#12 Uncensored | The Mafia, CIA & Hidden American Underworld with John Kiriakou

They don't get promoted for not pursuing charges against you. This is how they get ahead in life. If I'm this guy outside Syracuse and I'm cool with doing wet work, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. What does it mean for a man to butter his wife's horse? And if that man works at the CIA, does that limit his career options? What's it like to have dinner with a mob boss? What's it like in the year 2025? Can you have dinner with Tucker Carlson and an Italian mob boss in the same week? Answers to questions like this and much more are coming up in the conversation. If you like hearing from John Keryaku as much as I do, this is a fun one. Welcome to the Austin and Matt podcast. I did Tucker Carlson yesterday. It'll come out in the next couple days. Yeah, he's he's been a great friend to me. I was on his show like a dozen times when he was on Fox and then I haven't been on the podcast yet. So, it was it was great seeing him. But, um, but we sat there for two and a half hours recording and the night before we had dinner, he he invited me over to his house for dinner and three and a half hours we sat there and talked. There's a lot to There's a lot to say. No way. Oh, we should get that one recorded. especially between you two. Yeah, he's uh you know, it's funny. When I first went on Fox, um he he made a comment like to the effect that you and I probably disagree on 95% of the issues, but blah blah blah. And then he said last night, you know what? He said, I don't know if you've changed or if I've changed, but we agree on pretty darn close to 100% of things. And I said, we do actually. It's kind of crazy. I cool. My guess is that he's changed, right? It seems like he's moved a little bit more towards the fringe. He's been on his own journey. It see I think like we've all gotten a vis a public watch of him just moving along his own journey. And I It's been really fun to see. He's far more libertarian, I think, than he used to be. Yeah. Far more libertarian. Yep. Yeah. And it's funny that sometimes puts him Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that that libertarianism puts him very close sometimes to people like you know Glenn Greenwald or or me or you know any number of other people who would consider themselves to be leftists but it's not about right versus left. It's about civil light civil rights and civil liberties. That's right. Is is there anyone that interviews you like on a regular basis that you really don't see eye to eye with and it's kind of it kind of grinds a little bit but it's you know it's worth doing the interview. Yeah. No. And and that's a great question. I'll I'll tell you why. It's because it's because I've come to the realization that the ideological spectrum is not a straight line from left to right. It's a circle. And at a certain point, the left and the right meet. And I've become so anti duopoly that I'm happy to agree. I don't care if if people identify as conservatives or as Republicans or as liberals or Democrats or whatever. There are issues that we agree on and I embrace those issues. I don't care what people's personal politics. I love that. I think I think it's about it's like not getting caught in the forest from the trees and always remembering that we're all Americans and we want to we want the best. No, no, we don't have a lot. We don't hate people. We don't hate. Like the point is not to hate and to be divisive. The point is to seek common ground and just go, "Hey, we all want the same thing, right? We're just getting there maybe in different ways, but at the end of the day, we both agree that this is what we want." And as long as we're doing that instead of assuming the other side is evil and my side is right and and moral is moral high ground, I think that it you can find this commonalities. It shouldn't it doesn't feel like it should be that much of a challenge. You're absolutely right. We we talked, for example, he asked me kind of an odd question toward the end of the the conversation. He asked me um what examples I could give him of governmental actions that I'm opposed to outside of the um the intelligence community. Like, you know, I I consider myself to be a critic of the CIA, a critic of NSA, a critic of whatever. And I said, "Well, you know, off the top of my head, look at the Bureau of Land Management. Most Americans have never even heard of the Bureau of Land Management, and it wres havoc on farmers uh in in the West. And I end up I end up finding myself in support of of for example the Bundy family, which many Americans view as being so far to the right as to be like off the charts. But by God, they were right about the Bureau of Land Management. I talked to him about this this case that I followed in Hawaii where u there was a woman who's a GS12, you know, mid-level nobody from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Noah. Because she's a GS12, she's living in and living in Honolulu, you you can't make ends meet. So, she and a business partner bought a boat together and they would take tourists out on the boat on weekends to go whale watching. So, one weekend they're out there and they come upon an orca feeding on a seal carcass. And so, everybody runs to the side of the boat. They're taking pictures and video of the of the killer whale eating the seal. And somebody whistles at the whale, you know, to try to get it to stay near the surface. I don't know, for whatever reason. Not that like I don't Do orcas have ears? I suppose they must, but who knows? So, um, some kind. Yeah. Yeah. So, a couple of weeks later, there's a pounding on her apartment door and it's the FBI. Do you own this boat? She said, "Yes." "You take tourists out on the boat?" "Yes." "Did you see the whale?" "Yes." "Did you whistle at the whale?" She said, "No." "Somebody did, but no, I didn't whistle at the whale." "Do you know who did?" She said, "No, but I take videos of every outing and I sell the videos to the DVDs to the tourists." The FBI takes all the the DVDs. They come back another couple of weeks later. They raid the place. They take her computer. They take her phone. They take her laptop. They take everything and they charge her with one felony count of interfering in the feeding of a wild animal, which is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. This is a felony. She fights this thing for five years. She loses her job at the Commerce Department. Uh, she loses her pension, she loses her business and her boat, she loses her condo, she has to move in with her parents in San Francisco, and finally they reduce the charge to a misdemeanor. She pays a fine and she's finally done. Now, is is American society better? Is American society safer because the FBI went after this woman for maybe or maybe not whistling at a whale? Seriously, how did they even know that she did it? How did that even begin? Yeah. Did somebody somebody ratting her out? Yeah, somebody ratt her out. What? And I said to Tucker, I said, you know, one of the sad things is the FBI, individual FBI agents don't get promoted by not arresting you. They don't get promoted for not pursuing charges against you. This is how they get ahead in life. And so, sure, we should expect that the FBI is going to break down your door and take all your stuff because you whistled at the whale. Yeah, that's right. We have to watch incentive structures because it surprise surprise, humans act in their own incentive structures. And so, you know, I think that's always been a question, you know, do policemen have quotas for handing out speeding tickets? Because if there was a quota, they would give out more. And they're like, no, that's illegal. We don't do it. But somehow, you know, but if there are these incentive structures, then it shouldn't be surprising when someone's just doing their job and they might get a promotion. They don't it's it's irrelevant to them as to what's actually happening, but if they can get a promotion, they'll do it. Well, it's funny that you bring that up, too, because just this weekend, there was a piece in the Washington Post saying that uh police in Honolulu have been caught uh charging people with DUI even though they're stone cold sober just to make their quotas. And now there's a class action suit against the Honolulu PD. Yep. Just ruining lives. Outrageous. Ruin ruining lives. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's how you create a place you don't want to live, which is really unfortunate. Could say that again. Can can I ask you a a very tangential question? Is there a precedent, and this is going back to the CIA for for employees having intimate relationships with animals? Because I've heard that's one of the screening questions, and I wanted to know more about that. Have you seen not real? No. Have you seen my previous podcast? Because I actually have a story about that. Um, is that right? No, no, they they they don't ask you a question like that. But I think what you may be referring to is Well, I'll start at the beginning. I worked with a guy overseas, fantastic guy, great case officer, dear friend, and he had been a CIA polygrapher for 20 years before transferring into operations. and he was a natural operator. So I asked him one time, we were just the embassy where we were working had a like a shack in the in the parking lot that had a bar in it and we would all go after work and just drink beers in in the embassy bar. So I said to him, 20 years as a polygrapher, you must have some crazy stories. And he said that in those 20 years, he had people hooked up to the polygraph machine admit to literally every crime I could imagine, including murder. Wow. Yeah. And there's a panic button, you know, under the table where, you know, you press it and and you know, one guy said in his polygraph, "I murdered this guy outside Syracuse and and I want