A Former CIA Spy Just Warned: What’s Coming Next Will Get Ugly

0:00 So from your perspective,

0:01 you have a unique vantage point as a former CIA operative.

0:06 When you look out at the world right now, what are you seeing through your eyes?

0:12 It's not a happy story.

0:14 It's not a good place to start.

0:16 It's the reason I'm not invited to parties really, man.

0:19 Because it's we have a lot of pain ahead of us still.

0:24 Mhm.

0:24 And I hope that the pain will drive a change that makes everything better.

0:30 But that's not what history proves more often than not.

0:34 So what I'm talking about is we're under fiscal pain.

0:37 We're under social pain.

0:39 We're under um international pain.

0:43 There's there's competition everywhere.

0:46 And you see not just in the United States

0:48 but in the whole world that strength is being met with strength.

0:53 And there's just more and more fight everywhere.

0:57 And that doesn't deescalate conflict.

0:59 That only exacerbates conflict.

1:01 And the people who really feel conflict are not the decision makers.

1:05 It's the people at the bottom of the totem pole.

1:09 So when you're looking at the possible risk vectors of this increasing conflict,

1:14 like what do you what are you seeing?

1:15 you know, what is what is some of this, you know,

1:18 and we'll all take a deep breath here with you

1:20 and but I think it's important to have eyes open to what might be ahead of us.

1:28 So, I think there's a few different vectors that we should look at.

1:31 Um, the first vector I would look at is really our daily lives

1:35 and what what does the world have to do with impact to our daily lives?

1:40 And when you're an American particularly and you're

1:42 looking at the daily life of an American,

1:44 it's really just about keeping your family safe, keeping yourself safe.

1:48 And part of that safety is finance, keeping money in your pocket,

1:53 money in the bank, keeping a roof over your head, right?

1:56 Even at that basic level, everything is threatened.

2:00 And it's threatened because one of the things

2:02 that's really becoming apparent to us in the last 18 months is that the face

2:09 of what threatens American security is changing.

2:13 It's been changing since the 1980s.

2:16 But when you look at the killing of Charlie Kirk,

2:18 you look at the assassination attempt on Donald Trump,

2:21 you look at the killing of Brian Thompson,

2:23 United Healthcare CEO, in November of 2024,

2:26 you see a very chilling consistency with what FBI

2:30 investigators are reporting in their annual uh crime criminal reports.

2:36 You're seeing that the majority of fatality lethal killings are coming

2:42 from men under the age of 30 who are intelligent and unemployed.

2:50 That's the new face of danger, right?

2:52 Men under the age of 30 who are very intelligent and who are unemployed.

2:57 Pair that up with what we're seeing economically with increasing unemployment

3:02 and with this continual uh kind of press towards political uh division.

3:11 You're seeing that that is going

3:12 to continue to encourage what are very intelligent

3:16 people to reach the wrong conclusion that violence is going to be a solution.

3:21 And that's what's dangerous about intelligent people.

3:23 really intelligent people live in their own heads and they

3:26 create these echo chambers in their own minds about

3:29 what is actually happening because they've been ostracized or they

3:33 feel like outsiders among the more average intelligence people.

3:38 It's why high high success people are very smart.

3:42 It's also why very unsuccessful people are oftenimes very smart.

3:46 They live in this echo chamber that's not real.

3:49 It seems like there's been pressure to capitalize leverage on the fermentation

3:57 of this kind of division and of this labeling and of this dehumanization.

4:02 I mean, this is classic propaganda for any war.

4:06 You start calling the enemy names, dehumanizing them.

4:10 They're cockroaches.

4:11 They're rats.

4:12 They're whatever else it is.

4:13 And or Nazis, fascists, whatever, whatever you want to do.

4:18 Now of course that means something similar to one of these dehumanized terms.

4:24 You start using these terms and then actually people

4:29 coming from a patriotic impulse will say oh well I have to do something right.

4:35 So it looks it seems like this game that's been played

4:39 which was designed for shortterm finite you know game success which

4:45 is maybe we win the next election cycle because we disparage

4:49 and and radicalize the other side and and both sides do this.

4:53 Nobody is innocent from this kind of radicalization.

4:57 This is ultimately leading to a situation like we have now.

5:02 Right.

5:03 You're exactly right.

5:04 and and the way that you describe is exactly on point.

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5:59 Um there's this this whirlpool effect that is being amplified.

6:06 It starts at a political level because one

6:09 side is is dehumanizing the other side, creating labels,

6:13 creating titles that then get repeated by the people

6:17 who are farthest leaning in whatever political direction that is,

6:21 the far left, the far right.

