CIA SPY: Mind Games, Power & Seduction Tactics | Andrew Bustamante

ended up being picked up by CIA one of the main things that they're looking for when people come into CIA is actually a history of childhood trauma CIA teaches you all the skills that you need in order to attract someone of the opposite sex or the same sex power is measurable when you want to project power it really isn't anything more than one of the core things that a skilled liar does that an unskilled liar doesn't do is reward ideology coercion and ego are the four primary motivators that you can use to manipulate anyone when

you think somebody is lying to you you can test them with an emotional question every time we meet a new person the first thing that we're truly doing on a basic instinctive level is we are asking ourselves is this a threat to me or is this not a threat to me when you want to appear as non-threatening you should not demonstrate power what tactics do you use to talk to a female that you're attracted to it's called parallel conversation CIA actively recruits people with anxiety because anxious people are naturally more attentive anxiety is a superpower

in the world of Espionage there's also a technique that CIA calls stress inoculation all human beings are at their core pack animals We crave human connection we have a fascinating guest joining us today his name is Andrew Vante and he's a former covert CIA intelligence officer and the founder of everyday spy how cool is that Andrew thank you so much for your time and for joining us today I'm super excited to be having this conversation right now I know it's going to be extremely interesting both for myself and our listeners absolutely I'm excited to be

here as well Franchesca and uh I have a great fondness for Romania and for Romanians because I I've had a chance to work with some of your Intelligence Officers and you have a really fantastic intelligence team that comes out of Romania that's actually born of Soviet Roots but has reinvented itself as a western Ally so I don't know whether you knew that or not but you come from Fantastic ilk I had no idea tell me more about that oh my God that's crazy so it's true so the Romanian intelligence service actually does a lot of

fantastic work uh when it comes to countering illicit Finance countering nuclear proliferation countering terrorism all across Europe uh throughout NATO as a NATO Ally and in bringing some of the KGB best practices to Western partners that otherwise would never have had a chance to know how the KGB operated or to apply KGB tactics into Western intelligence models so really a fantastic country that you come from uh a huge a huge Ally to the West wow that is so interesting I had no idea I'll look more into it after this conversation this is so fascinating amazing

but like how are you how how does the the day of a for for mer CIA spy look like it's uh it's pretty typical day I mean it doesn't look that much different from the average person except that what I'll say is Cia taught me to have a lot of discipline around certain behaviors and to worry less about other behaviors so for example I'm very disciplined about sleep and I'm very disciplined about exercise because those are areas that have huge impact on your cognitive functions but I'm less interested in I'm less worried about diet I'm

less worried about uh social stress or social pressure uh those are areas that actually don't have as much of an impact on your cognitive functions or on your long-term physical health so it's there it's been great because CIA gave me a f a foundation that's been really useful in everyday life as well as in corporate and business life uh that most average people don't get so they taught you how to sleep well not how to eat well well they told you that you must sleep well but you don't necessarily have to eat well that is

so interesting I think that's very controversial because there's so many like people talking about diet and like how to eat but you're saying is not that important correct it's I mean in a hierarchy of priorities because here's the truth CIA prioritizes everything because there are certain operations certain missions certain countries certain threats that are a clear and present danger and then there are others that are a long-term simmering or strategic danger so when you have to dedicate money and time time and lives right now you're going to assign those to the highest priority threats and

then the lower priority threats you'll deal with a different day that's how terrible things happen but that's also how wonderful things happen 911 happened because we deprioritized terrorism at a time when it shouldn't have been deprioritized CIA prioritizes everything so there are different threats that are clear in present and then there are some threats that are more long-term and strategic uh and when you have limited time and money and people and resources like CIA does you have to dedicate those resources to the top priority things essentially the things that will make the most impact in

the least amount of time and they take that same model and they apply it to how we think how we train how we take care of our bodies our our mental health our physical health and one of those things that has a huge impact immediately is sleep one of the things that has a less significant impact right away is diet so if you can make your diet healthier that's great but you can't let yourself sacrifice sleep because sacrificing sleep reduces your ability to think your ability to process your ability to remember your ability to engage

and Converse all of those things are critical to the success of not only a spy but a career professional a spouse a business owner like without the ability to remember a conversation and think and process critically you're kind of lost and you feel lost in the water which is what in part feeds people's caffeine addiction because they trust caffeine to make up for lost sleep which is a falsehood that's so interesting now I'm really curious what does your sleep and everyday schedule look like how do you organize you know based on this prioritize priorities yeah

yeah absolutely so I prioritize sleep at the top of my list meaning I give myself no less than a six to eight hour window of sleep every day that doesn't always mean that I get 6 hours minimum of sleep because sometimes you know my children will wake up in the middle of the night sometimes I have a call late at night that that turns my brain on and I'll have a hard time shutting my brain off but I give myself those eight hours of window in order to sleep so sometimes that sleep is seven hours

sometimes that sleep is eight hours sometimes it's eight and a half hours I also do not wake up to an alarm it's important to let your body decide when it wakes up so that uh you don't force yourself and you don't interrupt your Cadian Rhythm which is something that unfortunately most people who work 99 to5 don't either a they don't have a choice or B they haven't created a lifestyle that allows them to wake up naturally so they go to bed at midnight to a 5 AM alarm when in fact what your body really wants