you to know that I'm cool with doing wet work and I that's why I want to join the CIA." and he's like hitting the panic button so that the cops can come in and take this guy away. But anyway, he said to me one time he was doing a routine repoly. You you do a polygraph prehire after three years and then every five years for the rest of your career. Okay? Okay. So, this is just a routine 5-year repoly for a CIA groundskeeper cuz even the guys who mow the the grass and all that stuff, they have to have polygraphs and security clearances. So, he said, "This guy is just flying right through the thing. No problems of any kind. He's already been at the agency for 10, 12, 13 years, whatever." And the very last question, my friend said, "Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think is important? Something big like murder, rape, robbery, beastiality." The guy goes, "What's that last one?" He says, "Beastiality." And my buddy goes, "Oh no, I knew I had him. I knew I had him." As soon as he said, "What was the last one?" And he so he says, "Well, you might be surprised to know that that that's actually far more common than you might think. Uh it's uh it's having sex with an animal." And a lot of people do that. Is there anything that you want to say? And he says, "I might have done that couple three times." And so my friend says, "Okay, well um well, let's let's get to the bottom of that. In what circumstances do you find yourself having sex with an animal? And the guy said, "Well, sometimes in the barn when I get in a fight with my wife, I go out to the barn and I I bugger her a horse to get back at her." And he's he's hitting the panic button underneath. He's like, "Okay, well, thank you. Thanks for your honesty." And of course they take his badge and escort him out or tell him never come back. So yeah, it's it's not a common thing at the agency. It is something that they ask about and every once in a while you're going to get somebody who says yes. Man, I didn't know you had told that story, but I was tipped off by one of our mutual friends. So, thanks for indulging that. I had no idea it would come out. Man, that was better than I expected. And it was even more detailed. He The guy says he keeps a step ladder out there. So he's got like one of those three-step step ladders and he gets up on the top. Yeah. It was just not good. Well, here's my SOP. Here's the way it goes. You're like, "Whoa, whoa. I didn't know there's a protocol, man. Oh my gosh. There's a lot of crazy things happening in the world." Yeah. Um, speaking of which, of crazy things happening, did you did you see that the I think it was FBI said they're going to release a video of Epstein having killed himself. Mhm. What are your what are your thoughts on that? Well, somebody has been lying to us, right, all along cuz we were told years ago there was no video, that the cameras were down, right? Right. Um, and I even went on the record, I wrote a piece saying I didn't believe this was a conspiracy because having been in prison for two years myself, I can tell you number one, everybody has his head up his ass who's working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Literally everybody. It's It's like they stand on the street corner in the worst parts of town and shout, "Hey, anybody here want to be a prison guard?" And those are the people they hire. We had trouble at mail call. We had trouble at mail call. because the guards couldn't read and so they had to have the prisoners read the mail and hand out the the mail. Yeah. They can't read. So, number one, everybody's got his head up his ass. Number two, as a general rule, the cameras are always broken or they're turned off. Always. Okay. Number three, the guards are supposed to walk around every 15 minutes and look in every cell and make sure you know you're not hanging from a sheet. They never walk around ever. They sit in the little guard booth surfing the internet, looking at porn, playing solitire, whatever. Um, and they were supposed to put uh Epstein in with uh, you know, some guy to watch him make him make sure that he didn't uh do it. I've heard two things. one, that there was nobody in the cell, or two, that while there was somebody in the cell, that person was an accused serial killer. So, it's like, okay, yeah. So, now they're telling us they have video and that the video shows them committing suicide. Okay, if you have the video, release the video. Let's see it. I want to see if the hyoid bone was broken by the sheet or the the action of his body snapping as he dropped or if somebody strangled him. Show us if there's a video. What What are we waiting for? Who Who do you think would have been most highly incentivized to take him out? I I know that there's a lot of speculation around who Epste was connected to, but from where you're sitting, what does it look like? I personally believe he committed suicide just because okay there's there's so many moving parts in a conspiracy. It's it's they're almost impossible to enact first and second even if you enact them they're impossible to keep quiet. So I I believe facing life without parole there's no parole in the federal system. He knew he was never going to see the light of day ever again. And because he was a convicted uh pedophile, he would never be able to serve a single day in a minimum security work camp. So he was done, right? He was done. Um yeah, he saw the writing on the wall. Yeah, he had no outs. But to answer your question, I think of all the different factions who have been either implicated or accused of having having had some involvement in this whole situation, I think it was the Israelis that had the most to gain taking him out. I I was on a I was part of a debate. Why? Yeah. Why is that? Well, I believe that Epstein was an Israeli access agent. An access agent is a very specific kind of of recruited agent. If you Okay, I I'll preface what is I I'll Yeah, I'll preface it with a story to explain what an access agent is. One of my instructors at the CIA told me once in training that the best recruitment he ever had was a copy machine repair man. And and I laughed when he said it. He said, "No, no, hear me out." He said, All of us want to recruit the prime minister, right? None of us are going to recruit a prime minister. Prime Ministers aren't recruitable. But copy machine repairmen are recruitable. And eventually the copy machine in the prime minister's office is going to go down and it's going to need to be cleaned or repaired. And so you recruit the repairman and he goes into the office of the prime minister to clean the machine, clean the drums and install a little device that we give him so that every time somebody makes a photocopy, it transmits another copy to CIA headquarters. He said, "I got promoted. Oh my gosh, I got a medal. I got a photo op with the director." He said, "It was the best recruitment of my life." Okay, look at Jeffrey Epstein. If the Israelis want to recruit a former president, a British prince, you know, sixth in line to the throne, the founder of Microsoft, you're not going to recruit any of those people. They're not recruitable. But you recruit somebody almost as good. You recruit the guy right next to them. You recruit the guy next to them to whom you give millions of dollars so he can entertain these people at his private island where the rooms are all wired for audio and video. You supply underage girls. You make them your best friends and then you just turn everything over to us and we decide what to do with it. That's what an access agent is. And I think that's exactly a conduit for information. They're a conduit. That's right. Yeah. Jeffrey Epstein as Jeffrey Epstein didn't have access to classified information, but everybody around him did, right? And so that's the guy you want. Did if you get rid of the underage girls part, the rest of it seems so benign and innocuous, like, oh, we're just going to a baseball or we're just doing whatever we do. and we're just hanging out and I'm I'm paying for it, you know, because I like you. That's a good point. And it is and that's a great observation. And and if if an operation is that benal, you're going to give that guy a,000 bucks a month, okay? And you're going to meet with him once a month in a coffee shop and you're going to say, "So, what fun gossip have you heard this month?" and he's gonna say, "Oh, Bill and Hillary Clinton are fighting and they're disagreeing over, you know, Trump's budget cuts." Because who cares if it's a Jeffrey Epstein situation, you know? That reminds me, it's different. It reminds me of uh if you ever read Sherlock Holmes, that was always Holmes's uh intel is he always had all the homeless kids on the streets. He would pay them all, you know, a nickel or whatever the token was and they would just scatter around all of London and then they'd all report back to him on anything that they found because he's like and there's no one pays attention to those kids and there is, you know, and they're the they're the ones that can kind of go anywhere and no one no one sees them as a threat. It's interesting to talk about how you understand how Oh, sorry. It's interesting to think about you. You understand how to set up these networks of intelligence and then to think about you in prison where there's like this lax very lax very like no protocol. Were you were you able to like set up for yourself sort of some some infrastructure of figuring out what was going on in different places or like cuz your mind is so it's so it's working so fast. How could you not do that? I guess. Yeah. Second wrote a probably actually said in longhand. This is the Greek version. I can't find the American version. Doing time like a spy. How the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison. So that is exactly what I did. Austin, I decided on the very first day. Yeah. I want to hear about that. I was going to use