CIA Spy: "Leave The USA Before 2030!", "Why You Shouldn't Trust Your Gut!", "I Held The Nuclear Codes Around My Neck" - Andrew Bustamante

Andrew Bustamante (0:00)

For seven years, I was working undercover as a spy, and I needed to know how to manipulate, how to live and operate without ever being detected, and how to collect secrets.

Steven Bartlett (0:10)

Okay, I've got so many questions.

SPEAKER_3 (0:12)

Andrew Bustamante, he's a former CIA officer, who uses spy skills, to teach anyone how to master their mind, talents, and potential in business and everyday life.

Andrew Bustamante (0:22)

When I left CIA, I realized that I could use CIA skills to succeed in business. One of the first things you should want to learn is, how do I know if I'm being lied to? As an example, bad liars, that is one of the biggest tells of an unskilled liar. Next, people have four basic core motivations, reward, ideology, coercion, and ego. If you can speak to somebody through the lens of their ideology, you can get them to do incredible things.

Steven Bartlett (0:46)

Perception versus perspective, what's that?

Andrew Bustamante (0:48)

Ninety percent of the people out there, they're all trapped in their own perception, in thinking emotionally, and emotions are very likely wrong. So CIA trains us to recognize and distrust our perception. And there's two really quick things that you can do. Next, SADRAT. It's an acronym. And all of our marketing, all of our human interactions falls into the same SADRAT process that I learned at CIA, because the human condition is so predictable. So SADRAT stands for SADRAT. And it's the reason my company has grown 300% every year for the last three years.

Steven Bartlett (1:22)

I want to know more. Was there any situations where you felt your life is at risk? What do you think about what's going on at the moment with geopolitics? Do you think we're already engaged in a form of world war three? And then why are you going to try and leave America in 2027? Andrew, you're well known for your time in the CIA because people are so intrigued and compelled by it. How long were you in the CIA?

Andrew Bustamante (1:53)

I was actually in the CIA for a comparatively short period. I was only in for seven years. Many people make a 30 or more year career out of CIA. So it was really quite a small blip in terms of my overall life. I wore the US military uniform for seven years before that as well. So 14 years total spent in service to the United States.

Steven Bartlett (2:12)

And what is the CIA?

Andrew Bustamante (2:14)

So the CIA is the United States' intelligence, foreign intelligence collection platform, their primary agency deemed with collecting foreign secrets that have any kind of impact in American national security. So if you think about it, there are multiple what's called intelligence agencies in what's known as the intelligence community or the IC. CIA is just one of those 36-ish community members in the IC. However, it is the one charged with centralizing all of the intelligence collected, hence the Central Intelligence Agency. So it's the hub in a large wheel of intelligence collection.

Steven Bartlett (2:54)

Is that what a spy is? Is it the same thing as being a spy?

Andrew Bustamante (2:57)

So I'm going to, I'll geek out with you a little bit here because terminology is really very important. So there are spies and spy is a vernacular that's used in common conversation that doesn't really have a definition in terms of the intelligence or espionage profession. You have handlers, you have assets in terms of traditional espionage. Handlers are officers who collect intelligence. Assets are foreigners who provide intelligence to the handler. So a CIA officer or an MI6 officer, a Mossad officer, an MSS officer, depending on the country, these are officers who collect secrets. They are there for handlers. And then all the people who provide them secrets are considered assets. Traditionally speaking, when you talk about a spy, some people think a spy is an asset or a handler, either someone who provides information or someone who collects information.

Steven Bartlett (3:52)

Okay.

Andrew Bustamante (3:53)

And the term spy is just confusing enough that oftentimes people will project their own opinions on top of that word because they don't understand the real nuance of espionage.

Steven Bartlett (4:05)

So I thought of a spy as someone that goes to another country and collects information secretly and then sends it back to the country they came from.

Andrew Bustamante (4:14)

So technically that is an intelligence operative or an intelligence officer, also known as an operator or in media an operative. Sometimes it's also called an agent, right? An intelligence agent. These are all kind of terms that get nebulous. But what you're describing is a intelligence, a trained intelligence officer, no matter what country you're in, whether you're in, it doesn't matter what intelligence profession you're in either. And there are multiple types of intelligence. There's human intelligence, signals intelligence, measurements intelligence. Anybody who travels to collect secrets on behalf of their country is an intelligence officer.