collection was, was illegal in certain places. That's a productive outcome, but there is a whole lot more unproductive outcome that came about as a result. Yeah.

Srini: So one other thing, when you see somebody like Trump I don't remember which event it was when he directly, you know, conflicts, what, you know, his intelligence community is telling them like as a CIA, former CIA person, what do you make of that?

Is it just like, holy shit, he's actually disagreeing with his own national security official.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, it's interesting. Trump did a fan of a fascinating thing with his relationship with CIA. So if you go back 15 or 20 years, there's been a strong undercurrent for a long time on the topic of intelligence reform.

Maybe you've heard that term before. It was very popular during the Clinton and bushy years. Intelligence reform is basically the idea of saying that maybe our intelligence infrastructure isn't very efficient. Maybe it isn't very reliable. Maybe it needs to be improved. And most people would look at nine 11 and the nine 11 commission that came out saying, Hey, here's documented evidence that says that our intelligence community is not effective and we need to improve it in these certain ways.

What Trump did is he kind of took that to the next level and he showed that if, if intelligence from the federal sector, Isn't in line with what the president wants to see or hear the president has the right to essentially pursue intelligence in the private sector instead. And that's what, that's what Trump did.

He hired private intelligence organizations. It was the rise of private intelligence where instead of listening to CIA, he would just go to third-party providers, commercial intelligence providers, and he would task them to do the thing that CIA would push back on. So he learned that he didn't have to follow the old guard and use the CIA the way his predecessors did.

He could just take the CIA's funding and use it instead because he was the executive to have private intelligence, do the research and do the operations for.

Srini: W let's talk specifically about the social skill development and the ability to read people, which I think is so fascinating. So are you the guy who basically could walk out into a bar and be like that girl will give you her phone number and that girl ignore you just from looking at

Andrew Bustamante: her?

No, it's not quite that simple. The the most important steps are reading. Somebody is actually developing a baseline of that person first and arguably serine. I don't have a true baseline of you because when we first were talking and we had the video on for a little bit, I saw that you were drinking coffee.

So really my baseline foundation of who you are is you caffeinated. I don't know who you are and caffeinated. So I don't even have a true baseline to direct my assessment from, but when real people with real skills are reading other people, the first thing they all try to do is develop a baseline of that person, a standard operating procedure, if you will, of how that person approaches their everyday.

You'd never be able to know what is involved in that baseline. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go with the girls at the bar, since that was the example you started with.

Srini: So for selfish

Andrew Bustamante: reasons, so you and ice serine, we go, you pick the city. Are we going to Denver? Are we going to Chicago? Where are we going to pick up these girls?

Let's

Srini: go to LA where most of them will ignore

Andrew Bustamante: you. So it's funny. I have a very different idea of what LA girls are like, but that's okay. Let's go to LA and we'll go to west Hollywood and we'll go into a bar in west Hollywood. You and I, and we'll find, you know, a dozen girls all dressed to the nines, all working very hard to look very cute and very attractive.

And two of them were sitting at the bar and they're both very interesting looking to you. So there's no way by looking at those two girls that I'd be able to tell you, well, Shreeny this one's going to going to let you talk to her. And the other one's gonna be rude and cold. I would never be able to do that by looking at them.

But what you and I do get to do is we do get to sit at a table in the back and watch those two girls for about 15 or 20 minutes from us. And now what we get to do is see how they interact with other people. How do they interact with the person sitting to their left or their right? How do they interact when people approach them?

How do they talk to the bartender? Are they predominantly smiling or are they predominantly in their phone? Are they predominantly on their phone talking or are they actually in, you know in an app scrolling through their feed, who knows what they might be? How do they sit? What's their posture look like what's their muscle tone look like, what are they eating?

What are they drinking? All of this starts to give us a baseline of that person in that moment. Are they there because they're waiting for a date? Are they there because they're looking for a date, are they there with a girlfriend? We don't know any of those. We don't know any of that information at first glance, but with a 15 or 20 minute assessment, we start to collect that information passively from a distance.

And that helps to inform how we will approach them. So most people underestimate the process of approaching and talking to a stranger. Because instinctively, we all think the same way. We think that we're the most important thing. We think that we are the center of our story. We think we're the star of our own personal movie.

So when we approach a person subject subconsciously we're thinking to ourselves, this person gets to be an extra in my movie while the person you're talking to is sitting there thinking the exact same thing. I'm the star of my own movie, who is this guy that's bumping into my movie trying to be an extra.