my CIA training to stay safe and to make sure that I remained at the top of the prison social heap. And so the very first thing I did was to form what I called strategic alliances. Um those alliances were with at first the Aryans but more importantly with the Italians. Italians named Gambino, Lucesi, you know, Genevese, etc., etc. Um, and then you I I wrote in this book, there were the 20 life lessons that the CIA taught me that I used in prison to protect myself. Things, some of them were tongue and cheek, like admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. Some were let others do your dirty work. I'll give you an example. You're going to think less of me, but I think it's a good example. Anyway, there was thising guy. Bring it. Oh my god. There was this guy who everybody hated. He just would not shut his mouth all the time. And so he used to date this A-list Hollywood star. He was in People magazine every once in a while. He was just a con man. And he would say, "Oh, when we get out, you got to come onto my yacht and we're going to go around the Mediterranean on my giant yacht and we're going to party at my house in Beverly Hills." He didn't have any of this stuff. It was just all made up. He was a degenerate gambler and he was just borrowing from this gang to pay that gang and then he'd lose there and have to borrow from this other guy and pay this other guy and it was just a mess. And I said to one of the Italians one day, "I'm gonna this guy up. I just cannot stand listening to him anymore." And um he got to you. Yeah, he got to me. And the Italians like, "Are you crazy? You're going to go straight to solitary." And I said, "No, no, no. You underestimate me. I'm not going to be so crude as to actually [ __ ] him up with my hands." I said, "Watch and see what I do." Okay. Well, when you're being released from prison, there's this form that they give you called a merrygoround. It it lists every office in the prison, and you have to go around on your last day and get a signature. It's completely nonsensical. You're getting out in a day. really what they want you to do is to spend an entire day just going around um so you don't get in trouble on your last day settling scores. So I asked one of the Italians if All right. Yeah. I asked one of the Italians if he could steal a laundry bag for me. So, he gave me a laundry bag that he took from laundry and I um one of my cellmates was getting out and I said, "Jose, uh can I can I borrow your your merrygoround for for an hour?" He said, "Yeah, sure." So, he gave me the merry-goround. I whited out I made a photocopy. I whited out his name and his his prisoner number. Made a clean photocopy so it looked like an original merrygoround. I'm gonna call this Wallace. That's what I called him in the book. And so I waited until five o'clock on Friday and I put the merrygoround and the laundry bag on his bed. He comes into the cell. He's like, "Hey guys." We said, "Hey Wallace, how you doing?" He goes over to his bed and he gasps. I said, "What?" He goes, "I'm being released." I said, "What?" He says, "There's a merrygoround and my laundry bag. I'm being released. He goes, I must have won my appeal. We're like, holy, Wallace, nobody wins their appeals. He says, I have to call my lawyer. Well, even big New York lawyers go home at 5:00 on a Friday. So, the lawyer's not there. He runs to the unit manager. He's already gone for the day. He runs to the case officer. He's already gone for the day. He comes back to the cell. He's like almost in tears. He's so happy. And the Italian says, "Wallace, we got to have a big party for you Sunday night. We're going to have a going away party." He's like, "Oh, thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you." On Saturday, he gave away all of his possessions. So, Sunday comes. Oh, we have the big party for him. Everybody's wishing him well. Monday morning, we all walk with him to R&D, receiving and discharge. It's where they physically open the door and they let you go. He goes into R&D. This is what the R&D guard told us afterwards. He goes into R&D. The R&D guard says, "Who the hell are you?" He says, "I'm Wallace. What are you doing here?" He said, "I'm going home." He hands him the merrygoround. The guy looks at the merrygoround. He says, "Turn around. You're under arrest." He goes, "For what?" Attempted escape. So they cuff him. Oh my gosh. They cuff him. They take him to solitary. He spends two weeks there and then they transfer him to another prison. So I heard later that they never charged him with attempted escape cuz they couldn't prove that he had doctorred the the merry-goround. I had, but we never saw him again. Oh yeah. And I told one of the one of the big guys, the maid guys, I said, "I told you I was going to [ __ ] that guy up. I thought he would never shut his mouth. That's what the CIA taught me to do." Whoa, dude. You took his soul. Wow. Yeah. You didn't you didn't try to break his face. You you just crushed his spirit. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's that's incredible, man. H how did like who were you who are you most who are you most allied with and what did that like gain you more respect? Oh yeah. Yeah. Once word got out that I was with the Italians, nobody dared lift a finger against me. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And you know what? I'm still in touched to like a mafia. Oh yeah. In fact in fact one of them one of them is a boss today. One of the five families bosses. Oh, whoa. What's the relationship between the mafia and the CIA right now these days? What's the haps with that that relation? Because I don't I don't hear much about the mafia down here in North Carolina, you know. No. And I imagine you don't. Um non-existent in in my experience. Uh quite close in the 1960s. Yeah. Quite close, but not with the mafia in general. Are they enemies specific? or they No, they're not enemies. They're The CIA The CIA's The CIA's involvement with the mafia, of course, goes back to about 1959 when Castro uh took control of Cuba. Um, and the CIA's involvement was very specifically with Santo Trafocante Senior, who was the boss of Tampa, Tampa and South Florida. Uh, we we now know thanks to to mob rats and and declassified documents that that Trevor happily took the CIA's money, pretended to to move against Castro, and really never did anything. He just lied to the CIA. they just kept the money. Um, and there are credible reports that Trafocante and the boss of of um New Orleans may have had some involvement, maybe peripheral, maybe more direct in the the JFK assassination. But um yeah, when you said the extent the last connection was in the 60s. Yeah, that that was the first thing that came to mind was oh well that that's interesting because that's when JFK was having having his issues with it seems like both the CIA and the mob. So it could have put them on the same side for a little while too. Now now the FBI has this lovehate relationship with the with the mafia. The hate is well known. Of course it's up to the FBI to break the mafia. But then, you know, there's kind of a famous story. Well, it's famous to me. I I don't know why most Americans don't know it. There was a notorious mob hitman named Greg Scarpa. Greg Scarpa was born and raised in Staten Island and was a major figure. Um, he started off as a low-level, you know, crook with the Gambinos and became a a hitman that you could really count on. I've read that he killed as many as 120 people on behalf of the mob. Wow. He was asked by the FBI, "Do you do you remember reading about Freedom Summer 1963, where these northern kids, these 1819, they went to Mississippi to register black voters and three of them, uh, Chapman, I forget their two two Jewish kids and a black kid. They were kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer and they were buried in an earthn dam." Well, the FBI assumed that they were dead. The FBI assumed that the clan had killed them, but they didn't have access to the clan that would have allowed them to find the bodies and to make a prosecution. So, the FBI went to Greg Scarpa and said, "Can you go down to Mississippi for us and find these kids' bodies?" Scarpa went down. He approached one of the clansmen that the FBI believed was involved and said, "Hey, I'm from New York. I need to know where these kids are." The clansman told him, "Go himself." And so Scarpa shot him in the leg and kidnapped him and tortured him to within an inch of his life. Shot him repeatedly. Dang. Carved him up. Finally, the guy said, "They're in an earthn dam at this location." He told the FBI, "They went. They found all three of the bodies." That made Scarpa a hero in the FBI. So, there were two factions within the FBI. One loved Greg Scarpa. The other wanted Greg Scarpa to spend the rest of his life in prison or maybe get the electric chair. And so what ended up happening was Scarpa's handler in the FBI became so enamored with him that he ended up providing inside information to Scarpa about what the FBI was doing, where the bugs were located, who was watching him, when the surveillance was on him. that allowed Scarpa to evade and to elude the FBI for the next 25 years. In the end, and this is kind of the crazy story. