Former CIA Agent Exposes the Truth About Trafficking

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31:23Guests are subject to risk, including possible loss of principle. Alps Distributors, Inc. Distributor. To the point that I'm at today, and I think the big problem that entrepreneurs run into or that their detractors run into is they don't want to put in that work. And that's okay. We don't need everybody in the world to be launching rockets to Mars or trying to solve the commercial sex trafficking issue. We don't need everybody to be doing that. But don't demonize the people who are just because they're not living like you are. Yeah. Yeah. And that's I'll be honest with you. That's why I do this show is is I've always wanted it to be a home for unreasonable people to learn from other unreasonable people.

32:01Right. Like that's that's the idea. And it came from, you know, my own journey as an entrepreneur and growing in my career and the various things that I've done. I've been referred to as unreasonable so many times. It was actually out of honor, isn't it? It was actually on one of the letters when I was fired from a job was, you know, the despite your performance, the unreasonable nature that you take with your team, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like so so hitting the goals, happy team. Those didn't matter. It was that I didn't kowtow to the leadership with an unreasonable. Now, some of that is me learning and being immature.

32:37Right. I probably could handle myself better at certain. Right. But the other side of it was I also was keenly aware coming from where I came from. You know, I grew up in a household where I was blessed with two loving parents, but we were we did not have any. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a tiny town of 900 people. You know, I mean, like we would get one new shirt and one new pair of pants for the whole school year. And you would just wear the shit from the last year with holes in it and stains and your one new stuff. Like that was how I grew up. Right. So like I learned very early that looking around where everybody's, Every role model was either an alcoholic or a pothead or worse.

33:13And, you know, looking and going, the only way out of here is to become a different version of than all these people is to become this person who does different things, who does seemingly what they would consider unreasonable things like not getting hammered every night and not, you know, being a freaking clown and not becoming a drug dealer. It was unreasonable for me to like beyond, you know, being an athlete and focusing on getting good grades and, you know, those were like unreasonable things at that time, which may sound crazy to some of you, but from where I came from, very, very unreasonable.

33:44And because you were the straight stick to that community. Yes. You were a reminder of what they could be, but they were choosing not to be. And for that reason, I literally talked to two people from high school for that exact reason. Right now, I'm fine with that. That's not something I even concern myself with, but it is an interesting thing. And what I hear you saying is like, look, these are all choices that we get in life to make. And I think what I would hope people take from this, if you aren't willing to put in that extra effort, is be okay with where you are and the choices that you make.

34:18Like you said, it's okay to say, you know what I want to do? At 4.30 every day, I want work to be done. I don't want to think about it again. I'm going to hang out with my family, watch TV, Netflix with the spouse, you know, whatever. And that's what I want my life to be. And it's like, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, God bless you for that. If that's what you want, great. But what I think where I do judge those people is in then turning around and vilifying those who say, I'm going to see my kids less in exchange for this thing that I want to get done. That's the decision, that's the math they made.

34:58You don't have to agree with their math, but that's the decision they made. And I just, what bothers me is that, and is this idea that like, you get to choose exactly who you wanna be, the life you wanna live, right? Your priorities exactly. You're creating, you're building, that's great. But there's no reason for someone who chooses a different path that didn't tear you down because your path is different. And I think that's where, from a communication standpoint, you know, our political class has completely lost their minds. So we can't even look to them anymore. You know, it's funny. I was talking to my kids the other day.

35:29I was at my kids play baseball and I was talking to one of the other dads and we were just kind of standing around before practice and, you know, everyone's just kind of getting their stuff together. And I don't know how this came up, but I was like, remember when being the president, like that's, that was like the highest goal. Like when I was a kid and everyone's like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right. It was like, like the really ambitious kids were like, I want to be the president. I was like, Ooh, that's awesome. You want to be the president? They don't even think that way today.

35:54Like our politicians have so lost that respect and that, that political kind of talking head class because of the nature of their communication. And the, frankly, except for a few, none of them create or have created anything. Literally. It's just been these narratives that literally the only thing they create his narratives that to try to get elected. And it's, it's, it's sad that we've, we've lost that. Um, but I want to, I want to, I want to, uh, turn, turn a little bit to the, um, um, uh, to your fund and to the, to the work in sex trafficking. Where did this come from? Why did that become such a huge part of your mission?