is to wake up naturally on its own to interrupt its own Cadian Rhythm when it comes to a natural completion so for me I get a full night's sleep I do not wake myself up I do not wake myself up with an alarm I let myself wake up naturally uh and then the first thing I do is actually hyd before I eat or drink anything I drink water first and I drink water first because water hydrates all of your internal systems it hydrates your stomach it immediately is processed by your intestines it goes to your

heart it goes to your colon it goes to your bladder it goes to your brain and all that hydration jump starts the body but it takes about 15 minutes so for people who wake up and don't drink water instead they drink caffeine or they drink coffee the thing that is actually waking them up isn't the caffeine it's the water in the coffee but then what the caffeine is doing is immediately conflicting or uh uh creating problems with their mental and their biological processes which is why people poop after they drink caffeine or why people get

shaky after they drink caffeine because the caffeine is messing with your body when the actual benefits that you're getting are really primarily from the water so you can actually skip the coffee skip the tea cut straight to water and get 80% of the same benefits that you're actually looking for do they teach you all of this as part of your training they do they teach you all of this because when you're an operator in the field you don't have the luxuries of what we have here in America you don't have fresh berries you don't have

fresh eggs you don't have coffee you don't have hot water you don't even have clean water and all the places that you might operate so instead they have to create a process that you can follow every morning no matter where you're deployed whether you're in Africa South America Russia China Mongolia Australia Canada France anywhere you might be you want to have some kind of consistent dietary consistent mour process that you can rely on and you can do it every day that makes a lot of sense I want to know a bit more about you know

how did you actually become a spy and what was like the Recruitment and training process like so I kind of became a spy a little bit accidentally I was trying to get out of the US Air Force I was a military officer and I was trying to leave the Air Force and go into doing something more humanitarian I was actually trying to apply to the Peace Corp because what I really wanted in my life was like a hippie chick that was going to be my girlfriend and a tent where we could have sweet sweet love

making sessions and I wanted to save all the Nigerian like children and orphans from pain like that was that that was my mission after I left the Air Force but apparently in the process of signing up for the Peace Corps C found my application and tapped me on the shoulder and said hey if you think you'll like that kind of job we've got a job that you might also be interested in and that's how I ended up being picked up by CIA now I still had to go through an interview process just like you said

and that interview process is really less about an interview and more about a series of tests psychological tests memory tests critical thinking tests we also go through a series of roleplay or scenario based testing which is when a panel of people say hey this is the situation what do you do or a specific person sits across the table from you and says hey we're going to do a role play this is the situation this is who I am what are you going to do and we literally roleplay act it out and they'll assess your Performance

Based on the role play because what they're really looking for is your critical thinking your decision under pressor uh you know do you do you comport yourself well under moments of hostility or moments of confusion or moments of high emotion high stress that's the process really to determine whether or not you ever truly get the interview only after they know that you've passed all the exams do you ever sit down with somebody who asks you what are you the most proud of and what have you done in your career that you are impressed with and

what is your 10year goal nobody talks to you about those things until after they know that you're worth talking to are there certain things you're looking for in terms of like skills or talents or I know personality type you know what I discovered about how CIA recruits I didn't learn until later in my career when I was first recruited I think I was just too excited to be someone who's potentially going to be a CIA officer like every time I flew to Washington DC every time I got to sit in on the interview even when

I was strapped to the polygraph machine I was excited I was like oh my gosh like this is like the movies I get to do this who gets to do this I was just excited it wasn't until after I became a middle ranking officer that I discovered what we were actually looking for and the way CIA works is like this it's a large ecosystem there's multiple Specialties I mean of course there's linguists and of course there's case officers and of course there's analysts but there's also disguise Specialists and Mission planners and finance people and budget

people so there's a large contingent of very different types of skills CIA has mastered its hiring process so that it knows what types of personality traits and personality types are going to be the most successful for the longest period of time in each of those career Fields because if you think about it nobody lasts longer than seven to 10 years really anymore so CIA needs to know before they spend $150,000 training you they need to know that you're going to make it longer than two or three years right so there's a great deal of of

investment in psychological understanding and a great deal of investment in uh training and also so Franchesca frankly there's a lot of investment in brainwashing people who come in so that their ego and their values and their personal motivations are heavily tied to the job so what one of the main things that they're looking for when people come into CIA is actually a history of childhood trauma because people who have childhood trauma are often seeking validation externally so we become very loyal to the idea and opinions of others well CIA knows how to shape that trauma

to make you very loyal to CIA to make you seek validation from CIA and your supervisors and that's a great way of keeping people for a long period of time after you've put so much training and investment into them that is extremely fascinating I wouldn't have thought about this that's so cool what area of the CIA were you working in so CIA has four primary different directorates uh those directorates are Science and Technology analysis Logistics and Operations Logistics is sometimes known as support I was on the operations side uh specifically I was part of the

