American Thought Leaders

• Exclusive: Kash Patel Talks China Fentanyl, Violent Networks, ‘Burn Bags,’ and More

  In this exclusive interview with FBI Director Kash Patel, we dive into the agency’s crackdown on crime and foreign espionage, his trip to China, the “burn bags,” and recent criticisms.What exactly is the “764 network,” and how is the FBI working to target these actors? Why did President Donald Trump label Antifa a domestic terror organization, and how does this alter the playing field?Does the FBI director’s recent visit to China signify a pivot in the agency’s priorities? Given Beijing’s record of broken promises, can we really expect the regime to honor its side of the fentanyl deal?The criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey was dismissed—what’s next? What are the FBI “burn bags,” and what was really discovered in those Trump investigation documents?Patel also reacts to recent headlines and controversies regarding his use of an FBI aircraft, the security detail for his partner, Alexis Wilkins, and rumors that Trump planned to replace him as FBI director.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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• Why These 9 Institutions Must Be Reformed Post-COVID | Jeffrey Tucker

  For many Americans, the COVID-19 era revealed profound ruptures in American society. While some are eager to move on from that period and simply return to “normal,” there are others who wonder: Is it really that simple?How can we move forward without truly reconciling with the profound brokenness that was revealed in the last five years? How can we simply ignore or forget those who were censored, deplatformed, surveilled, fired, socially exiled, or irrevocably injured? And if a new virus were to spread in America, can we really say that the same things wouldn’t happen all over again?At the center of the people asking these questions is the Brownstone Institute, founded by Jeffrey Tucker, senior economics columnist at The Epoch Times. Brownstone has become a safe haven for free thinkers to deliberate on some of the most profound questions of our time.“We’re really at this precipice. We don’t know which way we’re going to go,” Tucker says.In this episode, he breaks down nine key foundational institutions of American life that he believes are in desperate need of reform.“We need a different system, a renewed and refreshed system of ideas production and teaching production in this country, with new independent institutions that are willing to stand up and do the right thing, [that] embrace classical forms of teaching and have a broad-minded approach to academia,” Tucker says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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• How a Little Known Technology Can Break China’s Rare Earths Stranglehold | Dr. James Tour

  In a few years, America may not need to buy critical minerals from China anymore, says synthetic chemist and nanotechnologist James Tour.Why? Because of a method called flash Joule heating that he and his team have been studying at Rice University.China currently has a near-monopoly on global processing capacity for critical minerals, including rare earths. These are essential to much of our modern economy, from electronics to defense to medical devices.The United States has access to plenty of rare-earth reserves, but minimal capacity to process and refine them. Rebuilding these incredibly complex supply chains independent of China is a major uphill battle.But Tour and his team have pioneered a process that allows for the quick extraction of rare earths from something we have in abundance: electronic and industrial waste.“We realized that we could take certain materials, say industrial waste like fly ash … flash it, and get rare-earth elements to come out,” Tour says.The same method can be used to extract rare earths from mine tailings—the leftover, toxic material from old mines that were once too expensive to process.“So there’s huge availability of this. And if you recycle it—metals are infinitely recyclable,” Tour says.Tour is a professor of chemistry, materials science, and nanoengineering at Rice University. You can find him on X and other platforms: @drjamestourViews expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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• How Your Private Data Is Packaged, Sold, and Deployed to Target You | Joe Weil

  Most Americans have little understanding of the vast amount of private data harvested from their smartphones by third parties, said Joe Weil, a former Apple product manager and the founder of Unplugged.Where you go, who you associate with, what you like, is all easily discoverable, Weil said.“It’s publicly available. It’s purchasable.”What’s even worse is that the Fourth Amendment does not protect this advertising data, he said. The U.S. government, for example, does not require a warrant to access it.Data brokers sell this data freely, and by applying just a few filters, anyone—foreign governments, intelligence services, criminal cartels—can easily triangulate it to surveil and target individual people or groups, Weil said.“We can’t do [surveillance] in China. They can do it here, and it’s a huge vulnerability. They can easily find the people they want to take off the board—it’s mapped out from our phones,” he said.Weil worked for 10 years at Apple in product strategy before founding Unplugged, a tech company that has built a smartphone designed to block tracking, data harvesting, and behavioral profiling at the system level.​Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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• From Gene-Edited Babies to ‘Bodyoids,’ the Brave New World of Modern Medicine | Dr. Aaron Kheriaty

  Modern medicine is veering away from the traditional Hippocratic Oath that required physicians to do no harm and use their knowledge and skills solely for the purpose of healing the patient, says psychiatrist and bioethics expert Dr. Aaron Kheriaty.Now, physicians are euthanizing patients, removing healthy organs in certain transgender-related surgeries, and injecting drugs for late-term abortions even when the mother’s life is not threatened.Hippocratic principles are being superseded by utilitarian ethics that prioritize the “greater good” over the well-being and rights of individual patients, Kheriaty says. That’s fueling, for instance, the push to expand the dead-donor eligibility criteria for organ donations.It’s also manifesting in the push to adopt technological advancements like germ-line gene editing that could be used to create “designer babies” or in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), a process that uses stem cells, such as those derived from skin cells, to create human eggs and sperm in a lab.Earlier this year, an op-ed in the MIT Technology Review argued for the creation of “spare” human bodies called “bodyoids.” These would essentially be human bodies created in laboratories from human stem cells, but without brains or consciousness. Proponents say they would revolutionize medical research and drug testing and create an unlimited supply of organs.It sounds like the stuff of science fiction. What are the true ethical implications? Is this really where we want medicine to go?Kheriaty is the director of the bioethics and American democracy program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former director of the medical ethics program at UCI Health.His latest book is titled “Making the Cut: How to Heal Modern Medicine.”“The biggest advance [that] medicine needs to make is to accept the limits of medicine,” he says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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