36:33Like where, where did this come from? The short story is, uh, and I've told this, you know, a lot of times when, you know, podcasts like Patrick by David and stuff in much longer form, is I met the CIA, was working counterterrorism issues with a JSOC counterpart. We came across what I like to call smoking gun intel on a child trafficker that was moving children across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and basically selling them for whatever reason. And we figured, like, okay, we now know this intel. Trafficking isn't our mission. it's somebody else's mission we're going to write this intel up it's going to go through the process and end up in the right person's hands but turned out there was no right person's hands for the intel to uh to land in and that made me really curious uh human trafficking wasn't at the time a mandatory presidential reporting requirement i don't think it is still to this day and that got me really curious and when you have access to systems at the central intelligence agency which like when you're at the cia and you have the highest clearance that you can possibly get in the government there's nothing that you can't reach down into now if you start reaching down into classified programs that you have no business reaching down into like some people are going to come knock on your door and ask you some questions but beyond that uh you can kind of get to anything that you need to get to.

38:03So I started hunting for who's got the ball on the human trafficking issue and is running it towards the end zone and figured out that there was really nobody. And that then led me kind of deeper into learning about human trafficking. And I learned that dollar for dollar, the largest human trafficking market in the world is the United States of America. And that just blew my mind because I was just still thinking that a human trafficking was an over their issue, not an over here issue. What does that mean? We're the biggest human trafficker because I was at the biggest human trafficking market, as in we have the most customers and we spend as a country the most money on purchasing primarily children and young girls for sex.

38:50That is something that we, the United States of America, are the number one in the world on. Trump mentioned that as one of the reasons why he wanted to shut down the border. And I had a friend of mine who's a Democrat reach out and say, you know, this is another one of the ways that he deflects from, you know, his Nazi, whatever is kind of crazy, but but completely disregarding this idea of human trafficking. I think for a lot of for a lot of like everyday Americans in particular, we see ourselves as a good guys. Right. And I had this conversation actually with my sister who is slowly converting from a liberal to more conservative mindset.

39:27It's only taken me 36 years, but I'm getting her there. And I don't mean to be, I actually don't necessarily align with the political parties. So you mean she has kids and she pays taxes, meaning taxes now. She has a house and she's paying taxes now. She's still working on a kid. Funny how that happens. Yeah, but all of a sudden she buys a home and has to pay taxes and is slowly converting. but I brought this issue up to her and I you know because she's very thoughtful like she's one of those people who moved to the democrat party because she's just got this enormous like she's so caring right animals children she helps the disabled she's a wonderful human being like wonderful and so like she struggles because she's always seen like this idea of and I really don't want to make this political but like the left is being the good guys right and you know and I come back to her and I'm like there aren't good guys like you're thinking about it wrong like there's no good guys and bad guys like that's not necessarily how the world works like there are bad people who do evil things for sure but we can't put them in these buckets but I brought up the human trafficking the sex trafficking as a as an issue and she was like no that's not real that's all misinformation like where where can where like obviously I know you have resources at DeliverFun, but like, how do we make this tangible for people to understand what is actually fucking, I mean, this is one of the most horrific things that happens in our world, right?

40:51Maybe, you know, it's certainly, it's there at the top level of horrific things that can possibly happen, being fucking trafficked into this country and having to have sex as a minor or worse. It's not even just being trafficked into the country. So when I learned that human trafficking in the United States, right? Dollar for dollar, largest human trafficking market in the world. My mind was blown because I'm like, wait a minute, here I am in Afghanistan. We can kill people with flying robots from 6 ,000 miles away, but we can't do anything about this child trafficking issue. And I'm still thinking it's like, oh, it's coming across the border and things like that.

41:31And that does happen, right? I mean, Trump is not wrong. It does happen. And there are traffickers who come in here and they bring children with them and they recycle children across the border and all that. But according to the DOJ, 86 % of the victims in their cases are U.S. citizens. Over 70 % of the human traffickers are U.S. citizens. So whether it's traffickers coming across the border or it's traffickers who are already in our country, they're preying upon our children. And the reason why is because of the internet. I mean, in my day, you know, the creep, right, pre-internet, the creepy guy on the wrong side of town, everybody knew, keep the kids away from him.

42:12And the only kids that he could abuse were really the kids that he could get access to, which were usually lower socioeconomic demographic, undersupervised, mom's working three jobs, no dad, right? I mean, the typical story. Now, because of the internet and, you know, poverty being relative to what you compare it to, the girl with a thousand dollar shoes in the private school is impoverished compared to the girls with the two thousand dollar shoes and so she gets on her phone because her parents are checked out uh right mom's on xanax and wine and dad is just working too much to to be you know to to be uh relative you know or to be a a good influence in her life and understand what's going on and so she gets on her phone and she makes a couple of bad decisions uh trying to get some extra money.