National Clandestine Service what was known as the NCS which sometimes is also called the directorate of operations it kind of has a two names at one time uh and that's how I got into the world of of clandestine field operations and that was my specialty was in collecting clandestine secrets from foreign adversaries that could be used to keep America safe wow do you have a favorite Mission from all the missions that you went on maybe one where you had to wear a disguise or something like that I actually do but my most favorite mission is

one I can't share because it's still classified but I do I do have a story that I don't think many people know about right I had an opportunity to uh to engage in an operation in Africa to support uh a a de Democratic movement against a coup attempt that was actually carried out by a radio DJ so if you can believe this a radio DJ successfully executed a coup in a country in Africa you can I mean if anybody who's talented with Google can find this for themselves and it was one of those operations where

you sit back and you can't help but laugh you can't help but laugh and be like this is who gets to do this who gets to who gets to travel to support democracy to fight for Freedom against a coup attempt that's being led by a disc jockey right that's the kind of stuff that nobody ever thinks about yes there are all the counterterrorism operations and there's the cool stuff that happens in the war zone and there's all the very dangerous um sexy mysterious stuff that you read about in spy books and watch on spy movies

that happen all over the world but never in a million years did I anticipate that I would be uh working in Africa against the DJ uh who was trying to destroy democracy that's insane and I think that speaks a lot about I guess some of the misconceptions or myths that Hollywood like promotes what would you say you know are the biggest myths and what's reality the biggest myth in Hollywood about CIA officers is that we are born special like there's something special about us like we have some kind of superpower we're so smart that we

learn five languages we're so gifted that we can uh you know put on a disguise and speak with an accent and you know fire any kind of gun under the sun uh we know how to drive fast and shoot out the window right those are those are things that are complete Fabrications that are that are uh perpetuated by spy media in reality CIA officers are just very normal people we are everyday people but we are every people that have a specific skill that CIA thinks is needed at a specific moment so for example I was

just a brown guy who studied Chinese who was in the Air Force at a time when what CIA was looking for was brown people with a high security clearance that they could use against terrorists right in 2007 so that's how I became interesting but 1999 when there was no war on terror CIA was very interested in Caucasian men and Caucasian women that could be used to fight Russia in a cold war that was extended right the cold war that ended in with the fall of the Berlin Wall was really still the war that continued until

2001 so it's always different even now if you think about it with the conflicts in Iran and the conflicts in the Middle East who do you think CIA is interested in people who would pass as Muslim CIA wants women because women can live and work and operate in parts of Muslim countries where men aren't even allowed right so that's the kind of when when we had a war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan all of a sudden the top language was pastan when our primary threat was Russia the top language was Russian when our top

threat becomes China the top language in demand is going to be Chinese so it's not that there's these gifted superheroes that CIA goes and finds CIA goes and finds normal people that are good at something and then CIA knows that because they're good at that one thing they can be trained to be good at all the other things that they need to know that's so interesting and I'm curious you think about it think about all the people who don't take the time to become good at one thing think about all the people out there who

who know that they're good at something they know they're good at puzzles they know they're good at Athletics they know they're good at remembering things they know they're good at languages but their job or their lifestyle never lets them Master it because they're too busy being a cook or being a waiter or also taking care of two kids or being a spouse of a military member so they never get to master the thing that they're good at the sad part is because they never get to master the thing that they're good at they never get

to unlock the cognitive processes that allow them to discover Mastery and if you can't discover mastery in one thing you'll never Discovery Mastery you'll never discover Mastery in something else that's very interesting do you also need to SED did you ever need to like seduce or attract someone in a mission or you know do CIA spies do that do they teach you how to seduce and attract with your sexuality so this is this is a sensitive area because CIA teaches you all the skills that you need in order to attract someone of the opposite sex

or the same sex and they teach you all the skills that you need to know how to seduce which really means attract someone sexually they teach you all the skills that you need in order to do that as well however we don't engage in operations where the end goal is some kind of sexual encounter because CIA is a a it's a western service it's an American intelligence service and everybody who is part of CIA every officer inside of CIA is an American citizen and those American citizens carry their American rights and there is a protection

in American rights that make it so that you don't ever have to engage in sexual exploitation on behalf of your employer especially not if your employer is the federal government so you might know how to seduce and attract people but you'll never be called on to have sex with somebody so depending on the operation you might might choose to be attractive so that they pay attention to you but you would never be forced to have a sexual encounter often times what we will do is we will actually engage somebody who we know is attracted to

us but then when it comes to sex itself we will distract or we'll redirect that person towards some other sexual Target right so for example I may be working with a gay Target that I know is attracted to me I'm not going to have sex with my gay Target what I might do though is buy a male prostitute who does have sex with my gay Target and I can pick that prostitute and pay for that prostitute using US Dollars and I can make sure that I know who that prostitute is uh personally and physically because

I know what my my target is attracted to but now what I I get all the benefits of being in control of this relationship without any of the compromises that come from physically engaging in the sexual aspects of a relationship does that make sense that makes a lot of sense that's so interesting and I'm so curious now like how what do they teach you how do they train you to become attractive or seductive what are some tips or tricks a lot of what CIA teaches us Franchesca is what you teach your followers if you can

believe it right really they teach us they teach us Body Language they teach us micro Expressions they teach us uh physical Dynamics and they teach us non-verbal and verbal communication cues things that that trigger a predict able response in the psychology of the human brain because all human beings have one thing in common the way their brain is created skin color can be different accents can be different language can be different but the brain still operates the same way the cognitive functions of the brain are the same sometimes they are higher order processing sometimes they

are lower order processing only in the event that you have a brain that is not neurotypical for example Autistic or some kind of retardation or whatever else only in a brain that is not neurotypical do you lose the ability to predict the outcomes of certain behavioral inputs so whether you're talking to a sagales male who has no no education or whether you're talking to a very well-educated British citizen you can still trigger the same behaviors if you use certain verbal and non-verbal cues can you give me some examples of some verbal or non-verbal cu use

