YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew Bustamante

lines on the record: 255
first: 2022-08-08
most recent: 2022-08-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's the CIA. By far, because budget-wise, capability-wise, weapon system-wise, modern technology-wise, CIA is the leader around the world, which is why every other intelligence organization out there wants to partner with CIA. They want to learn from CIA. They want to train with CIA. They want to partner on counter-narcotics and counter drug and counterterrorism and counter-year, you name it. People want to partner with CIA. So CIA is the most powerful in terms of capability and wealth. And then you've got the idea, you've got tech.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly right. People in China. So when it comes to REACH, China wins that game. When it comes to professional capability, it's”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct with their culture. You know what a Chinese person who lives in Syria thinks of himself as? A Chinese person. Do you know what a Chinese person, a Chinese national living in the United States thinks of himself as a Chinese person, right? Americans living abroad often think of ourselves as expats, expatriates living on the local economy, embracing the local culture. That is not how Chinese people view traveling around the world.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so to answer your question, your original question, which is the most powerful, I'm going to have to give you a few different answers. So the most powerful intelligence organization in the world in terms of reach is the Chinese MSS, the Ministry of State Security, because they have created a single solitary intelligence service that has global reach and is integrated with Chinese culture so that essentially every Chinese person anywhere in the world is an informant to the MSS because that's their way of serving the Middle Kingdom, Zhongguo, the central kingdom, the Chinese word for China. So they're the strongest. The most powerful intelligence service in terms of reach, most assets, most informants, most intelligence.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And we always will. We always will because that is what people do. And that is just the truth of it. And it breaks my heart to see travesties that people commit against people. But whether you're looking at a micro level, like what happens with shootings here in the United States, or whether you look at a macro level, like geopolitical power exchanges and intra and interstate conflicts like what you see in Syria and what you see in Ukraine, those are disgusting, terrible things. War is a terrible thing. That is a famous quote. But people will persevere. People will come through.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chinese people in the rural parts of China are some of the kindest, most amazing people you'll ever meet. And Korean art and Korean dance, Korean drumming. You know, nobody has ever even heard of Korean drumming. Korean drumming is this magical, beautiful thing. And the North in North Korea does it better than anybody in the world. Taekwondo in North Korea is just exceptional to watch. In North Korea. Nobody knows these things”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People are beautiful, and that's what you're talking about. People are just People are beautiful creatures. Culture and art and science. These are beautiful, beautiful things that come about because of human beings. And the thing that gives me hope is that No matter what conflict the world has seen, and we've seen some devastating, horrible crimes against humanity already. We saw nuclear bombs go off in Japan, we saw genocide happen in Rwanda, we've seen horrible things happen. But people persevere. Language, culture, arts, science, they all persevere. They all shine through. Some of the most, people don't even realize how gorgeous the architecture and the culture is inside Iran. People have no idea.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Practically speaking, in the lens of national security through military readiness, through future economic benefits, those are super strong. The geopolitical fight is essentially moot because Ukraine is not a geopolitical player. It was not for 70 years and after this conflict is over, it will not again. Just think about what you were just saying with the American people's attention span to Twitter and whatever's currently going on. If the Ukraine conflict resolved itself today in either in any direction, how many weeks do you think before no one talked about Ukraine anymore? Do you think we would make it two weeks or do you think we'd make it maybe seven days? It would be headline news for one or two days. And then we'd be on to something else. It's just an unfortunate reality of how the world works in a capitalist democracy.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sending these military, we get to test military systems in combat in Ukraine. That's priceless in the world of the military industrial complex. Being able to field test, combat test, a weapon without having to sacrifice your own people is incredibly valuable. You get all the data, you get all the performance metrics, but you don't have to put yourself at risk. That is one of the major benefits of what we're seeing from supporting Ukraine with weapons and with troops. The long-term benefit to what will come of this for the United States.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're right in the sense of the fact that it's, I wouldn't say that the red team and the blue team picked opposite sides on this. What I would say is that media discovered that talking about Ukraine wasn't as profitable as talking about something else. People simply, the American people who read media or who watch media, they simply became bored reading about news that didn't seem to be changing much. And we turned back into wanting to read about our own economy and we wanted to hear more about cryptocurrency and we wanted to hear more about the Kardashians. And that's what we care about. So that's what media writes about. That's how a capitalist market driven world works. And that's how the United States works. That's why in both red papers and blue papers, red sources and blue sources, you don't see Ukraine being mentioned very much. If anything, I would say that your Republicans are probably more in support of what's happening in Ukraine right now because we're creating new weapons systems, our military is getting stronger.