American Thought Leaders

Modern culture often treats popular consensus and media narratives as settled truth. Warren Smith, author of the new book “A Mind of Your Own: Independent Thinking in the Age of Misinformation,” argues that our society is increasingly convinced by misleading narratives rather than objective reality.

He is the creator of the Secret Scholars Society channel on YouTube, and he’s become known for using the Socratic method to introduce people to different viewpoints.
He argues that allowing ideas to conflict is essential to intellectual growth.
“We recoil often from conflict,” he said, “but that’s where growth occurs.”
Smith walked me through a host of questions: How do narrative manipulation and herd psychology compel people to abandon logic? How can one learn to identify fallacious arguments? And why does our culture so easily mistake emotional consensus for moral authority?
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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.