So once you change that mindset and you realize that they think they're the star of their own movie, then you approach from a point of view where you're thinking, what can I do that makes them feel better about themselves in their movie. And now that completely transforms the entire approach. If you can, if you spend 20 minutes and you watch them drink the same drink three times or two times, well, I guess three drinks in 20 minutes, it's quite a lot of drinking.

That's also, that's also pretty telling, but yeah, you get a chance to kind of, you get a chance to. To add value to the storyline, that's in their head and, and for all human beings, when you add value to the storyline, that's in their existing head, that is something that they trust. They want that. And they will accept that when you come in and you offer something contradictory to the story in their head, they reject it, they deny it and they fight.

Srini: Wow. So is this impossible for you to turn off? Like, do you walk into a restaurant or just any social situation and just subconsciously you kind of have a read on every single person, just based on the fact that this is the way you've been trained. It's not about every single person. It is impossible to turn off.

Andrew Bustamante: There's no, once you learn, it's like putting on prescription glasses, man. Once you put on prescription glasses and they bring the whole world into focus, you never want to take those off. You only take them off. If your eyes hurt or your nose hurts or your ears hurt. And even then you put yourself in a safe place.

Like your couch and then you take your glasses off and you sit back and you relax. Cause you know, you're safe. So it's a little bit like that. It's very hard to ever take them off because it's, it's so addictive to see the world clearly. But what I will say is when you, when we live our life, when when a covert operator lives their life, they don't notice every single person because we're trained to recognize that 99% of people are not relevant to our current operation.

We don't need to notice them. We have a process by which we scan and decide which people are threats in which people are, are non threats. And then once we make that scan, the non threats kind of fall off the radar and we focus exclusively on the threats. Sometimes that threat means a threat to our security.

Sometimes that threat means it's the target of our energy. Just like when you and I walked into that bar in west Hollywood, We, we did a quick scan. All of the boys, we're not going to talk to them. You're not here to hit on boys. And all of the girls that are sitting there with their boyfriend or their husband, we're not going to talk to them either.

So we did a scan and we neutralized like 95% of the people in the bar. And then we only had to focus our effort on the remaining 5%. Yeah. So

Srini: when you're on a one-on-one conversation, like the one you were in with your friend, you mentioned that you immediately could start to notice when he gets uncomfortable.

Does that make it easy for you to have a really sort of rich and, and deep interactions with people? Or does it make it challenging? Because you know, you can't turn the.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, it makes it really challenging to build and retain friends because part of it is because I'm ex CIA. So when you're ex CIA, almost everybody's willing to have a conversation with you, right?

It's kinda like what you were saying. When my publicist reached out to you, you were like the, or their ex CIA, of course I'll talk to them. So everybody wants to have a conversation with an ex CIA officer it's whether they want to lambaste you for how you are, the reason that the Vietnam war started or whether they want to ask you questions about war stories and ask you about how realistic Jack Bauer is.

Everybody has a topic they want to talk about. So it's easy for me to start conversations and have conversations with people, but multiple conversations over time that develop into a relationship like a friendship. That's much harder because over time, people start to doubt whether or not I'm being honest with them because they feel like they're, they feel inferior to my training.

So they always wonder if it's really a true friendship and I understand why they feel that way. And then the flip side is when I really start showing my vulnerability to my friends, just like we all do in any friendship. Sometimes my vulnerability is quite a bit darker and deeper than most people are accustomed to.

And some, some people see that darkness and they see that depth and they turn and run the other way. And then there's other friends who stick around and those are the ones that, you know, are the real.

Srini: So, how do you utilize these skills in your everyday life and in your business, and even how do people who are listening to this utilize and develop these skills or these skills that the average person can develop?

Or do you have to go to the farm to, to get this good at

Andrew Bustamante: this stuff? Well, that's why I started my business actually street name was because these are such life-changing skills. I didn't see why they were only being reserved for people who went through CIA training at the farm. So when I came out, I came out of the CIA in 2014, I didn't have a job lined up.

I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought it would be easy to get a job cause I could just tell everybody I'm an old, I'm an ex CIA officer. What I didn't anticipate was that CIA was going to forbid me from telling anybody that for about two years. Oh wow. So I come out with this terrible resume, cause it's all undercover.