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But again, empirically, this is I look at things through a very empirical lens, a very cold fact-based lens. And there are multiple data points that suggest that the American people ideologically sympathize with Ukraine, but they really just want their gas prices to go down. They really just want to be able to pay less money at the grocery store for their food. And they most definitely don't want their sons and daughters to die in exchange for Ukrainian freedom.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So going to that exact example, then I would highlight that our current administration has the lowest approval ratings of any president in history. So if people were very fond of the war going on in Ukraine, wouldn't that counterbalance some of our upset, some of the dissent coming from the economy and some of the dissent coming from the Great Recession and or the second great or the great resignation and whatever's happening with the down stock market, you would think that people would feel like they're sacrificing for something if they really believed that Ukraine mattered, that they would stand next to the president who is so staunchly driving and leading the West against this conflict.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, to think that it could be a shining example of freedom is accurate, but is it as shining a star as Germany? Is it as shining a star as the UK? Is it as shining a star as Romania? Is it as shiny a star as France? It's got a lot of democratic freedom-based countries in Europe to compete against to be the shining stellar example. And in exchange, counterpoint to that, it has an extreme amount of strategic value to Russia, which has no interest in making it a shining star of the example of democracy and freedom.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody even thought about Ukraine, and the people who did know about Ukraine knew that it was an extremely corrupt former Soviet state, with 20% of its national population self-identifying as Russian. There's a reason Putin went into Ukraine. There's a reason he's been promising he would go into Ukraine for the better part of a decade because the circumstances were aligned. It was a corrupt country that self-identified as Russian in many ways. It was supposed to be an easier of multiple marks in terms of the former Soviet satellite states to go after. That's all part of the miscalculation that the rest of the world saw too when we thought it would fall quickly.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think they've already gotten an advantage in the war. The fact the war is still going on demonstrates the asymmetrical advantage. The fact that Russia has stepped up to the negotiating table with them several times without just turning to Chechen, I mean, you remember what happened in Chechnya without turning to Chechnya levels, just mass blind destruction, which was another Putin war To see that those things have happened demonstrates the asymmetric advantage that the West has given. I think the true way to look at the benefit of Ukraine as a shining example of freedom in Europe for the West isn't to understand whether or not they could. They absolutely could. It's the question of how valuable is that in Europe? How valuable is Ukraine, which before February?”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That a negotiated peace really just means a negotiated ceasefire. We've seen this happen all over the world. North Korea and South Korea are technically still just in negotiated cease power. What you end up having is Russia will allow Ukraine to call itself Ukraine to operate independently, to have their own debt to the United States. Russia doesn't want to take on that debt. And then in exchange for that, they will have firmer guidelines as to how NATO can engage with Ukraine. And then that becomes an example for all the other former Soviet satellite states, which are all required economically by Russia, not required economically by the West. And then you end up seeing how it just, you can see how the whole thing plays out once you realize that the keystone is Ukraine.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the high likelihood. That's the most probable outcome. The most probable outcome is that Ukraine remains, in air quotes, a sovereign nation. It's not going to be truly sovereign because it will become it will have to have new government put in place. Zelensky will, it's extremely unlikely he will be president because he has gone too far to demonstrate his power over the people and his ability to separate the Ukrainian people from the autocratic power of Russia. So he would have to be unceded, whether he goes into exile or whether he is peacefully left alone is all going to be part of negotiations. But the thing to keep in mind also...”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just look in the last four years, the last three years. Do you remember what happened in Hong Kong right before COVID? China swooped into Hong Kong violently. Protesters, killing them in the street, imprisoning people without just cause. And Hong Kong was a democracy. And the whole world stood by and let it happen. And then what happened in Afghanistan just a year ago? And the whole world stood by and let the Taliban take power again after twenty years of loss. This we are showing a repeatable Point of view, we will talk American politicians, American administrations. We will say a lot of things. We will promise a lot of ideological pro democracy rah statements. We will say it. But when it comes down to putting our own people, our own economy, our own GDP at risk. Step away from that fight”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the whole siding with Ukraine is exclusively ideological and it's putting them in a place where they fight a war with Russia so the whole world can see Russia's capabilities. Ukraine is as sad as it is to say, man. Ukraine is a pawn on a table for superpowers to calculate each other's capacities. Right now we've only talked about Russia and United States. We haven't even talked about Iran. We haven't even talked about China, right? It is a pawn on a table. This is a chicken fight so that people get to watch and see what the other trainers are doing.