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was a very clear quidd proquo. Absolutely. Yes. Here's the craziness of the story. Scarpa. Scarpa um was in an accident when he was young and he struggled with chronic pain and so he would take aspirins every single day. Some people would say he would take as many as 10 aspirins at a time and just down aspirins all day long with coffee. As you can imagine, it ate a hole right through his stomach. And so he had a significant bleed from an ulcer to the point where he needed an emergency blood transfusion. But Scarpa hated black people. So when they took him to the hospital, he said he didn't want any black blood. It had to be Italian blood. Only Italian blood was what he would accept. He was dying. He was bleeding to death internally. And so his driver said, "I'm Italian. They're the same blood type. take my blood and transfuse it into scarpa. What nobody knew was that the driver uh used anabolic steroids. He was a powerlifter and he was used anabolic steroids. Oh no. And he was HIV positive from the from the needle. Oh my god. And so he passed HIV to Scarpa. Two years later, Scarpa is in full-blown AIDS and ended up dying of AIDS. Once it became apparent that he had AIDS and not stomach cancer, which is what he told everybody in the Gambino family, uh, they they cut him off. They cut him off and the FBI ended up prosecuting the FBI handler who had been passing Scarp all that information. Now he's buried in he's buried with a little teeny tiny stone. He's buried next to his son who was killed in a bad drug deal at 27. They're buried together in Staten Island. I was just there a couple of weeks ago for doing book research for my next book. Wow. So, so there's not many there's not many John Keryakus in the world who get to go and sit and have dinner with like the with a mob boss. When when you if you if you go and have dinner with someone like that, what's what's it like? Like are you on edge at all? Do you think last week he's on edge at all? Or is it just Yeah, like last week. Yeah. What's What's the feeling like? Do you have to get patted down? I mean, what's it actually like to have dinner with someone like that? It is wonderful. I went up I won't even say to where. I I went up to the northeast of Washington and to see a buddy of mine um who's a made guy and I love him like a brother. I'm telling you, I love the guy. And we're in constant touch. And he said, "Hey, I want you to I want you to have dinner with somebody." So, we go into town and I I recognize the guy. He's the boss. Like the actual boss. And um and my friend said, "I told I told him all about you and he wants to have dinner. Just the three of us. We took pictures together. We had dinner. We traded stories." And no, it was just we walked in. We sat down. We didn't even order. Like the owner of the restaurant just came up with plate after plate after plate of food. And nobody paid any money, you know. It was just It was just like the movies. Great. It actually was like the movies. Yeah, it was. It was great. I texted my brother. In Mexico, it's very I'm sorry. I texted my brother and I I said, "You're not going to believe who I'm having dinner with." And I told him who. And he says, "Are you out of youring mind?" And I said, "No, these are my friends. They're great." Yeah. Yeah. And it's not so odd here in Mexico because it's, you know, the cartel is very integral to a lot of a lot of places form of governance. And so it's very common parliament for people to say everything is a mafia. And if you're talking about the cap the taxi drivers in Cancun, that's a mafia. You're talking about one of the governments of the world, that's a mafia. And so when you really think humans have to organize in different ways, sometimes it doesn't work out that it's going to be penned by a lawyer. And and you can still be friends with everyone. That's I think that's really cool actually. And you know, one of the things about the Italian mafia though compared to some of these other groups or organizations is the importance of of personal honor. This is this is really the the overriding reason why I felt so close to these guys. They were extraordinarily honorable. I'll give you an example. I was in there there was a captain. Does that mean honest? What does that mean to you? No, it doesn't necessarily mean honest or trustworthy or Yeah. or loyal. Yeah. What's How do you define that? Or in this situation? Loyal, trustworthy, yes. Honest, no. I'm not going to say honest. But I'll give you this this example. I'll give you two examples. There was a senior captain of one of the five families. I I lived directly across the hall from him. And when I finished my New York Times, I'd give the Times to him. And he finished his New York Post. He would give the post to me. And we would sit next to each other in the cafeteria. And we'd watch football on Sundays. we were friends. So, we're in his cell one day and it's like eight of us and one of the really junior guys came in and he's got his he's holding his shirt out like this and his shirt is just full of candies and and peanuts and chips and all kinds of snacks. And he starts handing them out, tossing them out. And the captain says, "Where'd you get all this?" And he said, "I broke into that Chomo's locker." Chomo is a child molester. "I broke into that Chomo's locker and I stole all of it." And he said, "You stole all of it? Put all this back right now." He says, and the guy says, "Why?" He said, "If you want to take the Chomo, you look him in the eye and you say, "Chomo, open your locker and give me all your You don't do it behind his back. Put all that back." Yeah. And he put all of it back. And I was like, "Wow, that's okay. That's oddly honorable." But another thing was, yeah, there was I had I had real problems with this one particular guard, this woman. And um I I gave as as well as I took, but she was an ongoing problem to me. And multiple times I caught her in violation of the rules, like swearing at me. She threw something at me once. These are fireable offenses. And I mentioned, you know, I'm gonna file a complaint against this [ __ ] and I'm I'm gonna get her fired. And one of the Italians said, "Now, you can't do that." And I said, "Why not?" He said, "We consider that to be ratting." And I said, "Ratting? But I'm not like given any information." He said, "Yeah, but you can't rat her out. That makes you a rat." And I said, "Okay." Okay. So, I just I just take it. He said, "Take it, but you back with her. Give it back to her." But, yeah, you can't you can't rat her out. And I said, "Okay." So, I I didn't. None of that's allowed to be present inside of you. They just won't allow it. It's because if you if you do that to her, then they're afraid, you know, you might have some of those feelings towards someone else around you anyway. So, they just have to squash that before you act on it. That's exactly right. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Dang. Prison sounds like a crazy time. Actually, I get a hold of someone left a comment that said he was Yeah. No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no, go, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I said that in this book that prison is a combination of seventh grade, Lord of the Flies, and a mental institution. [Laughter] Yeah. Wow. It is. Dang. A lot of the things you you say about it are how people describe Trump. like he has sort of an honor code, but it's not exactly it's not exactly like by the letter of the law, right? It kind of is. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe he grew up in that ilk around I guess he grew up in New York. Like maybe maybe there was some mafia influence in his upbringing. I have no idea. He was the biggest construction magnet in Manhattan. He was mobbed up to his chin. His lawyer was Roy Con. He was the mob lawyer, right? He's no rat. I'll tell you that. He's no rat. Wow. So, he probably does abide by those principles as well. He was immersed in it all of his life. Uh I I have a question sort of. Uh oh. Oh. Um I have a question regarding you mentioned when we chatted a few two times ago actually when we first met you. I had a question because uh I don't get to talk to many people who have spent as much time in the CIA or any time in the CIA as you and you had mentioned that I I said how or could there be you went over the entire structure of the CIA and how it's kind of decentralized and there's there's these blobs and um and and I asked whether it would be possible to have a secret department that nobody else knows about. and you kind of mentioned that maybe it wasn't very possible or highly likely because of the campus and everybody's eating lunches together and information just gets swapped and I kind of wanted to I've been thinking about that for a few months and it feel and I and I just want to ask like is it possible um in these in this world it seems like it's part of a feature of the CIA to be the boogeyman like they get blamed for so many things and I don't think they're to blame for probably 99% of them but how could there not be a possibility that there's maybe like one department with one guy and then there's a government contractor that gets hundred billion dollars and it's sort of like off-campus like I know we're kind of shifting gears a little bit. I'm trying to I keep trying to get my bearings around how the CIA works because I just still don't understand they they look like the boogeyman intentionally I think but they're not all the time. And so, how is there how can there be transparency all the way across the CIA to where someone can have some kind of degree of confidence outside of just a conspiracy level of of doubt um that that it it's all you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Uh it does make sense. Yeah. And and you're right. It's it's it is possible to to have an an entity within the CIA that nobody knows about other than the director, the deputy director, the executive director. And then either the deputy director for operations or the deputy director for science and technology, let's say. And the CIA, the the CIA has increased in size probably 50 60% since 911. And so not everybody is on campus anymore. Now there are satellite facilities all over the Washington area, all over the place. Um, some of them are secure facilities. Some of them are little offices just tucked in with a million other offices. You know, you you look on a on a sign board and it says, you know, ABC import export company. Well, what the heck is that? Oh, it's