Gavin de Becker — One of the world's foremost security and threat-assessment experts whose firm protects heads of state, royalty and celebrities and designed systems used to protect the U.S. Supreme Court. Best-selling author of The Gift of Fear.
The gist
De Becker walks Steven Bartlett through the hidden machinery of power, privacy and violence. He shares inside-information claims about the Jeffrey Epstein case, arguing Epstein was a manufactured 'construct' funded by Les Wexner and run as a blackmail operation for at least one foreign government, which he names as Israel. He explains how no phone is truly secure (citing the Pegasus 3 hack of Jeff Bezos), why governments and corporations habitually lie until decades later, and how fear and division are the tools of all power. The back half turns personal: his violent childhood, his philosophy of intuition, healing, hiring/firing, decentralized 'subsidiarity' governance, AI and reality, and a belief in predetermination.
Big reveals
- De Becker says he learned that morning he is named in the Epstein files because someone emailed Epstein his article 'Fooling Ourselves into War.'
- Claims Epstein was a created 'construct' and not a real billionaire, funded by $500 million from Victoria's Secret owner Les Wexner.
- States plainly he believes Epstein was an intelligence asset of a U.S. ally, naming Israel.
- Says the prosecutor who gave Epstein's sweetheart plea deal later admitted 'I was told he belonged to intelligence.'
- Recounts FBI photographing labeled discs at Epstein's apartment, saying they'd return with a warrant, only to find them gone six days later.
- Asserts the U.S. is already at war with Russia via satellite intel, targeting data and electronic warfare in Ukraine.
- Reveals his mother was a violent heroin addict who shot his stepfather in front of him and died by suicide when he was 16.
- Describes a CIA museum tour where he was shown a working mechanical 'insectothopter' dragonfly drone built in 1967.
Things worth remembering
- Pegasus 3 is a 'no-click' exploit that can access everything on a phone from 7,000 miles away even when it's off, turning on the camera and microphone.
- De Becker insists there is no reliable way to protect the confidentiality of your phone calls or texts once a government targets you.
- He praises Elon Musk's release of the 'Twitter Files' as one of the most impressive transparency acts he's seen.
- Johnson & Johnson disclosed asbestos in baby powder to the FDA ~52 years before a no-asbestos ruling came at the end of 2024.
- Roughly 40,000 new laws are passed in the U.S. every year and almost none are rescinded.
- The U.S. has about 760 overseas military bases versus roughly one for China, and a defense budget larger than every other country combined.
- He champions intuition over logic: 'Logic does A B C D. Intuition does A to Z instantly.'
- Argues 'everything you want is downstream' — striving that feels like swimming upstream is a sign you're going the wrong way.
- His firm runs a daily employee survey system called CARE (Continuous Asking, Responding and Evaluation) to surface harassment and morale issues.
- Advocates 'subsidiarity' — governance at the most local level — citing Fijian villages of about 300 people as the ideal scale.
Recommended in this episode
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