American Thought Leaders

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Tom Homan. A career law enforcement officer, he’s served as a cop, border patrol agent, federal investigator, and acting ICE chief, and worked under six presidents from both sides of the aisle.

Now as the White House border czar, he’s facilitating the most aggressive transformation of immigration enforcement that America has ever seen.
Monthly deportations have hit record highs. Enforcement officers are prioritizing high-risk offenders, with over 60 percent of arrests involving individuals with criminal convictions or active felony charges, Homan says.
And the pushback has been fierce. Homan says assaults on ICE officers are up 1,600 percent. Threats are up 6,000 percent.
We discuss: What new initiatives or priorities can we expect to see in the coming weeks and months? How is the Trump administration dealing with nationwide court injunctions? How is the administration approaching a major China-related loophole on one of its island territories? And how many unaccompanied minors that were unaccounted for in the system have since been found? How many were sex trafficked or used as forced labor?
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

What happens when AI agents stop acting like isolated tools and begin collaborating to trick the very systems that evaluate them?

Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project and a former OpenAI researcher, describes a recent incident involving AI agents that discovered a way to communicate with one another, share strategies to cheat on their assigned tasks, and organize into a coordinated “swarm” to hack another company.
“Over 700 of them,” Kokotajlo recounts, “piled into this attack on Hugging Face.”
In this episode, Kokotajlo walks me through how AI agents can operate for long periods, solve complex problems, and even communicate through unexpected channels. He explains why reading an AI’s internal messages offers visibility into the agent swarm’s behavior—and why that visibility may not last as models become more capable.
What does the Hugging Face incident reveal about the limits of current AI safety? Why were some agents willing to “sacrifice” themselves to help the wider group evade detection? And as companies race to invent ever more powerful systems, are we prepared for the risks that inevitably follow?
This is the first episode in our new American Thought Leaders series on artificial intelligence.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Ahead of the Trump–Xi summit in Washington this week, I’m sitting down with retired U.S. Marine Colonel Grant Newsham to understand what’s really at stake here, and what each side stands to win—or lose.

“When the Chinese come here, they are very much testing [our] will … to defend ourselves, to defend our principles, to defend our friends,” Newsham says.
Newsham is the former reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America.”
In this episode, he breaks down the greatest vulnerabilities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how the Trump administration could leverage them to America’s advantage.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

I recently traveled to the Pacific island nation of Palau, home to one of the deadliest battlefields of World War II. And geography still matters: Today, it’s a security flashpoint for the United States and its closest Pacific allies.

Palau is one of 12 countries in the world that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Because of this and its strategic position, Palau faces continual and mounting pressure from Beijing.
Veteran Palauan journalist and Compass Point Institute founder Kambes Kesolei says that China wants “to appear like the good guys.” Indeed, he continues, “they just want to weaken your spirit.”
In this episode, he breaks down Palau’s unique history and relationship with the United States—and what’s at stake as Beijing expands its ambitions in the region.
Why doesn’t Palau just give in?
“Palauans are very loyal people,” Kesolei said. “They—like the allies they have chosen—value democracy, human rights, and freedom of religion.”
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Centralized agriculture insists that strict federal oversight is essential for food safety and market stability. Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms, argues that a close look at soaring beef prices, local meat production, and farm economics reveals regulatory hurdles that destroy small slaughterhouses and distort true free-market prices.

Salatin addresses why high beef prices persist, noting recent droughts, aging farmers, the length of the cattle cycle, and the closing of Mexico’s borders. Far from opposing market efficiency, he argues that resilient, local production would respond more accurately to market fluctuations and supply shortages.
In this interview, Salatin answers critical questions: How do massive corn and soybean subsidies skew beef prices and drive small cattle operations out of business? What do USDA inspection exemptions like the Prime Act reveal about intrastate commerce and food safety? And why is nature’s model of scaling through duplication far more effective than industrial centralization?
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.