actually pretty pretty likely it's a CIA front company. It doesn't have any employees. Nobody's ever in there or if they there is somebody in there, it's one person or two people. So, yeah, that's that's absolutely possible. But the thing is that Yeah, go ahead. Well, the thing that I think about that is since you have all the experience inside the CIA, let's see, let's say you see a building with this nondescript company. What could you possibly what would you do to say to to find out or to get any extra information around is that operating by the like what's a what's a what's a way you would you you could work your way in because you've been one like how could you how would you evaluate that? I I wouldn't I wouldn't there are some things no there are some programs that are so highly classified or highly compartmentalized I I didn't have a need to know and I didn't dare ask when I was when I was the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations for one for a period of one year I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world and it was whoa an an eyeopener Right. And then at the end of that year when I moved on to my next assignment, I lost my need to know. My clearances weren't any lawyer any lower, but I didn't have the need to know. And so I was removed from all of those compartments. Well, that's how a lot of people are. Depending on whether or not you need to know for the purpose of performing your job, that's that's what determines whether or not you have access. But there were many times, for example, where I'd go into a building in, you know, Tyson's Corner, Virginia, and I'd see one of these import export companies, and you kind of look in the little window on the side of the door, and you're like, "Uh, yeah, that's probably one of ours." But it's none of my business, and so I never said a word. Yeah. That really leaves it open to the boogeyman. I mean, that that's basically, you know, it's it it just becomes a label. I mean, you almost could just slap on CIA anywhere or, you know, not it it's so hard to keep track of. It seems very like it just seems like there's not much accountability. I'm trying to figure out how to see it away. After 50 years, it can run away. Yeah, it can. It can. But but there are two there are two responses to that. You make an important point here, but number one, the CIA doesn't give a what people believe they do or don't do. They don't care one iota. Number two, the only people that they care about informing are the members of the House and Senate oversight committees. So, so long as they know, they don't care if nobody else on the planet knows. And they don't care that that so many people accuse them of being involved in one conspiracy or another. They just don't care. So, it's not even about keeping it secret. They just don't care. They're just going about their business. And I mean, not that they're open, but they're it's irrelevant whether people suspect it or not. And maybe in sometimes it's helpful to get a little bit of rumors going and this kind of thing. It just gives a little bit more cloud to the whole mystery behind it. And that's why that's why they never comment on anything. Like anytime literally anytime a reporter goes to the Office of Public Affairs and asks for a comment, they just say no comment. or um if you go to the office of public affairs and say uh hey can you send me any information you may have on AB or C they give you what's called a glowar response gl uh we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any information pertaining to your question if things were to go south let's say you did try to whistleblow and you had to get off the grid and I want to point out a book that you wrote which is how to disappear and live off the grid where where would you physically go. What What would be like how would you get there and where would be your number one destination if you just accidentally the geo coordinates? Yes. Yeah. Can you drop us a geocache? Yeah. Where you're going to hide out? Well, I say I say in that book how difficult it is to actually disappear and live off the grid. You you have to be prepared to tough it out. And when I say tough it out, I mean no phone, no internet, no credit cards. So, you've got to be well prepared. You can you can buy these these cash cards. Um like you have a Visa card that you put $500 on it and you treat it as a credit card, but no phone and no internet which is very hard. And then you're going to have to no phone. You can't even get a burner somehow. I guess they're all tracking it. Yeah, even a burner phone. But but it'll be it'll be intercepted even if just you know remotely by a computer. It's going to be intercepted. So you really have to go off the grid. Off the grid. Um, now it depends too whether you just want to be off the grid and left alone or whether you're escaping criminal prosecution. So if they're actively searching for you, the chances are pretty good that you're going to make one mistake at some point and they're going to find you. If you just want to go off the grid, that's far far easier. You know, you can go to Yeah. you're going to have to leave the United States, but you go to Yeah. Baja or, you know, go to go to East Asia someplace, go to Thailand or, you know, places that have expat communities, but but they're expats that that expats that want to be left alone. One reason one reason I ask is because do you remember Matthew Liberger who blew up the Tesla in front of the Trump Tower? Yes. I'd been hurting I mean on YouTube like Sean Ryan and some of the ex-Navy Seals they've been speculating that he that wasn't his body and I've been wondering like man if he was in the area and now we know we know this event happened and we know he was at least close because he rented a Tesla nearby how do you get out of there and where would you go and a lot of them were saying he came to Mexico and I'd really like to find him if he's here but I was kind of wondering I just wanted to ask you like where could he go anywhere could he get out of the United States after doing something like that or would it be locked knocked down. He sure he could get out of the United States. That's that's the easy part. Uh the easy the easy part is crossing a border because most of the border is unprotected. You you go, you know, go 20 or 30 miles outside of a border crossing and it's just desert. You just drive your your four-wheeler across the the border. The hard part is remaining in Mexico unmolested. So, I think what one of the things that most Americans don't realize is just how closely the Mexicans cooperate with the Americans on these criminal justice issues. It's like the Mexican police are extensions of the FBI. And so, it's it's almost impossible to commit a crime in the United States, get to Mexico, and remain in Mexico unscathed. The Mexicans are very very good at tracking people down and and extraditing them. Now, if this was I'm going to be really conspiratorial here. If this was an operation where where he he did this explosion in front of Trump uh the Trump hotel, I guess it was. and there was, let's say, some random homeless guy's body inside and it wasn't his body, but this was part of a government operation and the government helped him get to Mexico, then sure, you can live happily ever after. Nobody's going to bother you. you know, the CIA has relationships with, you know, localities and with states and with, you know, other countries where they can come up with any documents you need to to live, you know, a free and easy life. They can jin up a foreign passport. They can give you a driver's license. They can give you a social security card. They can do whatever they want. But if you're doing it to escape justice, man, you've got to uh you've got to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Oh, yeah. Oh, that'd be tough. You would need to you would need to have some very good survival instincts. I guess if Matthew Levelsburgger was ex special forces, he would he would have those instincts, but it would still be tough. It sounds like Yeah. Yeah. Or lonely. I mean, what a life to live from that point forward, you know? It's you know what what are we doing? You know the witness protection program is one thing but the witness protection program on your own in a foreign country is an entirely different thing. Yeah. Go to a small town, marry a woman, settle down, never look back. I I think that's the move. Yeah. Did you see what was going on in the Netherlands uh just today I think or yesterday uh where the far right um he of the PV he stepped down and then the prime minister just quit or resigned. The whole government collapsed. Yeah. What's your take on Yeah. The government's collapsed in the Netherlands and I was What's going on there? I mean, I was trying to read around it, but do you have an opinion on on what's happening? The Netherlands is a microcosm of the rest of the European Union in that there is no issue more important than immigration. It's the overriding issue right now. And that's why a a a far right-wing candidate was elected over the weekend in in Poland. uh is for the same reason. There are a lot of refugees in the Netherlands. A lot. And there are a lot of Dutch citizens who are just tired of all these people moving into their country and they're not assimilating. They continue to speak Arabic or Kurdish or Farsy or whatever. That's right. And they're not really becoming members of Dutch society. And so there's been this right-wing reaction to either clamp down on immigration or to even push some of the immigrants and refugees back out again. You know, the Netherlands is about that big. It's not like Germany that can absorb thousands or tens of thousands of these people. It's a very small place. And so I think we're going to see more of this. You know, we're we're already seeing it in Greece where there's a neo-Nazi party