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outside of their sphere of influence. They cannot. The United States doesn't really have any economic vested interest in Ukraine. Ideological points of view and promises aside, there's no economic benefit. And the same thing goes for NATO. NATO has no economic investment in Ukraine. Ukrainian output, Ukrainian food goes to the Middle East and Africa. It doesn't go to Europe.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cannot lose. He will not let himself lose short of something completely unexpected, right? I'm talking 60%, 70% probability Ukraine loses. But there's still 20%, 30% probability of the unimaginable happening. Who knows what that might be? An oligarch assassinates Putin or a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere. Or who knows what, right? There's still a chance that something unexpected will happen and change the tide of the war. But when it comes down to the core calculus here, Ukraine is the agricultural bed to support a future Russia. Russia knows they know they have to have Ukraine. They know that they have to have it to protect themselves against military pressure from the West. They have to have it for agricultural reasons. They have major oil and natural gas pipelines that flow through eastern Ukraine. They cannot let Ukraine fall.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fact is there is no material support coming from the outside. The American Revolution was one because of French involvement. French ships, French troops, French generals, French military might. The independence of communist China was won through Russian support, Russian generals, Russian troops on the ground fighting with the communists. That's how revolutions are won. That's how independent countries are born. Ukraine doesn't get any of that. No one is stepping into that because we live in a world right now where there simply is no economic benefit to the parties in power to support Ukraine to that level. And war is a game of economics. The economic benefit of Ukraine is crystal clear in favor of Russia, which is why Putin...”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a difficult situation because I'm trying to make sure that you and all everybody listening understands that what's happening in Ukraine among Ukrainians is noble and brave and courageous and beyond the expectations of anyone.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For supplying them with the training and the weapons and the food and the med kits and everything else that we're giving them because none of it's free. It's all coming due. We're a democracy, but we're also a capitalist country. We can't afford to just give things away for free, but we can give things away at a discount. We can give things away lay away. But the bill will come due. And unfortunately, that is not part of the conversation that's being had with the American people.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They've been paying that debt since the end of World War II. So what we're doing is we're indebting Ukraine against the promise that perhaps they will secure their freedom, which nobody seems to want to talk about what freedom is actually going to look like for Ukrainians, right? What are the true handful of outcomes, the realistic outcomes that could come of this? Which of those outcomes really looks like freedom to them, especially in the face of the fact that they're going to be trillions of dollars in debt to the West?”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The strategy of the United States has taken to support Ukraine is similar to the strategy we took to support Great Britain during World War II. The enactment of the Lent Lease Act is a perfect example of that. The Lent Lease Act means that we are lending or leasing equipment to the Ukrainian government in exchange for future payment. So every time a rocket is launched, every time a drone crashes into a tank, that's a bill that Ukraine is just racking up. It's like when you go to a restaurant and you start drinking shots, sometime the bill will come due. This is exactly what we did when Europe and when Great Britain was in the face of Nazi invasion, we signed the same thing into motion. Do you know that the UK did not pay off the debt from World War II until 2020?”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, people don't understand where freedom of speech is. That's the first major problem. And it's shameful how many people in the United States do not understand what freedom of speech actually protects. So that aside, you're absolutely right. Fighting the information war in the West is extremely difficult because anyone with a blog, anyone with a Twitter account, anyone, I mean, anyone can call themselves a journalist essentially. We live in a world, we live in a country where people read the headline and they completely bypass the author line and they go straight into the content and then they decide whether the content's real or not based on how they feel instead of based on empirical measurable evidence.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They can go to court there. But that's the information still gets released. And that's enough to make Ukrainians believe that the United States is going to help them or that the West is going to help them. It's enough to make Russians think that they're going to lose. And maybe they should just give up now and leave in the battlefield now. We have to understand. We are in the middle of a giant information war.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know why people seem to think that the information that they're reading in English is any more or less true. Every piece of news coming out of the West, every piece of information coming out in the English language is also a giant narrative being shared intentionally to try to undermine the morale and the faithfulness of English-speaking Russians, which somebody somewhere knows exactly how many of those there are. So we have to recognize that we're not getting true information from other side because there is a strategic value in making sure that there is just the right amount of mis or disinformation out there. Not because someone's trying to lie to Americans, but because someone is trying to influence the way English-speaking Russians think. And in that world, that's exactly why you see so many news articles cited to anonymous sources. Government officials who do not want to be named, there's nothing that links back responsibility there, right? There's nothing.