42:59And next thing you know, you have a girl who's being trafficked out of an $80 ,000 private school. That is a real story that we were involved in. And she was going to school every day and being trafficked in the evening. And everybody just knew that her grades were suffering and she was getting, you know, her mental health was getting worse, but nobody knew what was going on. So the internet gave all the predators access to every child in the country and really around the world who has a smartphone or a gaming console. We've got plenty of cases where that happened. And so that was my kind of epiphany as a CIA officer to say, wait a minute.

43:41Again, most powerful military, economic, and intelligence might the world has ever seen. And yet our own children are being trafficked. We got to do something about this. And then that's where I took my skills training and created a fund, right, called Deliver Fund to be able to fund the equipping, training and advising of law enforcement officers to help them be able to close human trafficking cases and find human traffickers and put them in bars behind bars, better, faster and cheaper. That was the overall goal, which obviously then also I have for-profit companies that build technology and provide that technology to deliver fun for free and then deliver fun as its own engineers, that it's building technology.

44:28And so we have this consortium, right, this ecosystem for good that's all centered around this one problem of…

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45:45And so that was kind of the origin story. And that, I think, is the thing that people need to understand is trafficking is not predominantly a border issue. It is connected to the border. I'm not saying it's not, but predominantly it's the trafficker from L.A. who's moving through Oklahoma on his way to Chicago, who who has been targeting a couple of 14 year old girls in rural America and grabs them, drugs them, takes them to Chicago and start selling them. That's human trafficking in America. I don't think people know that. I mean, honestly, what you just said, I mean, this is something that I've even looked into.

46:26I had no idea that this was predominantly inside the States issue. Why is this not like, why is this not the most unified topic? Like, like, like when the movie and I cannot believe that I'm forgetting the name of the movie that came out about the guy that went down to Mexico. It's a fiction. Yeah, it's all it's all come out in the media that that movie was a fiction. But it at least helped to shine a little bit of a spotlight on. But it wasn't a unifying topic. even if it's a whole fiction just to bring awareness to the topic even that being true that movie got immense hate and I'm like I just can't wrap my head around this seems like the most unifying topic that should exist we do not want our children to be sex trafficked full stop you would think everyone would be kumbaya arms locked let's find these people let's go freaking get them Like, like, I, I can't understand, like, what is the counter argument?

47:25Why, why, why do you, why is it not, you know, and maybe I'm sure you have politicians that are behind what you're doing and helping you at some level, but like, how is our political class? Not just like this has to end period. Let's go get them. Like we can have a war on, on drugs and marijuana, you know, we can't, we can't have a war on the kids getting trafficked. Like, I don't, I don't understand the mentality. Like, what is the counter argument to what you're saying? How could anyone push back against this? Well, think about this. We have a drug enforcement agency, yet 90 percent of drugs are actually legal.

48:00Ninety percent of the drugs that they enforce are actually legal. And so we have a entire multibillion dollar agency that's focused around the illicit sale of legal commodities by and large. Fentanyl is legal, right? I've got some kidney disease because of some, you know, stuff that happened to me when I was in the military and the CIA. And so I have to go in for these like surgeries and stuff. They give me fentanyl, right? It's hyper useful. When you look at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, alcohol, tobacco and firearms are all legal. One of those firearms is actually a constitutionally protected commodity.

48:36Yet we have this entire bureaucracy that spends billions of dollars fighting what is the illicit sale of those legal commodities. 100 % of human slavery, which is what we're talking about when we talk about, you know, sex trafficking is we're talking about people who are being enslaved and then forced to do these things. 100 % of human slavery is illegal for the 13th Amendment. And yet we don't have a single, a singularly focused agency on human trafficking. And that's not to take away from those agencies, Department of Homeland Security, the DOJ, the FBI, they are, they're doing the absolute best that they can, right?

49:09But the major majority of the heavy lifting and law enforcement goes to state and local law enforcement officers. When was the last time you were pulled over by an FBI agent for speeding, right? And so it's the state and local law enforcement officers that are doing the heavy lifting and they have no resources, no anything. And I think there's a large part of the reason for this is that there's a massive overlap. And I do mean massive overlap. And a lot of your male listeners are about to get real uncomfortable, which means I'm doing my job. a massive overlap between human trafficking and strip clubs and pornography.

