American Thought Leaders

“China is surpassing American strength, whether it be naval forces or nuclear forces,” says retired U.S. Army Col. John Mills.His four-decade career has spanned key roles from the Cold War era to the War on Terror. At the Department of Defense, he directed cybersecurity policy.“I was brought into cyber in 2007 when the threat really was Russian cyber adventurism, but by 2012, from that point onward, it was all China—wasn’t even close,” he says. “For every dollar Russia spent on misadventure, China spent 20.”In this episode, we dive into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) influence globally and how it has created what Mills calls a “world on fire.”“All the playing pieces are kind of in place for [CCP leader Xi Jinping] to make his move around the world, to establish China as the dominant nation state, and everything else, all other nations, would be tributary vassal states, including the U.S.,” Mills says.“They are absolutely advancing a relentless onslaught of information warfare, through their media, through their wolf warriors, to advance a Chinese communist message that just drowns out everything else.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Former Trump national security adviser retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn found himself at the center of a national firestorm when he was charged with lying to the FBI over a phone call he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.The DOJ would later drop the case, saying there was no “legitimate investigative basis” to have targeted him.In his new book “Pardon of Innocence,” he details his story.As new documents are released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, we sat down with the 33-year military veteran to understand how he sees everything that happened to him, almost a decade later.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“A quarter to a half of the exploitation that’s happening to our own nation’s youth ... it’s a caregiver doing it—it’s a familial figure,” Jaco Booyens says.He is the founder of Jaco Booyens Ministries (JBM), an anti-human trafficking organization working to protect American children from predatory exploitation.“We’re talking about a $52 billion industry of buying and selling predominantly women and children inside this country—American citizens. The discussion about an immigrant child or an immigrant in the country is a completely separate conversation,” he says.Booyens says laws against human trafficking are not being sufficiently enforced. Why are cases continuing to increase, while prosecutions decrease? And how is pornography a “gateway drug” into the trafficking industry?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Kelly Walker, a local coffee shop owner in Tucson, Arizona, never imagined how his world would be turned upside down when he started speaking out publicly against COVID-19 mandates and the harm to children.He and Sam Sorbo are cofounders of the Parents Demanding Justice Alliance. They have put together a report detailing alleged actions taken by local authorities to censor, surveil, and pressure parents who protested policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.Editor’s Note: Kelly Walker previously has done work for The Epoch Times as a freelance marketing writer. Sam Sorbo previously hosted a show on EpochTV called School’s Out with Sam Sorbo. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, Rushan Abbas reveals how the Chinese communist regime has escalated its campaign against the Uyghurs.Uyghurs are being mass surveilled, forcibly sterilized, and exploited as slave labor both in Xinjiang and in other provinces across China. There are growing signs of large-scale forced organ harvesting in the region—including an apparent special lane in the city of Kashgar’s airport dedicated to the transport of human organs.In 2018, the Chinese regime imprisoned Rushan Abbas’s sister Gulshan in an apparent attempt to silence Rushan. Her sister was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and she has since spent almost seven years detained—with no end in sight.Rushan Abbas is the author of the powerful memoir “Unbroken: One Uyghur’s Fight for Freedom.” She is the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs and chairperson of the World Uyghur Congress’s executive committee.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 exclusive interview, I spoke with Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), about his first 100 days in office and how he is transforming the agency.In this wide-ranging interview, we dive into his work to change food guidelines and drug approval processes, reduce supply chain vulnerabilities, and tackle conflicts of interest. We also address criticism of some of the FDA’s recent decisions surrounding vaccines.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a newly established U.S.-backed aid group distributing food in Gaza, is under fire from critics who say hundreds of Gazans have been killed near its distribution sites.But is there a bigger story here?In this episode, I sit down with Johnnie Moore, executive chairman of the GHF and former commissioner for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.“We have one mission, to feed the people of Gaza in a way that Hamas—a designated terrorist organization in the United States and Europe—can’t steal the food because for many, many years, Hamas has been stealing the food of the Gazan people,” Moore says.“The problem in Gaza is that the United Nations and other international agencies created a system which empowered virtually every bad actor and every bad force in the Gaza Strip to make a bad situation worse.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“We’re living in this strange day and age when we’ve essentially bio-hacked all of the things that we do and really come to organize our lives around our little rewards, right? So, we wake up in the morning, we reach for our phones, we have our cup of coffee, we have our favorite muffin.”Dr. Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist, professor, and medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University. She’s the author of “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.”“This is, of course, the great paradox, that although we want to avoid pain, our efforts to avoid pain actually lead to more pain,” she says.How have technology and modern living led to mass overconsumption in America?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

For decades, we’ve been reporting on the ways the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) crushes the religious freedom of its citizens. But in recent years, the CCP has been escalating its tactics against a religious group here—on American soil.In this episode, I sit down with religious freedom lawyers Justin Butterfield and Lea Patterson to understand what’s going on and discuss their response to a recent lawsuit against Shen Yun, the performing arts company founded by Falun Gong practitioners in New York. The case touches on vital questions about what it means to be able to practice your faith—and guide the education of your children in America.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

When Adam Coleman was 8 years old, he was institutionalized after contemplating suicide. He shares his struggles—and the struggles of so many others in America—of growing up without a father in his new book, “The Children We Left Behind: How Western Culture Rationalizes Family Separation and Ignores the Pain of Child Neglect.”“I went through a lot when I was a kid, and I want my story to be an example that, yes, certain things happen to you when you’re a child, but when you’re an adult, you make life happen for you. So, it is possible to overcome these circumstances,” he says.Only 60 percent of children in America live with married biological parents. Among black children, it’s 33 percent.What’s fueling the rise of divorce and family separation in the West? How do we make resilient, two-parent families the norm?“There are a lot of people who are afraid of marriage, afraid of having children, afraid of being alone with the opposite sex because of their childhood situation,” says Coleman.“If we demonstrate a household that is proper, that is healthy, then you have more kids who grow up with a good, positive image of having children, wanting a bigger family, of having marriage as the priority.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.