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Narrative that you see these ground troops in Ukraine, these Russian ground troops in Ukraine believing they're clearing the land of Nazis, that information is being fed to them from their own home country.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back, this just calculatable empirical evidence. If Putin loses in Ukraine, the losses, the influential losses, the economic losses, the lives lost, the power lost is too great. So it is better for him to push and push and push through war crimes, through everything else. War crimes are something defined by the international court system. The international court system has Russia as part of its board. And the international court system is largely powerless when it comes to enforcing its own outcomes. So the real risk gain scenario here for Russia is significantly in favor of gain over risk. The other thing that I think is important to talk about is we, everybody is trapped in the middle of a gigantic information war. Yes, there's battlefield, bullets, and cannons and tanks, but there's also a massive informational war. The same...”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Autocracies don't need to win hearts and minds. That's a staunchly democratic point of view. Hearts and minds mean very little to people who understand core basic needs and true power. You don't see Xi Jinping worrying about hearts and minds in China. You don't see it in North Korea. You don't see it in Congo. You don't see it in most of the world. Hearts and minds are a luxury. In reality, what people need is food, water, power. They need income to be able to secure a lifestyle. It is absolutely sad. I am not in any way shape or form saying that my assessment on this is enriches or enlightening or hopeful. It's just...”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they can't afford to just do bombing raids because they're going to destroy cultural, significant architecture that's just too important to the Russian culture. And that's going to demoralize their own Russian people.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not going to use artillery and Odessa because Odessa is too important to Russian culture. It's going to be even uglier than that. It's going to be clearing of streets, clearing of buildings, person by person, troop by troop. It'll be a lot like what it was in Mario.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People all over NATO. Ukraine, everybody knows Ukraine's at risk. Everybody knows Ukrainians are dying. The game of war isn't played majorly by the people who are fighting. The game of war is played by everyone else. It's an economic game. It's not a military game”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of this year. Before winter hits Europe, NATO wants, Germany needs to be able to have sanctions lifted so they can tap into Russian power. There's no way they can have those sanctions lifted unless Russia wins. And Russia also knows that all of Europe, all of NATO is the true people feeling the pain of the war outside of Ukraine are the NATO countries because they're so heavily reliant on Russia. They have supported American sanctions against Russia, their people feel the pain. Economically, their people feel the pain. What are they going to do in the winter? Because without Russian gas, their people are going to freeze to death.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, what you need is control of natural resources, which they're taking in the east, and you need access to the heartbeat, the blood flow of food and money into the country, which they're taking in the South. The fact that Ukraine had to go to the negotiation table with Russia and Turkey in order to get exports out of the Black Sea approved again demonstrates just how much Ukraine is losing. The aggressor had a seat at the negotiation table to allow Ukraine the ability to even export one of its top exports. If Russia would have said no, then they would not have had that. Russia has, that's like someone holding your throat. It's like somebody holding your jugular vein and saying if you don't do what I tell you to do, then I'm not going to let you breathe. I'm not going to let blood flow to your brain.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if somebody believed Ukraine would win, if somebody believed Ukraine had a chance, they would have gotten more material support than just debt. And we can jump into that anytime you want to. But the whole world miscalculated. Everybody thought Russia was going to win in 14 days. I said that they would win in 14 days because that was the predominant calculation. Once the first invasion didn't work, then the military does what professional militaries do, man. They reevaluate, they reorganize leaders, and then they take a new approach. You saw three approaches. The first two did not work. The first two campaigns against Ukraine did not work the way they were supposed to work. The third has worked exactly like it's supposed to work. You don't need Kiev to win Ukraine. You don't need hearts and minds to win Ukraine. What you need”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he just carried out the same campaign. But this time, something was different. That was a miscalculation for sure on the part of Putin. And the reason that there was no support from the West, because let's not forget, there is no support. There is nothing other than the Lend-Lease Act. Which is putting Ukraine in massive debt right now to the West. That's the only form of support they're getting from NATO or the United States.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For military dominance. Now, did Zelensky and did the Ukrainians shock the world? Absolutely. But in that, they also shocked American intelligence, which, like you said, miscalculated. The whole world miscalculated how the Ukrainians would respond. Putin did not move in there accidentally. He had an assessment. He had high likelihood of a certain outcome, and that outcome did not happen. Why did he have that calculation? Because in 2014, it worked. He invaded, he took Crimea in 14 days. He basically created an infiltration campaign that turned key leaders over in the first few days of the conflict. So essentially, there was no conflict. It worked in 2008 when he took Georgia. Nobody talks about that. He invaded Georgia the exact same way, and it worked. So in 2008, it worked. In 2014, it worked. There was no reason to believe it wasn't going to work again.