Today we will be discussing the foundations of a good agent and the training associated with creating such individuals. Essential to this is the mentality to approaching situations that could be blurred by fear, adrenaline, or traditional social norms. The idea is to focus on effective points of concentration and not on the emotional context. Let’s look at two situations a cold war era spy might find themselves in: Physical Combat and Manipulative Seduction.
First, a hand-to-hand fight. Lots of garbage exists in this area. There are “soft” approaches, “hard” approaches, and even eccentric ways that involve “secret energies.” These are able to come into popularity because A.) Most people will never have to actually engage in an actual life or death physical fight so there are a lot of fake stories where people claim to successfully used a particular method(s). B.) Many techniques look to anatomically be sound in theory. With a good theory justifying them (joints moved beyond 30 degrees break, stimulation of the vagus nerve causes central nervous shutdown, 8 lbs of pressure will collapse the kneecap, etc.) people will assume a method works since essentially there is a good enough reason in place for why they should work. C.) The style or delivery mechanism is appealing to the practitioner and since they like it, will find reasons to justify continuing to use it. This is confirmation bias at its finest.
So how do we train spies to fight? We simply break down to the essential processes that do actually work and then focus on the targets that enable us to carry out these processes. Here’s what we know works: 1.) In order for me to hurt my opponent, I need to offensively inflict damage on them 2.) Certain spots on the body are more susceptible to injury than others 3.) Adrenaline, fear, tension, fatigue, injury, and other factors significantly reduce fine motor skills in combatants 4.) Techniques against resisting opponents rarely are executed flawlessly 5.) Violent acts tend to escalate as they continue to go on, i.e. the longer the fight goes the more violent the participants will become in the absence of fatigue kicking in. Now if we train someone in how to survive a fight we could apply these principles to create a process that: trains offensively (I would rather throw my body weight into a forearm strike to the neck as a reaction instead of trying to block a punch thrown at me as blocks rarely inflict injury to my opponent), focuses on hitting only a few vulnerable areas (less choice means faster decision making), uses basic movements, accounts for imperfect execution, and has techniques that begin much more violently in nature than your opponent, i.e. I am intending to kill or cripple my enemy instead of trying to knock them out. This last point is important as human beings are give-and-take escalation machines by nature. For instance, you push me, I push you back harder, you slap me, I push your throat, you punch me, I punch you back, you tackle me, I elbow you, you headbutt me, I dig at your eyes. This is time consuming and we can get into an extended scuffle. How about alternatively we chose a “switch” mentality. In such a mindset, I do nothing to you physically until I get to the point where I choose to impart significant injury on you. For instance, you push me, I attempt to verbally deescalate. You push me again, I decide whether or not you are in that moment a physical threat and if you are…..I go to the final stage and grab your head with the inside cradle of my left elbow and force my right thumb through your eye socket. I skip levels, you don’t, I successfully inflict damage, you take it. The other part of this is eliminating the “humanity” of your opponent. As a society, we are taught to try to understand the reason why someone is acting in a certain manner and also to sympathize with other people. This is not useful for us as it can lead to a fear response or a hesitation. Instead we need to adopt a target mentality. In front of me is not a person, but an anatomical set of targets that I need to engage in order to find victory. This shift in thinking does wonders when facing intimidating people or when you have to overcome the feeling that you are inflicting unjustified violence on someone.
Now onto seduction. Yes some cold war era spies were trained in the craft of seduction. It’s really not complicated. Let’s again look at process and what we know works. Women who will be “won over” statistically will need to be A.) highly attracted to the person B.) trust the person to at least to a limited extent C.) be comfortable with how that person is perceived by her social network D.) not in conflict with her current situation or at least not interfering with her current situation. So again let’s invert this into a training system. Such an approach would mean we train spies to act behaviorally attractive (dominant body language, excellent social skills, demonstrating status, using social proof) and selecting individuals assigned to such assignments who are physically good looking (in some cases researching past relationships of the target girl and finding someone who “fits her type” behaviorally and physically). With trust, it means manipulating the person by associating with a common dislike (a sort of shortcut for trust such as when people will trust each other when discovering they both dislike a particular political party), having multiple short interactions in multiple locations, and having consistency verbally (however inconsistent behaviors can often result in an increase in attraction, a whole different topic though). The next factor, social network comfort is a variable factor depending on how much the woman cares about how she is perceived. In the U.S. most college grads date other college grads from similar socioeconomic backgrounds as subconsciously they fit into each other’s “tribes”. However this is not always the case. For the most part though, it helps to have a character that mirrors her background and social status. The last part of this, not being in conflict with current situation, is actually very easily overcome by a process of isolation. Discrete time isolated means that a woman will not have to worry about the interaction affecting her current situation (marriage, in a relationship, in a government job that does not allow for dating foreigners, etc.) A woman in continuous one-on-one situations with a man that goes uninterrupted can be easily manipulated in many cases to do things she would not normally do. Just recently, my old boss (a woman) had certain tasks that required her to spend a significant amount of time with one individual in isolation (a deviant man who she would interview for information). They sparked up an affair and as a mother of two she left her husband of ten years to be with this fella after only a dozen or so individual, isolated sessions. This was obviously also against every organization policy in place and significantly put it at risk. She was separated from the organization and essentially through away a 15 year career for a bum. Isolation when properly used is so powerful that it can make someone destroy their marriage and permanently screw up their kids to be with someone as in this case. This was also a trained professional that this worked on. As such, forget all the seduction books out there, and focus on getting the target woman isolated in a comfortable way as often as you can.
One final note, as with hand-to-hand fighting, social awkwardness and nervousness could work against someone in a seduction situation. Remember to think in terms of target and process, it’s just another skeleton covered in muscle and flesh and a little bit of makeup. Makes it easier than thinking that a woman is beautiful than trying to spark up a conversation.
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In our first session of Spycraft Tips and Tricks, we’ll cover a technique that is so simple in nature that it is easily discarded by most yet is devastatingly effective. When overwhelmed in the moment, whether it is being suddenly captured, having the indigenous informant you recruited turn you into the local authorities, or suddenly being shot at from a rooftop, you need something to help you survive the moment. What you’ll learn today can be divided into three separate parts, the last one perhaps being the most powerful, least known trade secret a spy could learn (though these days I’m not even sure they teach it anymore as it is an “old school” technique). But first, we need to understand something called the training matrix.
Smoke, Drink, Spy. 