uh you're using one right now a smile is a very powerful non-verbal cue that is internationally recognized as a warm open Behavior similarly crossing the arms is the opposite of a smile right this is a very closed form of body language anywhere in the world if you cross your arms the non-verbal q that you're sending is a defensive Q right uh leaning towards somebody opening the chest and leaning towards somebody that is a a sign of energy now that energy can be communicated in different ways that's why sometimes people associate energy and power as being

the same thing so they'll call it a power move to lean into somebody but in fact what you're doing is it's an energetic move you're applying energy to the situation and if you know how to predict the response of your target sometimes they'll respond by bringing more energy to you that's what happens in a romantic relationship I lean into somebody who's attracted to me and what do they do they lean into me but if it's a threatening situation or like a boss and coworker you might lean into somebody who then backs away because it's more

of a conflict or a threat you mentioned the word power there and I wanted to ask you how can someone project power in an interaction there's a number of things to understand about power right power is measurable power is a real thing it's not just a mental thing it is a very real thing and the power center of the human body body is the chest that's where your heart is that's where your lungs are that's where the the spinal cord is the central nervous system all of those things if you were to call them something

different take them out of the human body and put them in your house right what is the primary source of power in the house well it's the place where the electricity comes into the house the central circuit breaker what's the center for for uh hot water in your house the hot water heater what's the center CER for uh for actually conting energy into a food source it's in the kitchen where there's a stove and a microwave and an and an oven right so there are certain parts of the body that are centers of energy just

like there's certain parts of the house that are centers of energy it just so happens that in the human body most of our centers exist in our chest and really our upper abdominal center right where the stomach and the digestive enzymes are so when you want to project power it really isn't anything more than presenting the center of energy on your body so you can do that with something as simple as posture just by lifting your shoulders up and back and putting your chest centered forward you can do that from a sitting position you can

do that even from a sitting and leaning back position you can still open your chest and put out that Center of power this is what is so frustrating Franchesca we have a term in the United States called jocks I don't know if you've ever heard of the term jocks I have yeah one of the things that all of us remember hating about jocks in high school and college is that they would sit back in their chairs cocky with their chest wide open that was the power move that's the thing that made us so angry the

thing is we didn't know that in college and high school we just thought that there was something about them what was bothering us was that they were projecting their power into the room while the rest of us we're leaning forward with our shoulders forward on our desk or sitting there with our arms crossed hiding our power right this is what happens when you see women especially women influencers talk about um demonstrating power as a female they usually tell you that you have to open up your chest in some way Throw your arms over your head

you know stand with proper posture it's it's not about the spine it's about the chest it's about projecting all that energy forward so depending on how you want to show that power maybe you want to show that power by showing that uh like you're showing your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend that you are a powerful partner you can do that by laying in bed with your shoulders back by sitting up in bed with your shoulders back by sitting at the table with your chest forward by doing by going out in public with your

chest forward you can show power to the people you care about but you can also show power to a threat if you think about a Mugger or a criminal or somebody who's trying to take advantage of you there not trying to take advantage of you personally they're trying to find a weak person to take advantage of so often times one of the visual cues that a a criminal is looking for in people is that they are condensing their power they're covering their power because somebody who's projecting power is more likely aware prepared and and self-respecting

enough that they may have self-defense tools on them but somebody who's cowering or clutching their their handbag or wrapped up in a jacket or whatever else that person is already subdued it's that person is already uh muting their power that's so interesting I feel like I've heard about this before for sure like they go after the vulnerable people they're they're not going to go after the people that show confidence and power yeah that makes so much sense and that's so interesting um the other thing I was thinking about is I imagine that as a spy

you need to lie a lot and you need to be really good at it right do they train you how to lie or manipulate people and what are some of the things you've learned really I mean all of CIA training is training you how to lie that's that's the job the job is to pretend to be someone you're not in a place for a reason that isn't the real reason to do an act that isn't the Real ACT and then to escape with the secrets that you've stolen that were never supposed to be stolen right

so all the other stuff all the shooting and the driving and you know water survival and how to jump out of planes and how to dress and how to put on a disguise all of that stuff is just fun extra stuff around the core of the skill which is really deception and deceit so you do have to become very good at lying one of the things that CIA actually looks for in its recruitment process is twofold one somebody has to be willing to lie there are lots of people who are not willing to lie there

are lots of people who have a physiological response that prevents them from being comfortable lying so that's why there's so many psychological batteries so that you can find the people who are naturally gifted if you will uh at at lying because they're willing to lie they're naturally comfortable with lying and often times people with trauma are also people who are very comfortable at lying because let's be honest if you've had trauma as a child lies and deception became part of your core programming so that you could survive you had to say you were fine when

you weren't you had to say you were happy when you weren't you had to sit there and smile when you felt like crying right that's part of what happens to you when you've got childhood trauma so the first thing that you need to that we need to understand about a good spy is that they have to be willing and capable physiologically of lying and then on top of that then that's where the training comes in where they train you how to sync your verbal and non-verbal cues so that I don't verbally tell you something that's

untrue while physically showing you that I'm lying and then they also teach you how to refine your lies for example one of the core things that a skilled liar does that an unskilled liar doesn't do is skilled Liars know you have to practice your lie you have to learn how to think the lie and say the LIE before the moment of lying it's called a brain Body Connection right in this case the brain is connecting to the mouth and the tongue of the body so often times when unskilled Liars lie they stumble over their words