6:22 That's not the problem.

6:23 The problem is when that makes it into the home.

6:26 The problem is when that makes it onto

6:28 social media and everybody has access to social media.

6:31 So now this this show because politics is a show.

6:35 The show that's happening at the top becomes amplified and magnified

6:39 in the home in the school and at the level of students.

6:43 And then now you've got these students who are 10,

6:46 12 years old, public school, private school, doesn't matter.

6:49 But they're living in an environment

6:51 where the students far outnumber the adults.

6:54 So where are they getting their ideas from?

6:56 They're getting their ideas from other students and as those students mature,

7:00 they're maturing among a peer group that's being just

7:03 as radicalized as the parents of those peer groups.

7:07 And you can just start to see that's why

7:08 we have what we call red states and blue states.

7:11 We don't have red states and blue states.

7:12 We just have states and the states are comprised of people

7:15 and the people may have their political opinion one way or the other.

7:18 But what's fascinating is the loudest voices are the farthest extremes.

7:22 And you have this silent majority in the middle

7:25 that understands they're not as crazy as the two extremes,

7:29 but they also understand they can't really speak up.

7:31 They're afraid to say what they think because what if they're ostracized?

7:36 What if they're marginalized?

7:37 What if they lose their job?

7:38 I just saw a report today that uh that there's

7:41 a new bill in Congress that makes it so that you could

7:44 have your passport taken away from you if you're deemed to be

7:49 a supporter of a organization or group that is deemed anti-American.

7:53 Primarily if you're if you're uh supporting terrorist

7:56 groups or affiliated with any kind of terrorist support,

7:59 that's a loose label, right?

8:01 Terrorism by definition is a loose label.

8:04 And then anti-American is a loose label.

8:06 So, who's going to determine whether or not you're falling under that rubric?

8:10 Well, that's particularly frightening because depending

8:12 on who's in power at that current time,

8:15 the other side, they've been saying that the other side is anti-American

8:21 all the time.

8:21 So, whoever's in power, that's going to switch back and forth

8:24 and there's just going to be the persecution

8:26 of political rivals and their support groups unless

8:30 we recognize that this game is ultimately self-defeating.

8:34 that if we continue to play this game of win-lose metrics and zero sum politics,

8:39 we're gonna erode our entire country,

8:42 the foundation that we spent so much time building,

8:45 the foundation that made the wealthiest, freest.

8:49 And when we talk about when we talk about things reaching into the home,

8:54 I'm not just talking about politics.

8:56 And I don't want people to oversimplify

8:57 it into thinking that I'm talking about politics.

9:00 As the changing face of threat has happened from the 80s

9:04 when we were all afraid of of gang violence

9:07 and what we could see were like hoodlums wearing you

9:11 know muscle shirts wearing some sort of uh gang affiliated memorabilia.

9:16 That's what we were afraid of in the 80s.

9:18 And then in the '90s we were afraid of domestic terrorists.

9:20 And then in the early 2000s we were afraid of foreign terrorists.

9:24 Right?

9:24 If they if they had brown skin and a long beard

9:26 and a and a a turban we were afraid of them.

9:29 Well, now what we're seeing is empirically the most

9:33 dangerous people might actually look like your neighbor.

9:36 They might be the 22year-old quiet, shy,

9:40 high achieving student that lives right next door

9:42 or even in the bedroom next to your bedroom.

9:47 When the federal government changes their policy to meet the rising threat,

9:53 they crack down on gang violence in the 1980s.

9:56 They started to create platforms that would track your phone,

10:00 track your your mail.

10:01 They started to become very invasive when it was domestic terrorism in the 90s.

10:05 When it became international terrorism, that's when the Patriot Act came

10:08 and they started scrubbing metadata from everybody.

10:10 So the government reaches deeper and deeper into our daily lives,

10:14 into our privacy, into our businesses, into our families, into our living rooms

10:19 to try to prevent against the rising threat.

10:21 Well, if the rising threat becomes middle American guys,

10:27 what does that mean for the changing policy that's going to meet that threat?

10:30 It seems like uh you know, they're going to use this cause

10:33 to reach even deeper into the surveillance state.

10:38 Yes.

10:37 Where Big Brother is going to become not a reality TV show.

10:42 It's going to become reality.

10:44 Right.

10:44 And what's fascinating about that is we're not the first surveillance state.

10:48 And when you look at the case studies of economic

10:52 success and security for the surveillance states that do exist,

10:56 they're very good news stories.

10:58 They're good case studies.

