"Secrets Are Required for Society" - Why Ex-CIA Officers Fear a 100% Truth Machine

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:00)
Is there anything out there that a truth serum, that people tell the truth no matter what, is there anything out there that the CIA used? Or you trust?

**Andrew Bustamante** (0:09)
That's what MK Ultra was originally designed to do.
MK Ultra's original objective was to create a truth serum, an undeniable, empirically consistent truth serum. That's what it started as. The reason it got into psychedelics was because it believed that psychedelics could be a path to that truth serum, and then it just kind of went off the reservation from there. But MK Ultra, for what we know, didn't succeed, or didn't succeed well enough to continue experimentation.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:37)
You mean to tell me there's nothing right now that the CIA has that you can sit down and talk to somebody and 100% of the truth is going to come out? That does not exist today.

**Andrew Bustamante** (0:46)
If it exists today, it's new in the last 10 years.

**Sarah Adams** (0:49)
Yeah, think about it this way.
Everybody grew up somewhere different in the world, okay? So I grew up an American in a small town. There was no danger in my town, no crime.
You know, you're Iranian, okay? Now my parents made me feel guilty if I did anything wrong, right? Now maybe you weren't taught that way. So all the lie detectors we have are based now on how an American thinks and feels and acts. So it's not even usually good to use against a foreigner because a foreigner isn't feeling those guilty things or not getting nervous the same way we do about lying because they can grow up with their parents like, don't lie, don't lie, don't lie. And so it's so based on an American.

**Andrew Bustamante** (1:33)
That childhood bias.

**Sarah Adams** (1:35)
And I honestly don't think it really works well on foreigners. I don't think it works well if you don't feel guilty about lying. I don't think it works well if you don't have that initial instinct because it's watching for you to have a change in how you feel when you lie. But if you don't actually care about lying, it's not going to show the change.

**Andrew Bustamante** (1:56)
Then you have different categories of lies. So 100% truth is a very clear sounding idea until you think about how many shades of lies there are. There's lies of omission, which is just not saying what you know.
Then there's lies of misdirection, whereas you say something factual intending to misdirect the other person. You got white lies, small lies that don't really mean anything to you. And then you've got bold-faced lies, the big full acts of complete fabrication.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:24)
So let me ask this, because you know right now, nowadays, one day we don't have Chad GBT, next day we're like, wait, what? Write me a book, as if I'm Dante, or as if I'm this. Write me a book as if I'm whoever.
Give me a hip-hop song in the voice of Tupac, but words that the President Trump would use. Gives it to you, right? So what do you think would happen if all of a sudden announcement is made, new technology out, 100% detects if a person's lying or not, 100% proven, not 99.2, not 98.3, 100%. And you can actually buy this for $300. How much would the world change? What would happen overnight?
A lot of divorces. Well, honestly though.

**Andrew Bustamante** (3:15)
Lots of grounded kids.

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:16)
But honestly, what do you think would happen? What do you think would happen?

**Andrew Bustamante** (3:20)
Valuet Hysteria, man.

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:21)
Pandemonium.

**Andrew Bustamante** (3:22)
We all survive in large part based on a survival instinct that tells us that our secrets are safe. Our secrets are safe. We can at least not share them and keep them safe. And that is something that's like caveman in your cave in the dark. No one's going to eat me kind of security. It's the only security we really still believe we have. So if a device like that came out, that would 100% guarantee if you were lying.
That means nothing's safe. Your whole cave comes collapsing.

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:54)
Do you think it would make the world a better place or worse?

**Andrew Bustamante** (3:56)
I think a lot of people would fight that technology in a violent way.

**Patrick Bet-David** (4:01)
I cannot believe we're like, don't put up that technology. It's not good for society. Where do you stand with it?

**Sarah Adams** (4:09)
No, think about it. Come on, people with kids, your kid will go up and tell a lady, you're fat, right? Everyone's had kids who've said the things they shouldn't say.