Shawn Ryan Says America Is Built on Lies—Then Promotes a Privacy App

Former Navy SEAL and podcaster Shawn Ryan recently described a sweeping loss of faith in American institutions, saying he had reached a point where he felt ashamed of having been a SEAL and came to believe the country was built on dishonesty, but another former Marine who watched the interview said the message became harder to accept once the conversation shifted toward Ryan’s new privacy app.

Jamesons Travels, the former Marine who runs the YouTube channel of the same name, reviewed Ryan’s interview with Tucker Carlson and repeatedly questioned whether Ryan’s conclusions were really as revelatory as they were presented.

His criticism was not that governments, media organizations, military institutions, or politicians always tell the truth. Instead, he argued that most adults already understand that powerful institutions have incentives, agendas, failures, and internal contradictions, making Ryan’s broader claim that “everything is a lie” feel far too sweeping.

Ryan Says His View of the Country Has Changed

During the Carlson interview, Ryan spoke about a recent psychedelic experience that he said sent him down a new spiritual path and fundamentally changed how he viewed his past.

He told Carlson that the experience had been deeply unsettling and said he felt as though he had encountered what hell would be like, although he also described it as successful because it pushed him toward a different way of thinking.

From there, Ryan moved into his growing distrust of institutions.

“Everything is a lie,” he said, before discussing cases involving military personnel that he believed had been misrepresented or mishandled.

Ryan specifically referenced the Eddie Gallagher case and a Blackwater-related incident, arguing that officials had been willing to punish their own people while withholding or destroying evidence that could have helped them.

He then broadened the conclusion well beyond those individual cases, saying that if serious dishonesty could exist inside one relatively small part of the military, he had begun wondering how much of the same behavior existed throughout the CIA, FBI, Congress, the Senate, presidential administrations, and other institutions.

That was where Jamesons Travels began pushing back most strongly.

Jamesons Travels Questions the “Everything Is a Lie” Claim

Jamesons Travels said he understood Ryan’s distrust but struggled with the leap from examples of misconduct to the conclusion that the country itself was built on lies.

He argued that politicians breaking promises, media outlets framing stories, and government institutions protecting their interests are hardly new discoveries.

“If everything’s a lie, should I assume everybody’s lying?” he asked while reviewing the interview.

His larger point was that skepticism should involve sorting through claims rather than deciding that every institution is fundamentally false.

Jamesons Travels said he already approaches news, politics, and government statements by asking what someone wants him to believe and what incentives might be shaping the message, but that does not lead him to conclude that everything is fabricated.

He also questioned Ryan’s statement that he wished he had never been a Navy SEAL, noting that Ryan’s military and intelligence background remains central to his public identity.

Ryan himself clarified that he did not regret his time in the SEALs and said he had enjoyed parts of it, but he now believed he no longer aligned with the ethics or value system he associated with the institution.

For Jamesons Travels, that distinction still left an obvious tension: Ryan’s career as a SEAL and CIA contractor helped create the credibility and audience that later allowed him to become one of the country’s most prominent military-themed podcasters.

A Spiritual Experience Becomes Central to Ryan’s Story

The interview then moved away from government institutions and into Ryan’s personal and spiritual experiences.

Ryan described receiving a message from the daughter of a deceased friend named Dan, who told him she had felt her father’s presence while entering his gun room and believed he wanted her to contact Ryan.

She told Ryan that her father had regarded him as one of his closest friends and said she would like to hear more about their relationship if he ever felt comfortable discussing it.

Ryan said the message arrived during a period when several other experiences were already affecting him emotionally, and he described the combination as life-changing.

He also recalled walking through a property in Sedona and later becoming convinced that a man working in a guard shack may have been God speaking directly to him.

Ryan said his wife, Katie, responded by telling him that God had always been speaking to him but that he had not previously created enough room in his life to recognize it.

Jamesons Travels did not attack Ryan for the religious interpretation, and at several points he acknowledged that Ryan appeared emotionally vulnerable and deeply affected by what he had experienced.

At the same time, he made clear that he did not personally interpret coincidences or encounters in the same way and wondered whether Ryan was drawing conclusions while still emotionally raw from a powerful experience.