It's all fake companies and fake backgrounds and nobody picks up the referral line. Right. So it was a very difficult few months trying to find that. And ultimately what I ended up doing was deciding that to, to get a job at all, the only way I was going to do that was by lying my way into a job by doing the one thing that I was really well-trained at doing.

So that's how it all started. So, so I, I, I operated myself into a job and then it was a, it was a program management job with a pharmaceutical benefits company. I knew nothing about it. I knew nothing about pharmacy. I knew nothing about customer service, but I did know that CIA had given me the skills I needed to learn fast and remember something forever.

So I just used those same skills. And before I knew it, I was doing very well in the corporate world. And one day the light bulb went off where I realized that the skills that I was using to succeed in corporate America was the same skills that I could teach a hundred people. And then those hundred people would have the same success that I had.

And that's how I knew I had a business. And that was when everyday spice. Okay.

Srini: You have to tell me how you lied your way into a job. What was the

Andrew Bustamante: interview like? So there was no interview that was kind of how it works. So what I did is I targeted and a senior executive in a company that I knew was local because I, one of the big things that you're looking for in developing an asset is time on target.

You want to be able to have multiple meetings with the target of interest. So I had to find somebody who was a decision maker in a local industry. So I found that person. And then I just, I befriended that person in a completely non-work-related situation for this person specifically, they played golf.

So I went and I just started frequenting all the same golf Hangouts and all the golf places where that person went. I never had to play golf with them because they just saw me around the clubhouse and they saw me in the same top golf practice range, whatever else. Right. So I basically. Some people would call it stalking.

I call it targeting literally. Yeah.

Srini: This literally what I was going to ask you is how did you find all this information? I was like, this sounds genius, but it sounds kind of like socking. Yeah. It is

Andrew Bustamante: stalking. Stalking is just a derogatory word for what professionals do when they target. Yeah, exactly.

Professionals target, creepy people's

,

stock. So inevitably what happens whenever you see somebody multiple times is subconsciously you develop a trust for that person because you're familiar with seeing them in that situation. So once I had seen him two or three times in that setting, then I went up and I introduced myself.

And then after that, you know, we just started having things in common. We liked the same drinks or I learned to like the drinks that he liked. We ate the same food. We talked about the same sports teams. And then inevitably it came up that he, you know, maybe five or seven meetings, like. He didn't know I was looking for a job.

He just thought I was a nice guy and I was not just talking to him. I was targeting four other people and I was just waiting for the first one to act on the targeting effort. And then one day he was just like, what do you do for a living man? Like my company could really use someone that's such a go getter and a, and a smart thinker like you.

And that's when I told him like, oh, I'm actually in the position of looking for a job right now. I just left service with the us government. He was like, oh, let me put you in contact with this hiring manager. Tell them that. I think that you'd be a perfect fit in this department. And if they have any questions, just tell him to call me.

Well, if you talk to a hiring manager and you tell them that the COO of the company connected you to them to talk about this job, there's really no real interview that happens. They just, they send you a letter, they offer you a salary and then you start the.

Srini: That's amazing. So do any of those people know now that your ex

Andrew Bustamante: yeah, I mean, everybody knows now and now it's I'm very publicly known as of about 2019, I think is when I came out really publicly.

But but yeah, two years on the job I was promoted basically every six months for the first two years, because what they didn't realize is I was struggling to learn everything, but what they did see was that I was always available. So they rewarded my constant availability, mistook it for, for competency in the workplace.

And and after two years when CA came back and sent me a letter saying that I could divulge my true background, that's when I went to the senior executive. And I was like, Hey, just so you know, You know, it's been a great, great two years working for you. My true background. Isn't what I told you. My true background is actually, I'm an ex CIA officer and he just looked at me and then he was like, let's go have a drink tonight.

Let's have a cigar. That's awesome. Please don't ever tell anybody else that story.

Srini: It's funny because like, if there's any young people listening to this who are struggling to find a job, you've just got your answer as to how to stop wasting your time on job boards.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. There's there is no bigger time suck. There's no more bigger disappointment out there. Then how those job boards and how your Indeeds of the world work.

And I was actually in a position where I was hiring people for this. And nobody hires from those, you know, these applications that come in from the ether, they, they don't meet the standard requirements of what the actual job is looking for. Even the jobs advertisements themselves are oftentimes incomplete or or inaccurate.

So they don't even seriously try to look for talents on those boards, which is why nobody gets responses.

