Ruse
What is a ruse? In this episode of Incorporating Superpowers, host Justin Recla welcomes guest Robert Kerbeck to the show. Robert is a former corporate spy, and now an author to the true crime memoir: RUSE: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street which is the story of how a wannabe actor became the world’s greatest corporate spy. Robert helps companies and business owners alike educate themselves on how to protect themselves from corporate espionage. The two discuss what it means to master the art of social engineering, or “rusing”. Tune in today to learn all about the ruse!
Justin Recla:
Welcome back to Incorporating Superpowers, folks who are going to be super excited for today’s episode because we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite topics from the counterintelligence world. This is like reaching back into my past, bringing it forward, because we’re gonna be talking to an actual corporate spy who was out there doing corporate espionage, getting secrets from companies, for his clients, for the companies that he worked for. And he’s written a book about it, he’s literally outed himself. And now he’s using his superpowers for good to help companies protect their assets and protect themselves, so they don’t get hacked, so they can use the techniques that the defense gets the techniques that he used to use it steal corporate secrets, and he’s written a book about it. And my guest today is Robert Kerbeck. He’s the author of Ruse, and I am super excited to join this conversation with you, Robert, thank you so much for being here.
Robert Kerbeck:
Justin, thanks for having me. This is a real pleasure to kind of go spy versus spy.
Justin Recla:
You know, it’s funny you say that because you know, as a counterintelligence that you get once you leave government there’s really a handful luxurious positions for you to find yourself in protecting against corporate espionage is one of them, and every major corporation out there, Microsoft, Boeing, you name it has teams of people that have former counters that are former counterintelligence experience, depending on what agency FBI army doesn’t matter. We have teams of people with my experience, that are protecting companies from corporate spies. And yet, this is what you did for a living. This is how you made a living. So I want to just ask, I’m gonna just dive right in. Yeah. How did you become a corporate spy?
Robert Kerbeck:
Yes, the origin story. Yeah, so the short version is I grew up in Philadelphia, my family, the correct family is very well known in the automobile business, my great-grandfather sold horse carriages before cars were invented. He switched over and became one of the first dealers in the city, my grandfather took that dealership over my father took it over, and I was supposed to take it over. But when I was in college, I fell in love with acting. When I graduated from college, I briefly went to work for my dad, and kind of the trickery of car sales just didn’t sit right with me didn’t feel right. This, of course, turns out to be pretty ironic because I moved to New York to try to be an actor, and actors need survival jobs and who stumble into a career as a corporate spy. But that’s what happened to me.
Justin Recla:
Wow. And what an amazing. I mean, they have the acting skills, right? To want to be an actor, you have to in order to be a spy, you have to be good at acting, and you have to be able to carry the different arcs the different energies, right? Because otherwise, you get found out really easily.
Robert Kerbeck:
Yeah, well, the woman who, you know, had this spying firm, because that’s what it was. She only hired actors, because, you know, they were the only ones that could kind of create voices and characters could do accents. You know, all of these things that you needed to do to convince people, smart people, people who are trained not to release sensitive private information, to indeed release sensitive private information. And so everybody that worked for her was an actor.
Justin Recla:
Absolutely fascinating. So I’m going to just, I’m going to keep the front end of this conversation, because I want to come on the backside of this, and really dive into what you’re doing to help people now. And I just got to ask, what was the flip? What made you get out of the corporate spy business? And use your structure to start using your superpowers for good? What was that? What was that moment?
Robert Kerbeck:
That’s a great question. It was when my eight-year-old heard me on the phone one-day routing, you know, hence the title of my book, routing somebody at a major corporation to tell me stuff that they in a million years should never tell me. And my child said, you know, you know, dad, or you know, are you a hacker, you know, and I said, Oh, no, no, no, you know, you know, and I basically was trying to justify what I did to my child. And that was the moment when I realized there was no justification. You know, there was no, you know, the, you know, you know, it was, you know, dishonest it was manipulative, it was wrong. And I had rationalized it for many years. for selfish reasons. One because I’m, you know, I’m here to tell you, being a corporate spy is very lucrative. But also because I was like, look at the end of The day all corporations are hiring spies. And that’s a fact all corporations are hiring spies. And so I justified it by going, Look, you know, everybody’s doing it. It’s part of the capitalist system. It’s just the way you know, business works, right? But to my child, it was really pretty disturbing for me. And that was the moment where I said, I gotta get out of this. I can’t I can’t keep doing this.
Justin Recla:
I literally just got chills. Robert, I literally just got chills, because of that moment of clarity when you when you can sit back and reflect and see it through the eyes of your children. Yeah, and to be honest, it’s the same reason why, one of the reasons why I got out of counter at the counter Intel world because it is a world of mental manipulation. It is a world of deception. And that’s not the world that I wanted to create for my kids. And it sounds like that’s the world that is not the world that you wanted to create for your children as well.
Robert Kerbeck:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, we see spies on TV all the time, James Bond, right? And it’s all cool. And you know, but everything that James Bond does is a lie. Right? I mean, you know, you know, everything that every spy does is a lie. You know, you’re undercover, you’re creating a false idea. You know, it’s all lies. And, you know, and so that was the kind of the life that I was living as a corporate spy. And it is, and it was like, one day at that moment, it was just like, you know, my blinders had been ripped off. And I just realized I didn’t, I didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t do that anymore.
Justin Recla:
I absolutely love that. And folks, stick with us, because when we get back from this break, we’re gonna dive into some of the things that Robert teaches and trains and covers in his book, Ruse, and how you can implement some of the stuff that he talks about in his book to protect yourself from being rude. But before we go on break, Robert, where can people go find more information about you?
Robert Kerbeck:
Thank you. I just tell people to go to my website. It’s easy. It’s just my name, RobertKerbeck.com. You can go there and you can buy the book from wherever you like to buy books. You can also see the trailer because Ruse is being made into a TV series. So you can get a sense of what the show will be like. And so you know that that’s the best place to go.
Justin Recla:
Fantastic, folks. Go take a look at it. Make sure you follow him because this TV show is going to be amazing because this world of corporate espionage, corporate spying, is truly cloak and dagger, it is a chess game, and going to the backside of this conversation is going to reveal some things. You’re going to want to pay attention to stay with us. We’ll be right back.
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