That is probably the fairest way to read the disagreement. Ryan was describing events through a newly religious framework, while Jamesons Travels was evaluating them from a far more skeptical one.

Then the Conversation Turns to a Privacy App

The part that raised the most suspicion for Jamesons Travels came later, when the interview moved from surveillance, distrust, phones, and institutional power into discussion of Ryan’s new privacy-focused app, Glacier.

Ryan described smartphones as fundamentally invasive and said he had become deeply uncomfortable with how much information they expose.

Carlson agreed that modern phones are not truly private and said people in broadcasting should assume they are being surveilled.

The timing immediately bothered Jamesons Travels.

He noted that viewers had just spent a long stretch hearing that institutions could not be trusted, phones were dangerous from a privacy standpoint, and powerful systems were dishonest, only for the conversation to arrive at a product designed to address precisely those fears.

Jamesons Travels questioned whether that transition was really as spontaneous as the interview suggested, particularly because Ryan released additional material about the app shortly afterward.

“I feel like I’m being snookered here,” he said.

He was careful not to claim that Glacier does not work. His criticism was instead about the sales structure: if an audience is first told that nearly everyone is lying and surveillance is everywhere, a privacy product introduced immediately afterward deserves the same skepticism being applied to everybody else.

The Sales Pitch Creates an Awkward Contradiction

Jamesons Travels also questioned whether any phone application could truly solve the surveillance problem Ryan and Carlson described.

If governments and intelligence agencies have access to highly advanced technology, he argued, consumers should be cautious about assuming that one commercial app makes a smartphone completely private or impossible to compromise.

He pointed out that wealthy public officials and powerful institutions have enormous resources available for communications security, yet highly secure technology remains an ongoing problem even for them.

His argument was less about Glacier specifically than about the tendency to sell simple solutions to very complicated threats.

That criticism carries some weight because the broader message of Ryan’s interview was built around distrust. If audiences are being encouraged not to put unquestioning faith in politicians, agencies, military leadership, media outlets, or technology companies, then a product promoted by a trusted podcast host should not automatically receive an exemption.

The same skepticism should apply in every direction.

“Don’t Put Your Faith in Any Man”

Ryan eventually summarized part of his new worldview with another statement that caught Jamesons Travels’ attention: “Don’t put your faith in any man.”

Ryan said he had previously placed too much faith in politicians and other powerful people, only to feel repeatedly disappointed.

Jamesons Travels agreed with the basic idea but again questioned why it had taken on the weight of a major revelation.

He said he never expected politicians to perfectly fulfill promises in the first place and viewed public figures as existing on a spectrum from better to worse rather than as people worthy of complete faith.

Carlson, however, called Ryan’s statement wise and agreed that people who place that kind of faith in individuals will eventually be disappointed.

That exchange may actually provide the simplest framework for evaluating the entire interview, including Ryan himself.

A person can find value in Ryan’s criticism of government institutions, his spiritual reflections, or his concern about digital privacy without accepting every conclusion he reaches.

Jamesons Travels Says Ryan Appears Genuinely Changed

By the end of his video, Jamesons Travels did not portray Ryan as simply inventing an act for commercial reasons.

He said Ryan appeared genuinely raw from his recent experiences and seemed to have undergone a substantial personal change.

His concern was that emotional certainty can sometimes make extremely broad claims feel more convincing than the evidence supports.

Saying that some institutions lie is very different from saying the country is built entirely on lies, just as acknowledging that smartphones create privacy risks is different from proving that a particular app can solve them.

Jamesons Travels ultimately encouraged viewers to watch Ryan’s full interview and decide for themselves, while making clear that he remained unconvinced by several of the conclusions.

The contradiction he kept returning to was difficult to ignore: Ryan warned his audience against placing blind trust in institutions and powerful people, then introduced a product built around asking those same viewers to trust his solution to a problem he had just spent considerable time describing.

That does not automatically make Ryan wrong about surveillance, government dishonesty, or Glacier. It simply means the skeptical standard he is asking Americans to apply to institutions may be equally useful when listening to the people selling alternatives to them.