or they double back or they they blubber or they look around they look confused they can't say it quickly and smoothly and we've all caught people in a lie because they weren't very smooth and confident with it whereas a skilled liar knows you have to practice the brain Body Connection of actually telling the lie so that's two different ways that a skilled liar can be developed what are some other manipulation tactics that they teach you about one of the biggest ones is uh something called primary motivations uh all human beings anybody with a with a

neurotypical pink brain has four core motivations and those four core motivations break into an acronym that we call Rice r i c reward is the r ideology is the I coercion is the C and ego is the E so reward ideology coercion and ego are the four primary motivators that you can use to manipulate anyone Unfortunately they are also the same four core motivations that you and I have that allow others to motivate or manipulate us reward means that you're getting something whether you're getting a free gift or whether you're getting someone's attention or whether

you're getting the opportunity to apply for a job if you're getting something then that's a reward motivator ideology means it's what you believe in people who believe a certain religion people who believe in a certain set of politics people who believe in the future and hope for the future people who believe in fatalistic thoughts that's all ideology and if you give somebody what they ideologically believe if you tell somebody or repeat or present or appear like you have the same ideology then they can manipulate you easier than if they appear as somebody with a different

ideology I'm going to skip coercion because it's a different one I'm going to jump to Ego ego is one of the stronger ones because ego doesn't mean egotistical ego means how you want to be viewed by the people around you we all have an ego that's a basic psychological principle we all have an ego not all of us are egotistical however some of us are ego is to be in the background some of us our ego is to be very self-sacrificing some of us our ego is to be part of a larger Community or larger

purpose so we actively take steps to fulfill our ego presence when somebody else knows what your ego is and they feed your ego you trust them and that gives them leverage to manipulate you this is what happens often times in churches when you hear about priests who abuse their their trust in their congregation when you hear about embezzlement by senior Executives in a company right they're taking advantage of the ego of the people that they know so that they can get something that they want the last of the four motivations was coercion the C in

the rice acronym coercion is anytime somebody uses something negative against you this is where blackmail comes into play anything that makes you feel guilty or embarrassed or ashamed or afraid all of those those levers are considered coercion and coercion is a very powerful tool to get people to do what you want it's a very powerful tool to manipulate people but the difference between coercion and the other three fundamental motivators is that coercion can really only be used once once somebody makes you feel bad about you you never trust that person again once somebody holds a

gun to your head you never get close enough for them to hold a gun to you again once somebody slaps your face you don't ever let them slap you again right you never trust them again whereas when somebody gives you a gift or when somebody says they believe in the same religion that you believe in or when somebody comes to you and they're part of the same community that that you're you're part of you will trust them again and again and again that's so interesting and I'm just thinking like how that applies to religious and

Cults and like you know the level of manipulation that happens there I'm fascinated by that and I was just thinking about that but that's really fascinating um and think about the think about the role that the four core motivators play think about the role that Rice plays in abusive relationships why do women stay with abusive Partners why why do men stay with abusive women it's because some part of all four of those core motivations are present yes the man might be slapping her but he is also somehow feeding her ego or feeding her ideology yes

the woman might call her man horrible horrible names she might even cheat on her man but what keeps him coming back something about the other three motivations right there's some element of all four that end up making abusive relationships a reality very fascinating um how do you know if someone's lying to you you know how how can you determine that first I want to say that when you're trying to catch a liar you cannot rely on any of the garbage that online influencers try to tell you you can't see it in the way that they're

eyes look one way or the other you can't see it in their blink rates you can't see it because of some typical body language movement because every human body is different so people just react differently so you can't apply one Behavior to all people what you can do however is you can compare a baseline a baseline means if I know you Franchesca and we spend some time together let's just say four hours four hours is a pretty decent amount of time to get a baseline on a person's personal Behavior because if I'm with you for

four hours you either like being around me or you don't like being around me if you do like being around me then I'm going to see that your energy stays High the whole time if you don't like being around me I'm going to see your energy change over those four hours so I can still get a baseline for you in both situations because you're either going to be high energy because you like being around me or I'm going to have seen your your energy change to a lower level of energy because it's draining to be

around people you don't like but once you have a baseline that's how you can then start to test if people are lying to you because you can see a lie is a very energy intensive act it takes energy and focus and attention to detail to lie well remember we talked about non-verbal and verbal Communications have to be in sync that takes a lot of energy you have to be able to remember the lie that you told and you have to be able to repeat that lie consistently with a brain Body Connection that's very difficult right

even gifted Liars even people who naturally are good at lying and who have lied a lot in their lives they still make a lot of predictable mistakes when you measure them against a baseline but if you don't have a baseline it's very difficult to tell if someone's lying to you there are certain tactics you can use with somebody who's brand new like a salesperson or uh a new date or a new boss there are certain things that you can try but they're not as reliable as the internet tries to make you believe what are some

things you can try so for example uh let me give you a few different techniques there's something called the emotional question when you think somebody is lying to you you can test them with an emotional question because when you ask a question that triggers an emotion that emotion is natural right so I'll do it with you right now right so Franchesca tell me about one of your favorite memories as a little girl it was probably walking in the botanical gardens in Romania with my mother so I'm going to stop you right there okay for anybody

