Transcription
I think that we have a solid 60/40 right now. I think there's a 60% chance that we don't like where the transition ends and then we spend 15 to 25 years fixing it again. Fixing our economy, fixing our superpower status, fixing our foreign relations, fixing our fixing our trust of our own government.
I think there's a 40% chance that the decisive action Donald Trump is taking right now is adopted widescale and we actually stimulate our economy, get people back on the same page and move forward in a way that keeps us one step ahead of our of the threats that we see from China, the disaster that we see continuing to unfold in the Middle East, the precipice that we have come up against in terms of geopolitics. There's a chance that we come out of that, but I think the dominant chance is that we don't.
And I would say that that's not just my opinion. That's the opinion of economists of economists. That's the opinion of foreign uh foreign relation experts. There are multiple people out there who are all saying that our budgetary decisions, our foreign policy decisions, our military infrastructure decisions, our economic decisions are risky. Risky means there's a chance they'll work, but it's a low probability chance, not a high probability chance.
In such a scenario, then the economy would would be hurt and then there'd be more wars presumably because if we're if the society becomes more individualistic and focused on themsel and nationalistic, then they become more of an island. People get more paranoid. They start building, I know Trump said he's building like the he's calling it the Golden Dome over the United States so that he can fire any rockets out of the air if anyone attacks. And then you kind of have to unravel that and try and go the other way potentially. Is that kind of what you're saying?
I try to do as much reading as I can. I'm sure you're the same way. And uh one of my gifts to myself is when I read fiction and I'm reading a book called the the left hand of darkness by a sci-fi legend named Ursula Din. And it's a book from the 70s. And I'm reading this book and in it she has this quote where she talks about nationalism inside the the world of the science fiction planet that she's on, right? And the quote is something like nationalism is not a product of pride. It's a product of fear. People aren't nationalistic because they're proud of what they have. They're nationalistic because they're afraid that something might take away what they have. And anytime you are driven by fear, you don't have the chance for true happiness.
And what I found in that that passage from this sci-fi book was really very insightful to what I see happening across the United States. We're all nationalistic, left and right, gay and straight. Whether you whether you are old or young, we're all nationalistic. We all love our country. But the things that's driving so much of our nationalism is this fear of the other side. Not a fear of the collapse of our society, not the fear of some rising power across the ocean, but for some reason we're more afraid of our neighbor than we are afraid of the real threats that are out there. Because at the end of the day there, California and Mississippi have much more in common than the United States and China. But for whatever reason, we get so distracted and so confused with our own infighting, that we don't realize that infighting is exactly what all of our adversaries from Russia to North Korea to Cuba to even even uh you know, Bulgaria, which is a NATO country that's pro-Russia, our infighting just helps them.
And what's the potential worst case scenario of that infighting? Because people think, okay, it just means people are going to pop off each other on on X and Twitter and social media and they're going to scream at each other and then gridlock is the biggest challenge. I I don't believe that we're going to be going into any kind of civil war in the United States. We're not going to shoot each other. We're not going to go machete our neighbors. Not now. But gridlock is going to lead to economic collapse. Economic collapse is going to lead to very real individuals having very real problems which is going to lead to an increase in criminal activity. People will steal from each other. People steal from from stores. People will you know lie and hurt each other to try to take care of their own. And as that society starts to collapse and we become more and more tribal again all very predictable all all case studies that we've seen all over the world. As we become more and more tribal, then we will become fed upon by our adversaries who don't have the same problem.
When you said gridlock is the the first sort of domino that falls there. What is gridlock? I see gridlock is policy gridlock. We don't know how to move forward with Israel. We don't know how to move forward with the budget. We don't know how to move forward with whether or not we ratify these election results. Right? And in the p in the time that we don't know how to move forward, it creates an opportunity for somebody else to bypass the democratic process and just dictate the outcome. And that series of dictations makes it so that the outcome is less collaborative, less well thought out, less welldefined, less palatable for more people. And then that distrust kind of continues on.
We do live in a moment now where the distrust for government is higher than it's been in a long time. We see the we see the largest decline in American currency that we've seen in decades and in century in a in the better part of a century. We see a lack of public trust. We see consistent presidential approval ratings below 50 for every president that comes through. We we are in a place where the people just don't trust their own government. And I would say that that's not such a big deal except that we are the wealthiest country in the world. We are the largest military in the world. We are the largest producer of financial tools and the largest producer of weapons. We are a big [ __ ] deal to not have our [ __ ] together.
CIA believes that all people are born with a spy secret superpower. For some people that means they can win deals. For others they can spot liars. Some can even seduce lovers. I built a free threeinut test to help reveal to you exactly what your secret hidden superpower is. All you have to do is click on the link in the description below, take the test, and start using your spy superpower to stay ahead of 99% of people.
Welcome to the United States. Shadow Cell, an insiders account of America's new spy wall by Andrew Bustamante and Jihei Bustamante. It is a fascinating book because usually the public doesn't get to read books like this and for the reasons you said because they're so highly scrutinized and then ultimately decided to be confidential by the CIA, but this one managed to get through. So, I highly recommend everybody reads it. We've touched on some of the surface level elements of this, but if you want the details of what happened, then this is a book good book to read. But it also just gives you a window into a world that most of us live in ignorance to cuz we don't we don't realize these things happen.