that's actually gotten itself elected to parliament. Not even neo-Nazi, it's actually Nazi that's gotten itself elected to parliament. We're seeing it in Muldova. We're seeing it in in Poland. It in Hungary. It's happening all over the place. There's already a right-wing prime minister in in Italy. The M Mcronone almost lost his race the last time he ran in France. Have you seen I saw that Elon he retweeted um he retweeted uh he he called it the great dying because and it was a whole map of Western Europe and their replacement rates and you know you need a 2.1 replacement rate to keep your population even for every couple because they replace themselves and 0.1 accounts for accidents and those sorts of things and all of Western Europe is like 1.1 1.4 four one I mean they're so low and Elon did the math and he's like well in three generations it's about 7% of the population if it actually does it halves and then halves and then halves and so there really is a population and that and the economic impacts of that is just going to be something like we've never seen before it's the reverse of growth to have that to have that just quantity of body bodies decreasing uh and so that also makes me think that because they're not replacing themselves the the population has to disproportionately older. there isn't there aren't that many young people because they haven't replaced themselves and so there is this kind of vacuum and I don't mean that that means you know this is a complicated issue but they definitely seem tied that if if Europe doesn't incentivize some sort of growth whether birth rates increase or immigration in some way that everybody appreciates and can enjoy and and doesn't ruin you know the ways of life then Europe is kind of dying anyways right like as a as an influence and a lot of these things uh they just seem kind of I maybe that's the reaction to the whole far right-wing thing is that there's not enough people to go around and so others are coming in. What do you what do you think about sort of the the contrast between the great dying of how they're not really replacing themselves and then all these immigrants being brought in? Yeah, I I saw that tweet. Um, and I can give you as an example, Greece Greece went into economic freefall in 2008, and it took them about 10 years to get out of it. But in that 10-year period, um, 1.2 million Greeks left the country. They went to the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany. People chase opportunity. They have to. They have to or they starve, right? But then at the same time, Greece was the destination for Nigerians, Somalis, Kurds, Pakistanis, Afghans, um Palestinians. I was in Greece 3 weeks ago and um I did not realize until 3 weeks ago that there's an Arab neighborhood now in Athens where all the signs are in Arabic. All the restaurants are Arab restaurants. Wow. Everybody was speaking Arabic. I mean, 10 years ago, Athens developed this little teeny um Chinatown that I thought was kind of quaint, but I'm talking about a whole major section of central Athens that's just Arab. Um that that's happening. They're chasing opportunity, too, right? They are. They're going somewhere that's better than where they're coming from, too. Yes. Yeah. Can I ask this? Uh I have a different take on this and just to paint my my the light of how I see things. Uh I come from technology. My I was like my first project I ever did was for Loheed Martin. Actually I actually had a clearance when I was like 21. And the way that I I look at politicians is like sometimes there are politicians who see technical curves coming and they plan for it. Usually politicians I don't think are that forward looking. I think they're mostly dealing with fires. I agree with that in the moment. Yes. But I I wonder is anyone actually looking and saying, you know, there's AI robots coming and that's real and they will be able to do manual labor and so maybe maybe immigrants maybe we want immigrants because they're they do labor but they pay taxes and AI might not but maybe we just don't need we don't need immigration to fill to backfill jobs like that. Is that a conversation that you're hearing anyone talk about? Like you know there there are AI robots coming and they will be doing labor. You know that's that's a really good point. That's a really good point. I I was talking on a podcast earlier today about um about how we need fewer and fewer soldiers because what we're seeing happening between Ukraine and Russia right now with the use of drones is totally in some cases going to make ground troops obsolete. Right. And then at the same time, DARPA is developing one of these Black Mirror style, you know, robots. Um That's right. to to to be the ground troops of the future. Uh so yeah, it's not it's not like we're gonna even need those people in the military after a while. And I think Austin, I that's a really good point. It's a capital game. It's it is it's all about capital, right? And I think that governments are not taking that into consideration when they're looking at population. We actually don't need all these people. Yeah. And that is a shift from growth at all costs. I mean, I think we topped out at 8 billion people in the world. And I don't know if I don't know how long it'll take humanity to get back to 8 billion. It does sort of feel like we've grown to 8 billion globally. And I know there's, you know, depending on where you are, there's growth and and decline. But I think net around the world, we've started to decline in population. And you know, I think that maybe it's sort of changing mindsets and shifting into since it's, you know, we all grew and life got great because of economic growth, but maybe there's some new uh era that we're moving into as an entire globe around we're actually going to contract in size. And so, what do we do there? How do we, you know, our whole monetary system is based upon growth. And so, with a huge contraction like that globally, I mean, we're we're gonna, it's inevitable. We're going to have to have ripple effects of it's like I think of cities start out here and then they they build concentric circles as a population grows and you get suburbs just like a mold or a fungus. And I think as the populations decline they're going to contract back down maybe back to the cities maybe unless we all go out to you know compounds but you can see that growth and I think we're just inevitably starting to decline and we're seeing everybody's reaction to that depending on what culture you're in and what country you're in. Yeah. Do do you have a do you have a thought or a framework that you evaluate the future in a posthuman intelligence? Like when we're not even close to the smartest things on Earth, have you thought about like or do you just have a a framework you're working in and like what happens to money? How does society go about like do the robots have to police the streets? Like what is it how does this play out in your in your mind? You know, I I actually haven't given it much thought. I think we probably all should, but but I haven't given it much thought. I'm I'm still amazed when I see one of these robots delivering a pizza. Well, every time I go visit my son, he goes to uh Miami of Ohio. I'm just amazed with these robots going down the the sidewalk carrying food and then the robot says, "Excuse me." What? Last time I was there, the robot got stuck on a curb and it says, "Can you help me?" And I kind of pushed it up over the curb. It goes, "Thank you." And then it goes and delivers the pizza. Um, you know, we we actually this is a good point you make. We we should be we should be having this national conversation about how far we want to take this because you're you're right. It's like I robot all of a sudden and it's going to make the rest of us obsolete and then what do we do? How do you how do you earn a living if the robots are doing all the work quickly? Yeah. Very very quickly. Very quickly. And we're you know Keynesian economics is based upon I mean a currency is based upon a unit of labor. That's kind of like where it all started. Was that a an hour of labor or a unit of labor as you're working that represents some piece of paper that now we trade for other things? Yes. And if you do the math on robots and if robots can do everything and we have let's say solar power to recharge them, that is in the equation that is infinite labor. We have infinite free labor. And so in the equation of money that actually makes money obsolete in the equation in the long run. And so I what do we look what does the society look like in a in a in an obsolescence where money is obsolete. It doesn't even mean anything anymore because if robots can just add an extension onto my house and garden for me and do anything then like what do I need money for? If if everybody just has robots to do everything. It's it's it's a real fundamental shift. And I think to Austin's point it's coming quickly like so fast. I don't think everybody's ready for it. What do you if I could ask you a question? How do you see this playing out in in terms of uh of the international monetary system? Do we convert to to Bitcoin? I mean, what do we do about money? I already don't carry cash ever. I don't need to carry cash. I don't know anybody anymore that carries cash. And um you know, it was it's like I'm going to make kind of a stupid analogy. The homeless guys with Venmo. I see them. They hold up their phone and they take Venmo. And I actually will Venmo homeless people 20 bucks. I I do too. Venmo and Cash App, they all take it. All of it. Um Sure. So yeah, do we I mean are are we moving in the direction of of one international currency? Presumably, well, we've got the euro already and the dollar, but but presumably the the bricks companies or countries rather are talking about uh about a unified currency. Is that the direction we go to? or do we go to Bitcoin or do