Srini: Why did you leave? What was it just, you were kind of done and exhausted. And is there a shelf life kind of like an NBA basketball player where you're just like, all right, that's it. I don't have anything left.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. Well, I mean, there, unfortunately there is a very real shelf life to that kind of work. That shelf life is about 10 to 15 years. Inside those 15 years, you can almost guarantee that the Chinese or the Russians or the Cubans are going to find out who you are. And once one of them finds out who you are, they tell all of their, you know, all of their friends and family who you are.

And now you, you can't operate safely in most places of the world because you've got one of the three of those services. Huntington's. But more importantly, for me specifically, my wife and I were both at CIA and we were both doing very well in our career, but we also knew that we wanted a family. We didn't marry each other because it was convenient for CIA.

We got married because we loved each other and we wanted to grow a family. When we had our first child, we were actually on a, on a mission on up overseas when when we found out we were pregnant. And that was one of those moments for anybody. Who's a parents. As soon as you find out you're pregnant, that's basically when you are a parent, it's not when the baby comes out.

It's as soon as you realize that there's a baby on the way. And when we came back, it became very apparent to us in that first year, as we're struggling through breastfeeding and daycare and putting the kids, putting our son to sleep at night and waking him up in the morning and, you know, just going through the grind of life that we realized we were choosing our career instead of choosing our family.

And for us, that was not, that was never what we intended to do. And just because our career was with CIA, didn't change the fact that we wanted to be parents first. So that was ultimately what led us to leave. CIA was we wanted to dedicate ourselves to our family and not dedicate ourselves to the institution.

So

Srini: basically your kids are the few kids on the planet that can't bullshit their parents and get away with it because you'll be like, I know you're full of shit.

Andrew Bustamante: Well, our kids are extremely good at bullshitting. That's the problem. That's the bigger problem they've learned from some pretty good ones.

And now it's really hard to crack our nine-year-old. He lies to me sometimes Srini, like all nine-year-olds lie. I swear to you. I look at him and I. I don't know if you're telling the truth. How did you do this? I learned from the best, just through observing the superpower of children. Well, I

Srini: can only imagine, like, you know what it's going to be like, if you have a daughter, like for the guy who dates her, it's like, oh, you're going to know so much about him right off the bat.

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. We have a daughter and I'm, I'm less worried about us then I'm worried about him for her because of her, because our daughter, our daughter is an absolute Spitfire. She's only five years old and she's already an absolute tornado that nobody can seem to tame. So I'm, I'm looking forward to meeting the brave soul who tries to tame that tornado at some point or for the one who just decides to just run into it and see what.

Srini: It sounds like my little sister who we took her to NASA at, I think we lived in Houston. This was when NASA was like this huge deal. That was kind of the most prestigious job. This is like pre Silicon valley. And you know, they used to do tours of NASA. And so we took some friends, there was a guy talking about the atomic clock and he tells everybody in the tour that the atomic clock only goes wrong once every a hundred years.

And my sister was like, not having any of it. And here's the four year old, like questioning a NASA engineer. She was like, how do you know? And then he looks at her, he's like, somebody told me and she says, do you believe everything? Other people

Andrew Bustamante: that is an awesome little girl.

Srini: Yeah. At that point we all knew. It's like, yeah, my sister is the smartest person in the room. If you're in a room with her.

Andrew Bustamante: So

Srini: one final question about all of this, how does this affect your relationship with speaking of family, with the rest of your family? Like your parents, siblings, whoever might be in your life?

Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, it's been, you know, I wouldn't have been picked for CIA. If I had really strong relationships with my family, that would have been a problem right away.

I would have never said yes. So, so fortunately going as far back, as you know, when I was a kid, my relationship with my family has always been kind of a marginal, right? It's been on the, out on the outskirts. I'm not a super close person with my mom. My dad died my sisters or half sisters, you know, that's that, I'm just one of those people who doesn't come from a very tight knit family.

So, and that's also a big part of why I chose personally to create such a tight knit family for myself. So to, to answer your question, going to CIA was a little bit for me, like finding my real family. Those were the people who understood me. Those were the people who didn't judge. Those were the people who I knew would, would faithfully die on my left or my right, just like I would faithfully put my life on the line for them.

So for me, it was a little bit like coming home. And then when I left CIA, it felt like leaving home. That was the hardest decision of my life was leaving that agency behind. But I had perfect confidence and I still have perfect confidence that the family that's here with me in my house, my home that's, that is where I truly belong.