who's watching right now they just saw your face do a few important things first they saw you actually look up and to the left which is the chronological order of how we read right it's a natural timeline you read from left to right you remember from back in time to the current day and that's what you were doing you were recalling a memory well when you recall a memory you physically reference like you read you look in the upper left hand corner and you reference to the right hand corner maybe you look up maybe you

look down maybe you look straight ahead but you naturally reference from left to right because that's the way you were t to read that's the way you see a timeline that's the way everything happens in a western world right second they saw that you immediately had a reaction as soon as I asked the question you immediately had a reaction where you were trying you you were you could see on your face that it was positive you could see in your face that it was not threatening you could see your face relax right you could see

all of these things happen so I had high confidence that you were telling me a true response because I asked you an emotional question okay I'm going to ask you another emotional question but I want you to lie to me all right I want you to lie to me what did it feel like the first time um a boy either cheated on you or lied to you it felt really good I was so happy about it so you could see as soon as I asked the question to you you could see the tension in your

face as you tried not to display what you really felt because when I asked you the question you had a real memory you had a real feeling and that feeling was not a comfortable happy feeling so your face went flat when I asked you about a happy memory your face like came to life when I asked you about a negative memory and you lied about it your face was flat as you processed how you were going to lie about it it's very nuanced but for the people watching they can see it when you watch this

play back you will see it yourself right you also didn't see your eyes referenced the same way that you actually referenced the memory that I asked you to reference you referenced a different way because as soon as you thought to look back in your own history you also tried to resist that feeling because you didn't want to show me the true feeling these are ways that anybody can test to see if a liar is lying to them because they can use an emotional question because the person who's lying cannot resist feeling the real emot it's

a great trick if you think someone's cheating on you it's a great trick if you think you have a friend who's not really your friend it's a great trick if you think that there's somebody who's not telling you the truth about their past you can ask emotional questions and and see their response um definitely going to test this out this is incredibly interesting and I'm going to replay to see how I responded what other things have you learned about human nature as part of you know like your training what you you know what do people

really want and need it's a great question right so there's a few things first at a very basic level there is a survival Instinct in human beings that's always present and because of that survival Instinct the natural first response for All Humans is to assess something new new people new information new food they assess it as either a threat or threat that's the first thing that that's just two options every time we meet a new person go to a new restaurant get in a new car the first thing that we're truly doing on a basic

instinctive level is we are asking ourselves is this a threat to me or is this not a threat to me a threat to my reputation a threat to my ego a threat to my family a threat to my success a threat to my rep my uh my sense of purpose all people if they have Pink Matter and a neurotypical brain all of us look at every piece of new everything through this lens of threat or non-threat and then sometimes we make a decision very quickly in a few seconds oh this is not a threat I

like this car this car feels good to me or I don't like this car the seat is uncomfortable and I can't see through the windows that's all threat response it's it's threatening my survival it's threatening my longterm success my ability to keep my family safe my ability to have a positive reputation right um so that's one thing that's really important very similar and very very much aligned with that is this understanding that all human beings are at their core pack animals we are tribal creatures We crave human connection we cannot be without it even when

we think we don't want to be around people what we actually want is to be around people like us that's why introverts love to be with other introverts they just don't necessarily love to be with them talking but they love to sit next to another introvert on the couch they love to sit quietly in the same library and read in silence they love to be part of the same Facebook group which is why there's introvert Facebook groups so even people who think that they're antisocial or think that they want to be alone don't really want

to be alone they crave connection with people who are like them and when you understand that all people are craving human connection it gives you a huge advantage over all the people out there who have not yet realized all people crave human connection so you can always connect with a person always no matter how prideful or wealthy or or ignorant or angry no matter what they're feeling there is an opportunity to connect with them if you understand that secretly deep down they are craving human connection from someone who they do not determine to be a

threat to their survival right so survival Instinct and human connection go hand in hand and it's a huge benefit for anyone in business relationships or family life when they understand that what are some things someone can do to appear as nonthreatening so that they can connect with anyone that's a great question there's a number of things that you can keep in mind so first of all when you want to appear as non-threatening you should not demonstrate power so remember how we talked about the center of power being your chest you don't want to demonstrate that

power because you never know if someone's going to see that power as a threat to their survival Instinct so instead you want to always subdue your power that doesn't mean you want to block yourself off if you block yourself off you can still appear as a threat it looks like you're hiding something or holding something back what you want to do is you want to mute your power roll those shoulders forward and slouch a little bit right and now people still see your energy center but they don't feel like you're hiding something and they also

don't feel like you're overly aggressive so you want to always start when you meet a new person always start in an energy neutral position right something casual something where you're not featuring your strength and you're not featuring your suspicion and then the next step after you present yourself is neutral is something we call mirroring so look at the person across from you and go from your neutral position to mirroring whatever they're doing if they're leaning forward you should lean forward if they've got their arms crossed you cross your arms the reason is because there's an

inherent bias in the human brain there's a cognitive bias to trust what looks the same the same as us so if I'm showing suspicion of you and you show suspicion of me cognitively that's a good thing I trust you more because you're Su too but if I'm suspicious of you and you're just a wide open textbook and your high energy that doesn't make me feel like we're the same but if you've ever seen two naturally uh um extroverted bubbly people meet especially for the first time and they're big as day and they're high energy and

