there are four core motivations that CIA teaches us to look for in every human asset right and we use the the moniker or the acronym rice to describe those four motivations right R stands for reward I stands for ideology C stands for coercion and E stands for ego so you've got reward ideology coercion and ego they make the acronym rice these four are fairly fairly obvious to understand right a reward is anything that makes somebody work for you whether it's money or whether it's praise or whether it's a free Cruise whatever it might be ideology I for ideology is what people believe in C is coercion coercion is going to be Force somebody through blackmail or through guilt or through you know debt whatever it might be and then e stands for ego and ego is the one that I find people most misunderstand ego is not egotistical people ego is about doing things a certain way because you want to be perceived right a certain way right so these four motivations basically Define all human behavior everywhere at all times r-i-c-e when we talk about the father of the nuclear missile the father of the the space program right Werner Von Braun he was not ideologically driven no he wasn't he was barely paying attention to politics he belonged to the Nazi party right but not because he was a Nazi no it's because he was German and he lived there and that's what you did so he actually um when Hitler took power in 33 he was finished he was in his PhD program and then the next year he we finished his dissertation and immediately the military took it the military was like this is important for you know the Fatherland right for the Homeland and he was like sure he's like you're going to fund me great I'm gonna build rockets and so for him he was like you know I was just being a German citizen yeah you know and then he even when there's stories where you know uh the the German Rockets were built by prisoners um and you know there's they say that he he had a tour by the SS of the factory where the Rockets were being built and there's all this you know there's this speculation of did he really know what was going on did he know and he just Justified it some way did he care but he wasn't ideal ideologically driven so it makes sense that for him you know it was a little bit easier I mean maybe he felt bad about it but it was a little bit easier for him to look the other way because his dream was coming true his rocket was being built right yeah so here you have a guy who is essentially just a a rocket nerd a giant rocket nerd so great and and the fastest path to him getting funding yes to develop the Rockets he wanted to develop where he lived at the time which was Germany right was essentially military funding by the Nazi party in 1935 right what else was he gonna do and if he were to ideologically stand up and say I do not agree with you yeah help build the rocket with the other prisoners I mean honestly or maybe those Rockets never would have been built because or maybe not who knows but I think you're right right because one thing that we we know about Nazi Germany is you were either a compliant asset or you were a forced labor asset so it's possible that even though his own personal motivation would have been reward and ego it's possible that had he ideologically resisted they would have just used coercion oh there you go way to bring it all together there you go that's true that's true but instead what we find with Werner Von Braun is that he was ego driven right and this I think is really important for us to understand if you want to understand what drives people you can't just assume that people are driven by blind ideology right you can't assume that people are driven by money and greed and it's funny because those are the two things those are two of the strongest motivations out there but they're also two of the most over assigned over General realized motivations out there people see a wealthy business person yeah and they accuse that wealthy business businessman of being greedy and money driven they may not be they may be driven by something completely different like ego or like ideology people look at a religious leader and they just assume that religious leader is blindly focused on religion they may not be they may be driven forward by money and ego they may be coerced they may not have an option right right we were just talking to somebody recently about um the growing sense of like anti-chinaism inside the United States yeah and I forget what they said specifically but it was something like you know is it safe to just assume that every Chinese person in America is a spy and we're like no you can't just assume that every Chinese person in America is a spy you cannot assume that but you also can't assume that just because someone has Chinese ethnicity they are being left alone by the government of China right right instead you have to land somewhere in between right because every member every person who has Chinese and every American with Chinese ethnicity is absolutely on the radar of the Chinese right so you have to see it for what it really is without going so far as to assume that they're all ideologically communist right and I think you know something that that maybe I don't know if people understand that about Espionage is you know Espionage is is a business of relationships right relationships and transactions in within those relationships but a big part of Espionage is getting to know who you are developing or who you are trying to get information from so there is so in Espionage there is no judging a book by its cover yeah you just can't do it so you can but you have to be willing to be very wrong yeah if you're going to play it that way so you know Espionage really the reason that Rice exists is because you have to get to know the other person right the person who's your Target and you have to be able to understand them well enough to understand what their motivations are any cultural things that come into play and culture completely comes into play um you know so there's all these things you have to learn about the other person before you can you know and to make an assessment before you can approach them before you can use them before you can work with them yeah right so fast forward now to when the Allied powers are able to capture Werner Von Braun right and make him a pow and make his team a group of pows when they when they take the actual facility where the Germans have created the B2 rocket where they've expanded their rocket uh Science and Industry the Americans the Allied Powers come in and take him away and they relocate him to the United States now here is a rocket nerd turned Nazi in order to secure funding to continue playing with his Rockets right that is a person driven on ego and reward right I want to play with rockets right just let me play with rockets so what do the Allies do so they say we'll fund you to build some Rockets we'll find you to build rockets for us now yeah and he was like okay he became yeah he became like the head he retired as the number one person in charge of Huntsville Alabama's Space and Rocket Center yeah like that's insane the guy was a Nazi war pow yeah and he became not just the head of a program but the head of an actual space facility inside the United States right that's just mind-boggling to me and my guess is that you know when when they uh so I I believe that he he and his team surrendered to to the American forces in the end but when that happened you know from from our from the fir you know first look at it you're like they're pows right prisoners of War they surrendered and they were but then he must have I can only imagine like going back in time like he must have sat with people who got to know him who made the assessment that he has no ideological connection to the Nazi party right he was a he was technically part of the party because he was German and he was there and that's who funded him so it was really a safe bet for America to be like you know what we're going to give you all the things you want right somebody made the assessment of what's the motivation and somebody was like we're gonna fund you that's you know the reward you know you're gonna they he was um I believe in the beginning like nobody knew he had been part of the Nazi party um you know so he he was a big ego boost because he was known like he his reputation he had a great reputation you know and he got to do all the things that he wanted to do so it's I just find it fascinating like somebody some you know American government official back in the day I mean probably it was an Army interrogator right this is this is exactly why it happened if you like this short clip make sure you click here to see the next clip or here to see the full podcast episode [Music] freedom