10:59 When you look at UAE and you look at Saudi Arabia and you look at China,

11:02 you're seeing countries that are on the economic rise

11:05 that has paralleled their increased surveillance activity of their own people.

11:10 So if the United States wants to see an economic comeback,

11:14 the case studies are showing that there's a case for increased surveillance.

11:19 So these are examples of, you know, economic thriving,

11:24 but then there's also, you know, socially oppressed.

11:28 Exactly.

11:28 There's a fundamental violation of what makes America the land

11:34 of the free and the home of the brave is

11:36 that we actually have a certain sense of privacy where

11:40 we're allowed to conduct our own lives without somebody overseeing it.

11:44 Especially when there's rules in place where you can claim somebody

11:49 as an enemy of America depending on whether you're blue or red.

11:54 That's going to change according to that.

11:56 I mean, we're setting ourselves up for a really challenging situation.

12:00 in particular.

12:01 I mean, one difference that I would say without even having, you know,

12:04 admittedly having very little knowledge of geopolitics

12:08 and the international implementation of these surveillance states,

12:12 it seems like there's a stronger nationalistic kind

12:17 of impulse like there those those countries are less divided,

12:22 but we're deeply deeply divided.

12:26 So you implement a surveillance state with power that's going through extremes

12:31 extreme division and then you get a real real problem

12:35 and it may not lead to these positive case studies.

12:38 it may lead to actually complete erosion.

12:41 And that's that is why I started this conversation

12:45 by saying it's going to be a difficult road ahead because

12:48 the questions that we all have to ask ourselves is

12:52 how much are we willing to deviate from the American ideal?

12:57 Are we willing to support or accept politicians who are willing to support

13:03 and vote for increased surveillance activity

13:06 in the best interest of protecting the average citizen?

13:11 Or are we going to resist that movement for security and accept the consequences

13:18 of what might be increased violence until we can figure our way through it?

13:22 It's one of those catch 22s where both options

13:27 from where we sit today, both options don't look good.

13:29 And unfortunately, the easiest way to fix where we're going would

13:34 be to have changed our decisions from the past.

13:37 Totally.

13:37 But we can't do that.

13:38 So, we have to deal with what we have today.

13:41 Let me just give you an example of another

13:43 case study that leads to my um consternation.

13:48 Right?

13:49 France.

13:50 Even as you and I sit here today, France,

13:53 the streets of Paris are on fire because the French prime minister

13:58 called an emergency meeting of of Parliament on the 8th of September.

14:04 And at that emergency meeting, the prime minister told the parliament

14:08 that the fiscal outlook for France is bad.

14:11 They're 114% in debt over their GDP.

14:16 So they owe 14% more every year than they actually produce as GDP.

14:22 And the prime minister was talking to parliament and said

14:24 the responsible thing for us to do is to cut our budget

14:28 just like any citizen would do and get ourselves back

14:31 into a place where our debt and our income are more tenable.

14:35 The parliament rejected his vote, rejected his idea to change the budget.

14:40 And then they had a second immediate vote where the parliament voted no

14:44 confidence in the prime minister and kicked the prime minister out of his seat.

14:48 He is the third prime minister to have been booted in the last year in France

14:53 alone when the president of France then

14:57 appointed a new prime minister 4 days later.

14:59 That new prime minister didn't ask parliament anything.

15:03 He just decided we will cut the budget.

15:05 we will cut it 50.

15:06 I think it was $50 billion.

15:08 And then protests immediately rose and people decided

15:13 that the the best way to fight the decision that came

15:16 from their parliament and their new prime minister is

15:18 to actually destroy businesses and burn cars in the streets.

15:22 France is one of the largest economies in Europe.

15:25 Germany and France are the top two largest economies in Europe.

15:28 One of the oldest countries and the oldest democracies that are out there.

15:32 In many ways, the United States takes

15:34 its direction off of where Europe is going.

15:36 That's why you see Europe kind of leading the way to renewable energies

15:40 and Europe leading the way to privacy

15:41 and Europe leading the way to anti- monopoly.

15:44 The United States kind of follows that path

15:47 even though we go back and forth between, you know, left and right politics.

15:51 Well, if France if France's people are making these actions

15:55 and making these decisions because they are 114% behind,

16:00 what's the United States going to do?

16:02 We are 119% in debt over what we actually generate in GDP.

16:08 So, we're in a worse financial situation,

16:11 but we're not having those questions about

16:12 whether or not we should cut our budget.

16:15 Yeah, there's a there's a great long-term vision and courage that it

16:20 takes to have make these right fiscal decisions as the Fed.