they're thr and they're speaking with their hands it just goes on and on and on because they're mirroring each other and it's just building more and more trust and more and more confidence that they're the same that they're going to get along and that's something that you can actually control when you want to when you meet a boss you can mirror your boss when you meet a client you can mirror a client when you're trying to have when you're trying to avoid an argument but you need to have a hard conversation with your partner you

can mirror your partner and it's going to inherently ly create trust in their subconscious these tricks are so useful do you have any other spy tricks that you can share with us no there there are so many Franchesca because we don't call them tricks we call them tactics we call them tactics we call tactics spy tactics that build trust spy tactics that build confidence spy tactics that give you an unfair Advantage there are spy tactics that you can use for everything from how to shoot a gun to how to tie your shoes there's spy tactics

for how you pack a bag there's spy tactics for what you eat and drink in the morning there's spy tactics for how you talk to somebody who's senior to you how do you talk to somebody who's younger than you how do you talk to a female how do you talk to a female that is attractive to you how do you talk to a female who is not attractive to you how do you talk to a female who is older than you and also attractive to you we can I mean there's tactics for all of it

because at the end of the day what a spy is trying to do is achieve a very specific outcome and the only way that you can get your outcome is if you understand how to take advantage of the subconscious of your target so that you can deliberately move the conversation in a direction that benefits you that does not mean manipulate everyone what it means is when you are on a mission with a specific outcome that you're trying to achieve you take deliberate actions to trigger with high probability the outcome that you desire now I want

to know how what tactics do you use to talk to a female that you're attracted to that's a great okay so if you're talking to a female that you're attractive to that you're attracted to but you do not want her to know that you are attracted to her it's called parallel conversation you don't talk to her really at all directly instead you talk to somebody who is parallel to her so if you want to approach a girl at a bar that you're attracted to but you don't want her to know that you're attracted to her

don't talk to her when you walk up to the bar talk to the person sitting next to her at the bar maybe it's a boy maybe it's a girl maybe it's an old person maybe it's a young person maybe there's nobody else at the bar so you talk to the bartender but you do not show her that you're attracted to her because subconsciously what will happen is you will engage in a conversation that conversation will be between you and the person you're talking to which means two centers of energy start to generate shared energy that

is going to naturally attract the Curiosity of the third person if you've ever found yourself listening in on someone's conversation when you were like why am I even doing this that's why it's because they started a conversation they created an energy center that your body couldn't resist because of survival Instinct what if they know something I don't know what if they talk about something I don't realize what if one of them is crazy your survival Instinct takes over and it forces you to listen in and that's why some of us try to not EES drop

we like oh I shouldn't be listening to them but I keep listening to them I'm not even interested in what they're talking about but I keep in I keep listening to them so you it's called parallel conversation if you ever want to talk to a female that you are attracted to without letting her know that you're attracted to her is that a spy tactic don't let her know you're attracted to her or absolutely it absolutely is because in a in every relationship you have to consider the dominance in the relationships and The Leverage that you

have over each other is what determines the dominance that you have so if you're trying to approach a Target remember in CIA speak we're not approaching a date we're approaching a target of interest that Target of interest is a bad guy usually they're a drug dealer they're a Smuggler of children they're the wife of a senior General right they're somebody important so you you want to never give them the leverage to have dominance over you right out of the gates because it's confusing to the relationship instead you have to find a way to approach them

on equal footing if you if I talk to you you have the dominant position because I'm deferring my attention to you before you defer your attention to me but if I talk to somebody next to you and you then join the conversation I have dominance to you because you are showing me attention before I'm showing you attention now if you want to talk to somebody who you are attracted to then you do want to give them the benefit of dominance because what you want to do is you don't ever want to come across as a

threat to them one of the ways that you can make sure that you don't trigger a threat response is by letting that person know they're in the dominant position so you would find a a way a reason a cause to approach them that is not threatening to them so you come up to them and maybe you ask them a question that's unrelated to them right you ask them you know do you know where the restroom is or you ask them if they've been to this you know if have you been to this bar before even

as cliche as that is have you been here before strangers ask each other that all the time they askel they ask each other have you had this have you had coffee here before do they have good food here like have you ever had their Pizza like we say that stuff to waiters we say that stuff to bartenders we say that stuff to Baristas we say that stuff to to samex people in a in a social scenario so it's not actually cliche because it really is something that's used but the goal is to ask a question

that's unrelated to the fact that you're attracted but what you're doing is you're you're creating a shared energy that is not threatening energy because if I come up to you and I say something like I'm lost and I'm looking for the nearest hamburger place you don't feel like I'm here to threaten your survival you feel like I'm some dumbass who's lost asking about a hamburger place in a wine bar that's all I need because now I'm I am closer to my objective of getting you to trust me as a non-threat when in fact I am

a threat you see what I'm saying something else I want to ask you is how do you deal with fear and anxiety in high pressure situations as a spy do they look for people that are low anxiety you know this is a great a great question that shows some of the myth in Hollywood and the myth in the general Public's understanding of spies the best spies are not actually people who don't have anxiety the best spies are people with high anxiety and CIA actively recruits people with anxiety because anxious people are naturally more attentive they