Srini: How's the experience differ for women that versus men who

Andrew Bustamante: are field operatives, you know, it's interesting. The, the technical work doesn't differ that much. There's there is no sex. BNIs is a real thing, but sex espionage, the professional version of how we use gender in espionage is not what they make it out to be in the movies.

Nobody's expected to have sex with their asset or have sex with their source. That's totally unrealistic stuff, but you see it in movies. What you really see more realistically in the field is that very professional manipulative officers, whether they're male or female can essentially get a male or female asset to move in whatever direction they want them to move the place where I think it's it's really impactful where the difference is significant is when it comes to the social pressures that are on men and women in our society.

And how different those social pressers interact with you when you're a career intelligence officer, because at least for me, and for many of the men that I remember working with the, when you are a field officer, you feel very proud of yourself. You feel like you've achieved something great, but there's always something bigger and better that you can do next.

Whereas many of the women that I've worked with, oftentimes they feel like how could there be anything better than working at CIA? So that's the one place where it's a little bit different and they're always. Appreciated and honored in their clandestine circles for what they've achieved. So to step away from that, they kind of have to start all over again in a world that is already kind of unfair and biased against women being success stories in the workplace.

Yeah.

Srini: Well, I have two final questions for you. Have there been any times when you were in fear of, of losing your.

Andrew Bustamante: Andrew. I'm sorry. Is there any, I lost you. I lost you there. When you said you had two more questions. Go ahead. Have there been any times when you were, you know, feeling in dangerous, so in danger that you thought you might die?

So I've been fortunate that my intelligence and my intelligence support network kept me away from those scenarios.

So I had, what's known as a threat warning multiple times, so I knew not to go into a threatening situation that would put my life at risk. So I've never been actively in a position where I was afraid that I would die. I have been in positions where the, the clear and present danger took a significant spike.

And I knew that I was going to be in a hostile situation, but I always had an escape path or some sort of exfil route that would prevent me from feeling at risk of that. So to answer your question in one word, no, I have not. Thankfully because the professionalism of the intelligence service worked like it was supposed to work.

Oh, wow. This has been really amazing. I feel like I could literally sit there and talk to you for three hours. Cause I probably still have a hug, a hundred other questions

for

Srini: you. But you know, in the interest of time, I want to finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews, the unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or

Andrew Bustamante: something unmistakable? That's a great question. It's a, it's a great way to end your show too. I feel like it's the lasting impact of whatever that thing or that person who created the thing leaves in their path. It's their legacy. That's what makes something unmistakable.

Because when you've been touched by something you never mistakenly forget or mistakenly award credit to something else, you always know what that thing is that. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us, to share your wisdom, insights, and subject yourself to my crazy questions.

Srini: Where can people find out more about you, your work, everything that you're up to and what can they do to start developing the skills that you've talked about?

Andrew Bustamante: Well, let me start with the third answer first. So if you want to start developing the skills that I'm talking about, that's the passion and the drive behind everyday spy.

So I would invite everyone listening to go to everyday spy.com forward slash quiz, Q U I Z a. And what I have there waiting for you is a quiz, very similar to the quiz that we're given when we first signed up for CIA and it's designed to identify your spy superpower. So Srini for you for everybody out there, go to everyday spy.com forward slash quiz.

Take the superpower quiz, find out what you are already naturally good at what's your already existing spice superpower. And then that's the perfect place to start your learning process with everyday. If you are a podcast fan, like you must be for listening to this one, then you can also find me on my iTunes, top 100 podcast, everyday espionage podcast.

The everyday espionage podcast is, is my is where everything started for me. And it's got mixed the heart and soul of everyday spy, but if you've visited the quiz and if you're listening on the everyday espionage podcast, then that's the best place to find me and reach out to me anytime.

Srini: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.

Andrew Bustamante: Cass powers, the world's best podcasts. Here's the show that we recommend. Hey, I'm Tom merit and I'm Sara Lane. And we love talking about tech. Now you might wonder why isn't tech news, all antitrust cases and stealing data these days. No. Well, I mean, we do help you understand all of that without the hype, you might get from a lot of other sources, but there's so much more like Taiwan rolling out a digital currency, autonomous shipping being threatened by cyber pirates and NFT is being for more than just fleecing people out of their money.

Like concert tickets or booking vacations. Did you know about this? Well, you would know them well, if you listen to daily tech news show, I'll be the most well-informed person on tech in the room. So wherever you listen to your podcasts, follow daily tech news show, he cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

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