It's actually from doing this podcast that I that things that I thought were conspiracy theories became not conspiracy theories, you know. Yes. Cuz before I started this podcast and started to speak to people like you and other guests that I've had, I thought that well, I was watching podcasts and thinking, "No, that's [ __ ] No, that's [ __ ] That doesn't happen. There's these like spies. That that's not going to happen. There's no way that like one country spies on another. There's no way that like, you know, people go undercover into countries and get secrets and do all these crazy things." I thought that was movies, but actually that happens and all countries are doing it to each other. And I imagine even the United States is doing it to some of their allies. Like I imagine the United States probably has spies in the UK, for example. The the United States doesn't claim to spy on the Five Eyes countries, and the Five Eyes have all claimed not to spy on each other. Um, but that's just a claim.
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for both of you to answer individually is how did a mistake you made shift the trajectory of your life in a way you could not have predicted?
I would say that the mistake I made that shifted the tra that truly shifted the trajectory of my life was staying with my ex-boyfriend for so long. Um because I we'd been together a year and I knew it then the relationship was already troubled and I was applying to the Peace Corps right out of college. But I also knew that if I joined the Peace Corps and I went overseas, the relationship wouldn't survive. And for some reason, I chose the relationship over PeaceCore. And because I chose the relationship over the Peace Corps, I ended up going to grad school. so I could stay with him. And then because I went to grad school and the relationship drained me of all of my money, I ended up applying to the CIA. And if I hadn't been in that relationship, I never would have joined the CIA ever. I never would have met Andy. I wouldn't have the kids I have right now. I wouldn't have the life I have right now. So, arguably a mistake to stay in a bad relationship for seven years, but I wouldn't be where I am today without that.
It's hard for me to answer the question because I I keep finding myself coming to the same conclusion that Ji came to that all of the mistakes that I think about making all led to a sequence of events that brings me to where I am now. So I'll actually give a more recent example that is changing the course of my life right now. In 202 I hired the first executive into my company, the first kind of equal executive to me as a CEO. And I hired that person because they came well recommended. I hired that person because they had a a long track record of success. I hired that person because they seemed to understand a lot of things about business that I didn't understand and it was time for for me to scale and it was an important thing to for me as a CEO to lead the charge by hiring the right people and then in the following 16 months that person lost the company individually a half a million dollars and then put us into debt almost another $215,000. So, a giant $730-ish,000 mistake in one 16-month period of time. And throughout that whole time, I I saw the mistakes. I saw the errors. And I kept convincing myself not to take action. I kept thinking, "This is just what scaling must look like. This person must know what they're doing." Like, you have to spend money to make money. Uh we have to we have to prepare for the future. Like, I kept rationalizing every step. Oh, this was just a misunderstanding. Oh, this was just a this was something that will pay off 6 months from now. And then, you know, that 16 months kind of ended in March of this year. And I'm staring at a healthy company that has zero dollars in it checking account that's carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And I realized I can't let somebody else try to do this cuz nobody cares as much as I do. I'm the owner. I'm the CEO. The company was built because of my passion for the lessons and my passion for the people that we serve. We are co-owners of the company together. Gi believes in me and she trusts me and I can't violate that trust by continuing to think that somebody else can do it better. So I remove that person from their position. I radically change the company and within 3 months we are back into a profitable statement. We are months away from being able to pay off all the debt that we had gathered. We'll never get back the money that we lost and all the failed investments, but we are on a trajectory to go in a completely different direction because I took hold of my company and made it my company again. Instead of thinking that I wasn't qualified or wasn't capable or wasn't good enough to be the CEO that built the company, why wouldn't I be good enough to be the CEO that grows the company?
I think a lot of um young founders can relate to that. I hear that story so often. I hear that story all the time. I've heard it for many many years of the founder that starts a business and then basically gets like gaslighted by oh this person's an executive. They've done it for 26 years so they must know what they're doing. I'll give them a massive salary. I'll give them control. And then they make a set of decisions which because you you know you've not walked that path before you're unable to have high conviction as to whether those decisions are good. But because they are so expensive and their decisions are so expensive you kind of have to go with it. And then eventually you realize at some point that just because someone has worked in some interesting places or had some previous interesting job titles doesn't equip them for this challenge. And especially when it's a small this is actually the paradox of it as well like the mentality of success in like big scale businesses is not the mentality of success in like a high growth startup you know where you're like penny pinching. Yeah.
Thank you so much. I super enjoyable hearing the story. It was actually much more captivating reading your book than I assumed it would be. Um, and I think that's because of the level of detail you go into in the book, which you just wouldn't have come across before. So, I really recommend everybody goes and read it. And thank you again for coming back here and it's wonderful to meet you, Ji, cuz I've heard about you before, but putting a face to the name is is always useful. So, thank you so much for being here and continue doing what you're doing because you're opening our eyes to a world that we would otherwise not be able to see.