are naturally more suspicious they are naturally more observant they naturally have a stronger recollection right it's a superpower anxiety is a superpower in the world of Espionage however if it goes untrained it can be very damaging because anybody who has anxiety knows the spiral that comes out of anxiety so what CIA does is they teach us how to recover recuperate and maintain our energy reserves our mental health because they also know that they're tapping into our anxious our anxious Tendencies so that's another reason why sleep is so important that's another reason why diet not the

food that you eat but the order of what you eat such as water first is so important that's why exercise is a priority for us because these are all things that counter and combat anxiety right sunlight or vitamin D combats anxiety routines and schedules combat anxiety when one of the things that my wife is also a CIA officer and my wife has general anxiety disorder like a clinical disorder and one of the things that keeps her sane is a routine that goes wherever she goes so she can always have hardboiled eggs anywhere in the world

you can find eggs and you can boil them and you can eat them very very predictable for her anywhere in the world you can make some kind of hot tea right whether that is cinnamon tea or mint tea or green tea or Jasmine tea you can make it pretty much anywhere so steeping some kind of plant in hot water to make tea is another thing that she uses so that's part of her routine there isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't have some kind of hot drink first thing in the morning after she's

had her water and when possible in most cases she also has either boiled eggs or or scrambled eggs or some kind of cooked egg it's a very predictable calming anti- anxietal routine that's amazing because it's such a simple thing that you can do you know just having a routine but it's so effective and one of the things that people don't realize is that 90% of your anxiety that you will feel during the day is actually determined in the first two hours of your day so if you start your day and there's a number there's a

lot of changes or there's a lot of threats or there's a lot of confusion you've just determined with almost 90% certainty that you will have lots of anxiety throughout the day but if you can start the first two hours of your day in a low anxiety state then you can present and and uh protect your energy reserves for the rest of the day and that's something that a lot of people get wrong they think that they should start their day with caffeine and checking their phone and catching up on the news and all these things

that cause them anxiety and all they're doing is they're ruining the rest of their day when instead if you just set an alarm on your phone for when you can pick up your phone don't set an alarm for when to wake up set an alarm for when you can pick up your phone so then you wake up you can't even touch your phone so you can't go looking for things that make you anxious instead you go for a walk drink some water eat your eggs drink your tea read a magazine read your favorite book and

then your phone alarm goes off and then you can check the news completely transforms the level of anxiety that you feel throughout the day that's so useful and if you are in a high pressure high anxiety situation what is something that you use to calm down your nerves so I mean this is where it really gets to a lot of the same cognitive behavioral therapy that anybody with anxiety has experienced before right there's breathing techniques like box breathing right there's there's also breathing techniques that intentionally hyperventilate or hyper oxygenate your bloodstream because all that extra

oxygen in your bloodstream will go into your brain and help you quickly cognitively rationalize your way through the emotional feelings that you're having uh there's also a technique that CIA calls stress inoculation which means that you intentionally find moments of stress in a safe environment you intentionally find moments of stress in order to inoculate your body with what that stress feels like so that when you feel the stress again it's not the first time do you remember when we were talking about the recruitment process for CIA we were talking about how they put you through

role plays and they put you through scenarios a big part of why they do that is because they are testing whether you have been inoculated to stress and confusion or whether those moments will cause you to freeze and there are some people who freeze because they've never been inoculated to that kind of stress this is what happens when you have somebody who you know grew up in a quiet home because they were a single child and then they end up going to a birthday party at another home where they have six children and you can

see that child Frozen like what is this chaos happening All Around Me they've never been inoculated to that much noise that much activity that much chaos so you can always inoculate yourself as an anxiety uh a person of anxiety or an anxious person you can always inoculate yourself to the stressors that other people experience in a safe environment you can ask your friend to take you to a concert you can ask your friend to take you to a busy restaurant you can ask your friend to pretend they're a boy flirting with you you can ask

your friend to pretend they're a girl rejecting you you can do all of these things so that you experience the stress and you learn the feelings and you cope and process the anxiety before it actually happens that's extremely useful is sounds to be like exposure therapy yes that's exactly that that is the commercial term for what the military and government call stress inoculation okay and my last question to you is what advice would you give someone that wants to become a CIA spy I would have I would say two things first thank you for wanting

to defend our country because we need strong capable courageous people to start working and become CL officers at CIA the second thing I would say is you must understand that once you take that path you are no longer the priority your family is not the priority your children your mother your father your spouse none of those people are the priority the priority becomes the the protection of American National Security the Primacy of American power becomes the primary objective so you will leave your family you will lie to your family you will hurt your own body

in pursuit of whatever the policy maker and the president decide is principle to maintaining American Primacy that might be a big deal that might be something like a war in Ukraine or a war in Afghanistan or it might be something that you think is Trivial like oil prices or rice prices or the trade of soybeans but your opinion will never matter again because once you sign up for that task you are a tool for American National Security so you have to be willing to basically let go of of everything of everything very interesting Andy thank

you so much for this this conversation has been so insightful and so interesting I'm sure our listeners will learn so much from this thank you so much again absolutely it's my pleasure Franchesca if anybody wants to learn more more of the tips more of the skills more of the tactics you can find us you can find me online at social media everyday spy on all the different social media channels you can also visit my homepage everydays spy.com or you can subscribe to my podcast on YouTube or on Apple or on any of your podcast Channels

with the everyday spy podcast yes absolutely I'll link in the description below as well so everyone can check it out you have a great YouTube channel I checked it out so I I encourage everyone to go there thank you Francesca