we go to some other international system? I I don't know. I I personally think it goes to Bitcoin. I think that game theory forces everyone because you have a situation right now where one one player can print money and the rest can't or you know you have a few you have a few currencies that people can print that everyone else values. Everyone else that can print doesn't have a currency anyone values. And so you'll always have like the bottom the way that I had seen it for the last like five or six years. And this is why I got into Bitcoin was I thought there's always going to be a bottom third who's just the disadvantaged group. It's like small countries who, you know, like Japan, they buy US bonds, but they don't they can't print any US dollars. So every time there's printed US dollars, it devalues what they hold. So they don't want to play that game forever. And I know that they're under the thumb of the US, so they like have to for now. But eventually countries like that are going to say like, man, we would just want a fair game. I just want to play on a fair field, you know, like let all the players think of their best entrepreneurs and come up with their best ideas and grow their economies how they will, but at some point we just need to play a fair game and it's it's not fair when the US and China can print stuff, but we can't. Yeah. Yeah. The libertarian in me, I really loved, you know, MC's and his sort of economic outlook. Um, but because we've been on Keynesian economics with fiat currencies for so long and they have to inflate because of growth. It's it's all predicated on growth. It's predicated upon growth always. So, and then also a unit of labor is representative of the currency and we're just totally moving past that. But then you got my who's talking about the gold standard and some of these things, but I I think that becomes irrelevant also. And so to what Austin's saying, I mean, the great part about Bitcoin is that it's decentralized. And so, but there is no inflation. In fact, there's huge deflation in Bitcoin. People lose their computers and get locked out of their keys and you use them. And so I don't know what it looks like to live with a currency that's in a deflationary that has deflation baked into its math. Like that that also seems problematic. No, we've never lived through the the the what was it? William Jennings Brian, don't crucify me on a cross of gold in like 1898 with the farmers. Like like we can complain about inflation, but we've never felt deflation like like Americans have 130 years ago. And so I don't the money going up or down is not great. We do have to move to like a UBI system though because if totally like we always thought robots were going to come for blue collar work first. Well, it's come for white collar first. Like if if you're a lawyer I I mean my I'm dating someone who's a lawyer right now and she says I can use chat GPT to produce something just as good as what probably better than what I could produce. Well, if white collar is going first and then we have Tesla bots rolling out in two years, then blue collar goes like what do how do any of us make money? We've got to have UBI of some sort. Or or we all just issued like 10 robots each. I mean, if you could if everybody gets 10 robots, right? And now all of a sudden that's kind of like and you can survive forever. Like you got 10 robots in the internet. I mean, is there some basic it is kind of UBI, but rather than issuing money every month and it'll it might be money because there's always some liquidity of oil that needs to be able to like slosh around the system. We can't like trade robots. So, there is going to be some sort of proxy for for value, but like as its baseline, maybe maybe compute power becomes the currency. And and you actually kind of I feel like we're seeing countries compete for that right now. If you see what China is doing with solar to create electricity, I mean the fact when I saw all of the tech billionaires start to invest in nuclear, that's when I knew I just they all cuz they did the math. They've got all their teams on it and all their teams come back and go, "Yeah, just for our stuff, we need like a hundred times the output of the whole country of the United States." And so instantly I start hearing about Zuckerberg and OpenAI uh Altman and everybody and they're all investing in nuclear companies because we have an we have an energy crisis. So like the the scarcity at this point isn't money. The scarcity is compute power which is powered by electricity. So we're almost going back to the ones and zeros of electron movement and that becomes the currency more so than a piece of paper. think I I think what we're missing going into this phase is like we don't know what basic human rights means because so so let's say robots are essentially everywhere and they can build a house in a day if you want. They they can make a garden for you, they can raise food for you, but like what's the basic level that everybody gets? Does everybody get a robot that grows their food or is it just is it still just going to be the rich people even though everyone could have one? I don't know. Well, but we really got to figure it out cuz it's blazing at us right now. I feel like it's coming so fast. There's a book, h it's called like the history of money. Oh, what was that guy's name? And he basically shows as the disparity grow like you want a healthy middle class, but it's also because of stability because as wealth but wealth inevitably and always concentrates up and it doesn't have to be the cool part about America is you can theoretically work your way into being into that class versus previously you were just born into a class and you'd never go up at the socioeconomic ladder. But regardless of who's in where in the in the flow of those people, wealth typically and always in history has concentrated to the wealthy and and once it hits a tipping point, the pitchforks come out because it's just too much. And so it's up to the wealthy class, or at least this is an idea, is that it's up to the wealthy class to make sure that it doesn't concentrate so much that the pitchforks come out. It's almost like a feature of humanity that as soon as it as soon as the power concentrates too much, you get an uprising. And so, but I don't know. You know, the difference this time is it will cost nothing to squatch the uprising. I think it's quite possible that we leave a bunch of people out. They grab the pitchforks and then the robots just fend them off and it's like you're out. Sorry. We're to the point where you need like a hundred people and you need like $100 million and you have a better army than everybody in the world almost or you know you're you're you're at a competitive level of an army with like a hundred people. I mean it really is going to and maybe that's hyperbolic but not by that much and so it's really a capital gain. So now capital is rewarding. If capital becomes the defense of of power because you can deploy drones and robots, it really can be dystopian in some scenarios, but it's weird to see. I don't know. And and our population is declining. I mean, globally, these macro issues are so wild to watch them play out. And obviously, every country is doing what they can with their resources and their people and those things, but it's a weird it's a strange time. It's like we're we're becoming more uh we have more stuff and more opportunity and more good things than ever before and yet somehow it's sort of moving in a way that it seems destructive for some reason. Yeah, man. I get I get concerned that right now everything's taking exponential curves like our technology development, intelligence development, money accumulation development. It it's nothing's linear in this in this universe. Like it's some sort of fractal is is exponential or it's probably sigmoid. levels off in a logarithmic way. And I feel like everyone might just be jockeying for which curve they're going to ride up and because we're all just hoping we get to ride a curve up and that robots don't kill us all. And so I see these people I feel like they're trying to get their money invested in this or they're trying to create enough energy so they can outpace everybody else because they know once I have super intelligence I start compounding faster than everyone who doesn't have it. And it could it could be a moment like that. So I think we're all just jocking for our survival spots right now. That's that's how I feel. It's It sounds extreme, but I can't avoid it. I'm not sure that's a future I want to live in. And now I almost regret like sticking my five kids in it. At least I've replaced myself. Yeah. Well, there's a chance. There's a chance. We We got That's why That's why we're That's why we talk and that's why, you know, like honestly Matt and I could sit and not do anything, but the reason we we do stuff is cuz like I don't want that future either, man. we got to talk about stuff and figure stuff out and there's a lot of hard work left to be done. But I think it's I even we had we talked about this the other day that there was this notion and it maybe it still exists for some people that when your kid grows up that they have to start out from scratch and that that's the the honorable and noble thing to do and how the honorable thing is to train up your kid and then go here you go start with zero and go make something of yourself. But I just think that's, you know, with at the sake I guess the the d the caution there is maybe we're going to give them a silver spoon and they don't work hard because there's this like Protestant work ethic still sort of built into our culture. But we're moving to a part where no one everyone doesn't have to work like we have enough resources and and the robots are going to do it all. We actually don't have the robots can do everything for us and it's so awesome if you look at