49:43So if you have an OnlyFans, if you're one of these guys who participates in like OnlyFans and Pornhub and things like that, there is a, and you, you do it regularly. There is virtually a, it's not a non-zero chance, but it's a very, very small chance that you have actually fed money into the human trafficking market. You have these, you know, and so the guy who likes to go to the strip clubs doesn't want to hear that. And so, of course, just puts it out of his mind. Nevermind the fact that we have data, we have photos, we have indisputable proof that this is happening. There's this incredible book about Pornhub and the absolute evil that happens on that platform called Takedown.

50:34Lila McElwain, absolute hero for the work that she did in helping to take a lot of the child pornography off of Pornhub and a lot of the rape videos and things like that, and a lot of the trafficking videos. When you have these parts of our society that are the over-sexualization of our society, that are treating women and girls as commodities. And then you have predominantly men. And again, I said we are the largest human trafficking market in the world, which means that statistically 30 % of the men who are listening to this right now are engaged in those activities and they like those activities.

51:15And so they don't want somebody coming along and telling the truth about those activities. That's why we get so much pushback. And as soon as I see, it's really funny when I go to talk to groups of donors or investors or whoever about the human trafficking issue. Inevitably, I'll have one or two men come up to me and be like, but human trafficking, isn't that the oldest trade in the world? I go, that's interesting. I was talking about human trafficking and you brought a prostitution. You just told me everything I need to know about you. and what you're into and what and the types of things that you like and why men like me are are extremely confronting and this gets back to the the slaying the dragons so to speak right it's why i personally absolutely hate the existence of of the things that people like like andrew and tristan tate say right they're like oh women are property i mean there's that's It's undeniable.

52:17Like like they have they've said that in text messages like we have that in court documents. And yet they like they the way that that they are training other men is absolutely reprehensible. people and what I find is that the men that they're training are living in their mom's basement they don't have the courage to go volunteer for the military much less special ops they're not going to go try to get into a good university they're not going to try to go to the CIA they're not going to actually try to go slay a dragon and they're basically perpetual victims so I think the men listening have a choice to make it's like are you a perpetual victim and you're like well I can't get a girlfriend and so I'm going to go do this porn thing or this strip club thing or I'm going to go visit this woman who's a prostitute, which by the way, about 80 % of what you think is prostitution is actually human trafficking by the best data that we can find.

53:08Or are you just going to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make a decision that you're going to go be a better man? And the reason I really focus on men here is because that human trafficking market, it's supply and demand generated and the demand is generated by men. If men didn't want the product, there would be no market and they would sell, they would try to sell the product someplace else. I mean, that's how it works. I mean, it drives up. So if men like us don't stand up to the men who are creating the demand, then what are we really standing for? Dude, this is why I was so excited to have you on the show because these are the kind of things that just drive me absolutely crazy.

53:50I'm a firm, I'm a huge fan of Jordan Peterson and his mindset and the way he approaches things. and he has this mentality, act as if, right? And it started out of his belief in God. When he first started, I found Jordan Peterson before 12 Rules for Life, which was a book that changed my life, but I found him because he did a 17 episode series on Genesis, right? So where he breaks down an hour and a half chunk. Dude, it's phenomenal. I'll go check that out, yeah. I really recommend it. You gotta go way back in his archive, but you'll find it. It's 17 episodes, it's long, But he approaches it from a very pragmatic standpoint.

54:26And what he says is, because at the time, he believed in the lessons, but hadn't necessarily figured out his true relationship to God. So people would ask him all the time at that time. This is like 2015, 2016. He got asked a bunch, do you believe in God? He would get that question constantly. And he said, what I believe is the Bible is the best set of rules for living a purpose-driven, fulfilled life. That's what I believe it today. He goes, and how I approach God is I don't know if he exists or not, but I act as if he does. And he says what that does is what I know that's going to do mentally is push me in the direction to believing.

55:18I will believe at some point as I act through the lessons that Jesus taught us. Right. So I think it's a wonderful mindset. So what I try to coach people and I talk about on the show, too, is like, OK, you're not that thing today. You're not the guy that can go to a community event and introduce yourself to a girl and have her be interested. You're not that guy today. OK. The only option you have is to act as if you were. Right. Right. Just go act as if you were that guy. You don't have to be that guy. Pretend go pretend to be that guy. And what's going to happen is the more you pretend to be a fit guy, to be a guy that doesn't, you know, waste time on porno or what waste time on social media, right?