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you're laying out isn't incorrect. And the miscalculations are not unexpected. Anybody who's been to a military college, including the Army War College in Pennsylvania where so many of our military leaders are brought up, when you look at the conflict in Ukraine, it fits the exact mold of what an effective long-term military conflict, protracted military conflict,”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can possibly yield true real results. And yet somehow there are real results happening. So it's either excessive waste and an accidental win or there really is a system and a process there that's functioning.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's rare that I'll talk about just thinking. I prefer to share my assessment why I assess things a certain way rather than just what's my random opinion. In my assessment, Vladimir Putin is winning. Russia is winning. They're winning in Ukraine, but they're also winning the battle of influence against the West. They're winning in the face of economic sanctions. They're winning. Empirically, when you look at the math, they're winning. So when you ask me whether or not Putin is getting good information from his intelligence services, when I look at my overall assessment of multiple data points, he must be getting good information. Do I know how or why? I do not. I don't know how or why it works there. I don't know how such deep cronyism, such deep corruption.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then, what do disinterested customers do? They go find someone else to create their product. And that's exactly what Donald Trump did. And he did it through the private intelligence world, funding private intelligence companies to run their own operations that brought him the information he cared about when CIA wouldn't. It also didn't help that CIA stepped outside of their confines, right? CIA is supposed to collect foreign intelligence and not comment on domestic matters. They went way outside of that when they started challenging the president, when they started questioning the results, when they started publicly claiming Russian influence. That's all something the FBI could have handled by itself, the Justice Department could have handled by itself. CIA had no place to contribute to that conversation. And when they did, all they did was undermine the relationship they had with their primary customer.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me start with the good first because there's a lot of people who don't think there was any good. So, the good thing is we saw that the president, who's the chief customer, the executive to the CIA, when the president doesn't want to hear what CIA has to say, he's not going to listen. I think that's an important lesson for everyone to take home. If the president doesn't care what you have to say, he's going to take funding away or she will take funding away. They're going to take attention away. They're going to shut down your operations, your missions. They're going to kill the careers of the people working there. Think about that. For the four years that President Trump was the president, basically everybody at CIA, their career was put on pause. Some people's careers were ended. Some people voluntarily left their career there because they found themselves working for a single customer that didn't want what they had to produce.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The United States, according to our current Constitution. They're very limited in terms of what they have to prioritize. And then if you look at a four-year cycle, two years of that is essentially preparing for the next election cycle. So that's only two years of really quality attention you get from the president. Who's the chief executive of all the intelligence community? So the most important thing to them is not always the most important thing to the long-term survival of the United States.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when you talk about the president wanting to prioritize what the president cares about, that immediately shows a break between what actually matters to the long-term success of the United States versus what benefits the short-term success of the current president.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“U.S. economy, a growing Chinese economy, and it's just we have questions, hard questions we need to ask ourselves about how we're going to handle the future.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not necessarily perfectly because there are other steps, right? They have to be in front of Congress and they have to have the support of multiple legislatures or legislators, but the challenge is that the shortlist of people who even get the opportunity aren't a meritorious list. It's a short list based off of who the president is picking or who the would-be president is picking. Now, I think we've proven that an intelligence organization can be an intelligence organization can be extremely effective even within the flawed system. The challenge is how much more effective could we be if we improved? And that's, I think that's the challenge that faces a lot of the U.S. government. I think that's a challenge that has resulted in what we see today when it comes to the decline of American power and American influence, the rise of foreign influence, the authoritarian powers, and a shrinking”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Massive flaw in the system. It is a massive flaw in the system. Because if you're essentially appointing a director to do what you want them to do, then you're assigning a crony. And that's what we define corruption as within the United States. And inside the United States, we say if you pick somebody outside of merit for any other reason other than merit, then it's cronyism or it's nepotism. Here, that's exactly what our structure is built on. All presidential appointees are appointed on something other than merit.”
2022-08-08 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #310 – Andrew Bustamante: CIA Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source