it in that light. But if it's but if we still have to look at everybody and judge everybody for how much work they do and how hard they work and that your measure of how much money you've achieved is a measure of how hard you've worked in your life. Like the robots are going to do it all for us. So it feels like we need to like change our mindset as to what is a meaningful life. What creates a a life of purpose? Because it used to be toil because life was hard and people are dying of cavities because we couldn't drill them out and they it'd get to their brain. But that doesn't exist anymore. So like what do how do we labor is not that valuable anymore. Robots can do it all or or or on their way to doing all of it. I I get the sense we were born for this moment actually because because humans have the ability to create a purpose that's just arbitrary, but it's out of our hearts and our minds. Like like Matt and I just recently interviewed the whale seti people. They're they're actively trying to talk to whales. It's like we need to have goals like that now because you don't need to have a goal of going to work a 9 to5. that's just not going to exist. But you haven't spoken to whales yet. It's like, let the curiosity just overwhelm you. We We can go to Mars. We can go to all sorts of places. We can go to the bottoms of the oceans finally. I think it's time for us to be building these purposes into into kids. Yeah. And it should be unifying. We shouldn't be fighting over resources. There's so many resources for everybody that I don't and robots are just going to make more of them that I don't know why we should be holding that back from everybody. But you know, but I get the downside of what hap what's happened when we try that because you know those are it's this is not an easy fix but it's just pointing out where we're going that our underlying basis of like labor is a unit of measure and inflation is always good th those are not true anymore actually. And so it's weird. We got to go somewhere else. Right. Right. Yeah. This is going to be I've been really grappling with whether or not humans have already cracked uh like free energy and anti-gravity tech. It from my research so far, it seems like most likely it's been done. And I kind of see now why it's been hidden is I think it's because it's actually not super hard to do. Like you have to understand a little bit about probably voltages and you have to have a little lab, but I don't think you need a big lab. And so I think they bought us a little time by not putting because they like uh Thomas Bearden, Colonel Thomas Bearden, some of these ex-military guys have mentioned like there's enough energy to create something that would make the hydrogen bomb look like a child's toy just just in a small amount of space. And if everyone knew how to draw it out of there, it would just be mayhem. And so I think they bought us some time just because the human psyche needs to develop a little bit. Like we need to think about bigger purposes and see ourselves as part of a bigger universe. But I wonder if we can keep the the genie in the bottle when it comes to AI because it really feels like that one somehow that one's leaked out and it's just going. It's rampant. I'm worried about AI. Yeah. And and the people who know about it are using it. Yeah, that's right. And using it very successfully. Like I I've been trying to tinker with it. I actually don't really like it so much yet uh because it lies to me. Uh but my son Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I I mean it it keeps insisting that I graduated from the University of Maryland and some school in Belgium that I never heard of. And I I said, "You're wrong." AI, John. Yeah. And then the AI says, "No, you're wrong. John Kiryaku graduated from the University of Maryland." I'm like, "I've never I don't even know where that is besides being in Maryland." Yeah. We're slowly We're slowly developing a brain, aren't we? Like right now it's a brain without a uh a a default mode network. That's right. Because right now our default mode network kind of keeps everything in it makes it so I can't smell the color red and all of my senses don't hallucinate. Literally the DNA the default mode network keeps you from hallucinating and right now our AIs are hallucinating. So I think there are some smart engineers working on I actually think we should take our brain and the way we operate and I think this is what they do and and sort of extrapolate well how do we do it and how can we programmatically build that to stop hallucinating because one part of the brain can hallucinate and that's it that's a feature not a bug and so we need another part of the brain it's a complex system that helps the hall keeps the hallucinations in check and so I think we're in the process of building a brain but it's like going to be more powerful than any single brain that's ever existed And so it I don't know. It's Yeah, man. I don't know. I don't know. Dang. We just But it's scary. We We just went the ultimate of rabbit holes. Yeah, it it is scary. At least we'll know. It should be when the robots It's bigger than all of us. When When the robots blue light turns red, then we know we have to fight them, right? At least there's that. Yeah. I'm just calling Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like, man, you with this, you know, gota keep him alive. Will Smith, what would you do? What would Arnold do? You know? Oh, John, before we wrap up, is is like I realized as I was trying to prepare questions, I was like, dude, you're interviewing the guy who's the smartest at questions. Why don't you just ask him what to ask? Is there anything that like that you would like to be asked or you haven't been asked in a while that would be that you just like to talk about? I know you got to go pretty soon, but yeah, that I haven't been asked in a while. Or just something you you have a hankering to talk about on Yeah. What I've been noodling on is I'm kind of Washington famous and I don't know how to turn that into a living. That's a very selfish response. Oh, it's a very selfish response. But, you know, I I travel constantly. Okay. And yesterday I'm going through the airport and one of the TSA guys points at me and says, "Hey, YouTube CIA guy." And I was like, "Yeah, great. How do I monetize that?" I flew to Greece a few weeks ago with my cousin. And uh and we we get up to cruising altitude, right? And the pilot comes out of the cockpit and says, "Are you John Kuryaku?" I said, "Yes." I said, he says, "Uh, yeah, I lay in bed at night. I watch your videos." I said, "Oh, thank you so much. We take a selfie." My cousin's like, "You got to be kidding me." I said, "How do I turn this into dollars? I just don't know." I got my first check from YouTube the other day. Three 365 bucks. Come on. Oh, dollar, man. Yeah. Another day, another dollar. Million days, a million dollars. Yeah, that'll be worth 200 in another year if you just let it sit in the bank. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I know it's I know it's silly, but it it feels like you could sell swag like it w with a with some sort of tagline that represents what you stand for. I feel like a lot of your followers would love to buy something to support you. Just just a t-shirt or a I don't know. I mean, you could fill up conference centers for sure. Like I And you would and and I already going on a speaking tour. Yeah, which is which which was cancelled two days ago. We got 57. Listen to this. We got 57,000 clicks on the on the ticket link. We sold seven tickets out of 57,000 because because Meta redirected everybody to a blank white screen. No way. I think you should still do it and I think you could run it yourself and I think you'll have better margins. I think I think a speaking tour would be unbelievable for you and I think that you and maybe this other company knows how to do it but they didn't know how to work a landing page but I don't know maybe something else happened. Maybe Meta did something. I think there is something in that I I would pay to come listen to you talk if you came here to Raleigh Durham. I would come listen to it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I think I think there's a way to do that. Thank you very much. Yeah, man. Yeah. if if you ever really want to chat about that. I mean, Matt and I are entrepreneur, serial entrepreneurs. It's all we think about is how to turn our few skills into money. Yeah. And Austin's pretty humble. He's been like a multi-time CTO and can and is knows software better than anyone I've ever known. So, we've turned we we build our own little softwares here and there to help our production team. And, you know, we're always coming across ideas like that, too. So, uh yeah, we we have Austin's got some serious software chops. Uh and we know that there's there's things in there. There's just ideas that are coming and the robots are helping. So Austin I would say Austin was a 10x engineer and now he's a 100x engineer. I mean I've seen him build stuff that a team of 30 can't build and so jeez I think I think there's opportunity there. Yeah, that's fantastic. Matt's overly nice. But okay, we'll we'll stay in touch. Yeah, for real. Like man, we would be here just offline just for free. That that would be our honor to be honest. Gez, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I got to figure this out. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, man. In my eyes, you're one of the guys making the the future one of the things we will be able to live in. So, like we said in the beginning, the world needs more John Kuryaku. So, we're we're gonna help however we can. Thank you. Yeah. Means a lot to me. Cool. Well, we know we know you got to get going. You got a hard stop. So, thanks for taking the time with us. We really appreciate see you both. You too. You too. Be well. You too. See you.