56:02The more you act as the person that you would like yourself to be, surprisingly and shockingly, you eventually become that person. It's start as an act. And this goes the same for entrepreneurs, right? You might not know what you're doing, but if you act as an entrepreneur, act solving problems, working through things, all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like, holy, I'm like an entrepreneur that like builds stuff and runs companies. And, you know, all of a sudden you wake up and you're that thing. And but sorry for that diatribe, but like it's the whole fake it till you make it thing.

56:37Like when I hear people say fake it till you make it, I'm like, no, that that's that's that's completely wrong. You shouldn't fake it till you make it. What you should do is you should do exactly what it is that you're saying, Ryan. Right. You should act as if you are that person. Right. And that's what I'm talking about is like. So to decide I am an entrepreneur. Right. We go all the way back to the beginning. We said like, well, what's the secret? Right. It's you find purpose and then you decide that you're going to act on that purpose. It's that simple. And so once you decide I am an entrepreneur.

57:08Well, that doesn't make you an entrepreneur. Right. But if you start taking the steps to become an entrepreneur, then you will eventually morph into that person. And if you decide, I'm going to have a strong marriage, let's just say your marriage is falling apart and everything's going bad. I decide I'm going to have a strong marriage. Does that mean that you'll be successful? No, it's the same thing as deciding that you're going to be an entrepreneur or deciding that I'm going to reduce commercial sex trafficking by 80%. When I tell people that, they're like, you are grandiose and crazy. And I say, thank you.

57:46Right. In fact, if you go to my website, which is just nicknickinley.com forward slash 10 points, I actually lay out in explicit detail to include Markov chain models. Right. So math models on exactly why I believe that I can accomplish this. Right. And it's not me. Right. That we collectively can accomplish this. And I put it out there publicly, which is probably, I mean, getting shot at actually isn't all that scary when you've done enough times. But for most people, that would probably be really scary. It's putting out something that public is actually scarier because it's like, all right, I am putting out a manifesto that I'm going to stand on.

58:30I'm telling the world what my purpose is and I'm driving towards this purpose. Does it mean I'll reach that goal? No. But what if I managed to and we managed to collectively reduce commercial sex trafficking by 80 or by 60 percent? We don't make the 80 percent. That's a huge win. Let's do that. All the way back to the first point. If you and there's a there's a book behind me that was written that kind of shares us to 10 X is easier than 2 X. If you shoot for the massive goal, the massive, ridiculous, unbelievable, unacceptable, unreasonable goal and you miss, you still have an enormous win. But if you shoot for what you think is possible and you miss, you're still unsatisfied.

59:12You're still unfulfilled. You feel like a loser. It's it. And the decisions become clear, right? With with with that goal that you set, there's like one path to getting that done, right? Like I have to do this and I have to raise this and we need this technology and I need these three groups on board and blah, blah, blah. You're like there is one path to hit that goal. And now you know exactly what you need to do versus, you know, the people who wake up every day and earlier in my life I'm just as guilty of this as anybody where you have like seven things and your goals aren't that big so you're not really sure what to do every day so you start spending your time on you know tasks that don't add value and dude I could talk to you all friggin day Nick I absolutely love this we're gonna have links to deliver fun we're gonna have links to your website in the description whether you're watching on YouTube or listening just scroll down you'll find that stuff and my man I want this show to be a supporter of Deliver Fund.

1:00:06So I'm going to work with you after we get done offline and figure out ways that we can kind of build helping push people because this is something that's near and dear to my heart. I coach all my kids' sports teams. I'm heavily involved. That's kind of kids. Our kids are so incredibly important to the security and sanctity of this country. And it's our God-given responsibility to protect them. And I think the work you're doing is absolutely incredible. I couldn't be more honored to be on the show, man. So any other places, any other final place that you'd like to send people if they just want to get involved in your world?

1:00:42If you just go to my website and go to the mission tab, you'll see all the different things I'm involved in. My data and AI company. So if you're a for-profit company, we can actually help you make sure that human traffickers are not using your platforms because they use all the platforms we use for business, right? If you're in law enforcement or a prosecutor or part of that chain, we are more than happy DeliverFund will provide you, equip, train, and invite you with everything you need to include case data and intelligence. That's all free for you. If you're a donor and this resonates with you, you can go right to that mission tab and you can find information about DeliverFund and you can make a donation there.

1:01:26We are solely funded right now by the generosity of donors. So all of this like doge cutting and stuff like that doesn't affect us one bit. We are moving forward with a mission as strong as we ever have. And then if you just want to learn more about me or you can find me on all the social platforms at TheNickMcKinley. And again, my website is nicknickinley.com. Appreciate you, man. Thank you so much. Thank you.

1:02:02In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

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