16:24 You have to be willing to say, "All right,

16:26 we're going to suffer now so that we can prosper later." But we seem to be

16:31 in this constant perpetual failing of that classic

16:35 marshmallow test where they give a child, you know, a marshmallow and they say,

16:40 "If you eat this marshmallow, you can have the marshmallow.

16:42 if you wait 5 minutes, I'll give you more marshmallows.

16:46 And everybody in politics,

16:48 in our government is like, "Let's eat the marshmallow.

16:50 Let's win the next election." It's it's kind of wild that we're

16:55 that we're in this because we're not having a long-term vision,

16:58 a shared vision of our own country.

17:00 I mean, that's what we really need.

17:02 We need to come together with a shared vision and have people speaking truth

17:07 to us so that we can rally behind it and say like, "These will be tough times.

17:11 we need to come together and actually change the course that we've taken.

17:18 And we're seeing a lot of I'm seeing at least a lot of doubling down.

17:23 But I'm also seeing a lot of transformation as well.

17:26 I'm seeing a lot of people go, whoa, wait a minute.

17:30 You know, we've gone too far.

17:31 I think the Charlie Kirk assassination was a real wakeup call for that.

17:37 I mean, I think some some people, many people are saying like,

17:42 "Wow, we've taken this too far, you know,

17:44 like we've gone way too far in this." And whether you

17:47 agree with his premises or you agree with his political stance,

17:51 the radicalization that was underneath the person who pulled the trigger.

17:57 Now, of course, there's some questions about that as well,

18:00 and I'd love to get your kind of expert opinion about

18:04 that shot that was taken and and you know, I mean, obviously,

18:07 this is just wild speculation, of course, at that point,

18:09 but undeniably there's been this fmentation of radicalization,

18:15 dehumanization that people are,

18:18 some people at least are waking up to and waking up to the energies behind that.

18:22 the people who are celebrating the slaying of a man

18:27 in front of his children and his wife in front of the world.

18:31 Absolutely.

18:32 And and you know to your point about

18:36 the the the awakening and people identifying the energies behind it.

18:42 In December of 2004, on December,

18:45 I think it was December 4th, 2004, you had Brian Thompson,

18:48 the United Healthcare CEO,

18:50 who was killed in cold blood in Manhattan by Luigi Manion.

18:54 Now, we have Charlie Kirk, another civilian about the same age,

19:00 who strangely also has two children just like Brian Thompson,

19:05 who was also happily married just like Brian Thompson, who's killed in Utah.

19:11 Both are acts by similar killers.

19:15 Both are acts that are politically most likely politically motivated

19:18 in some way because they wanted some some kind of policy change,

19:21 some kind of political change, right?

19:24 But the reactions from Americans are totally different.

19:28 after Luigi Manion killed Brian Thompson,

19:30 you actually saw a resurgence of support for Manion's actions

19:36 that killing the healthc care CEO was somehow valid or warranted.

19:41 And people started talk and there's still support for Man.

19:44 There's a nonprofit that's collecting money for his defense

19:48 because they believe that he brought some people

19:50 believe that he brought proper overview oversight to what

19:54 was an abuse by the health care system.

19:57 the energy, the the time that went between

19:59 that event and this event with Charlie Kirk,

20:01 I think really did transform more and more Americans

20:04 perspectives to say killing a person is not okay.

20:08 Killing somebody that you disagree with because of what

20:10 they say or what they stand for is not okay.

20:12 Brian Thompson was a CEO.

20:15 He was appointed to that position by other people.

20:17 He was not an influencer.

20:19 He was not known by anybody else.

20:21 And and arguably what Manion was looking

20:23 for that day wasn't even Brian Thompson.

20:25 He was looking for any investor, any leader,

20:28 anybody related to the top of United Healthcare, right?

20:31 Whereas we know for a fact that when Tyler Robinson went to that Utah event,

20:35 he was looking for Charlie Kirk.

20:37 He was looking for that target.

20:40 Sure.

20:39 So, there's differences and similarities that I

20:41 think absolutely back up your idea that there's a almost like a a ground

20:46 swell of self-reflection and we're all saying, "Is this what we want to be?

20:53 Is this what we want to be as a people,

20:56 as a country, as as as individuals that create the total population?

21:02 If you like that video,

21:04 you're going to love the next one and I'll see you there.

21:06 First thing is awareness.

21:07 Yeah, you have to be aware that you're in a shed.

21:09 That you're in a shed.

21:10 And you have to be aware that you're choosing to be in the shed, right?

21:16 You can always