American Thought Leaders

The Epoch Times
  • 4.9 (1.2K)
  • Politics
  • Updated Semiweekly

At a time when our nation is portrayed as increasingly polarized, media often ignore viewpoints and stories that are worthy of attention. American Thought Leaders, hosted by The Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek, features in-depth discussions with some of America’s most influential thought leaders on pertinent issues facing our nation today.

  1. The CCP Wants to Subjugate Taiwan—She’s Standing in the Way | An Exclusive With Hsiao Bi-Khim

    1d ago

    The CCP Wants to Subjugate Taiwan—She’s Standing in the Way | An Exclusive With Hsiao Bi-Khim

    “We will not let Communist Party of China define who we are,” said Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, who has been sanctioned by Beijing and labeled a “separatist.” Despite Beijing’s ever-growing hostility toward Taiwan, she is not deterred. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has escalated its “gray zone” operations, naval aggression, large-scale encirclement drills and missile tests, and aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has promised to seize Taiwan—including by force if necessary. Beijing has also aggressively sought to isolate Taiwan internationally and peel away its allies. Only 11 countries and the Holy See still maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan as of 2026. “China’s cognitive warfare, psychological warfare, political warfare, legal warfare, and very aggressive interventions in our domestic society and politics [have] become an increasingly serious problem,” Hsiao said. Born to a Taiwanese father and an American mother, Hsiao previously served in Taiwan’s legislature and as the island’s top representative in Washington, where she became known for her “cat warrior diplomacy.” Although Taiwan is only about the size of Maryland, it plays a pivotal role in the global economy, producing more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors—the chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones, cars, and much of tomorrow’s technology. It is also America’s fourth-largest trading partner, and nearly half of all global container ships—dwarfing even shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—sail through the narrow Taiwan Strait, carrying trillions in trade. “Everything we’re doing today in strengthening Taiwan is to prevent an invasion, to prevent that scenario from happening,” Hsiao said. Recently, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau established a secure information-reporting channel for Chinese nationals to submit intelligence tips—a unprecedented move for Taiwan. In this episode, I sat down with Hsiao in the presidential office of Taiwan to understand what’s really at stake here and how Taiwan is working to strengthen its whole-of-society resilience and deter a greater conflict. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    32 min
  2. Beijing Wants to Wipe Taiwan Off the Map—This Man Is Making Sure Its People Can Survive | Enoch Wu

    4d ago

    Beijing Wants to Wipe Taiwan Off the Map—This Man Is Making Sure Its People Can Survive | Enoch Wu

    💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHG With Chinese leader Xi Jinping repeatedly stating his plans to take Taiwan by force if necessary, many are wondering: What might such an invasion look like, and how prepared is Taiwan to defend itself and withstand such an assault? Enoch Wu is working to tip the balance in Taiwan’s favor. Born in Chicago to Taiwanese parents, he decided to quit his lucrative career as a finance executive in Hong Kong to join Taiwan’s special forces in his early 30s. And he’s since devoted his life to preventing Taiwan from being wiped from the map by its large totalitarian neighbor. In 2020, he founded Forward Alliance to train ordinary Taiwanese in trauma medicine, search and rescue, establish communication networks, and organize shelters during a crisis. The group has now trained tens of thousands of ordinary Taiwanese to become de facto first responders through partnerships with local churches, schools, and other community groups. Wu explains his philosophy: while the military serves as a country’s sword, societal resilience serves as its shield. At the heart of our conversation is an urgent message: “The whole point of living in a democratic society,” Wu says, “is that we are all owners, and we have to take responsibility. We can’t treat democracy like a heritage that’s just passed down. You can’t take it as a given. You have to continue to nurture it. You have to invest in it. You have to improve it.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    33 min
  3. How Classical Arts Training Helps Kids Unlock Their Full Potential | Sherry Zhang

    6d ago

    How Classical Arts Training Helps Kids Unlock Their Full Potential | Sherry Zhang

    Leonardo da Vinci once wrote that the key to developing a “complete mind” was to “study the science of art. Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” In 2009, Sherry Zhang and a group of dedicated California parents who were disillusioned with the schools in their area decided to co-found an academic institution that would put this philosophy into practice. A former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory postdoctoral chemist, Zhang shares her unexpected journey from working in a garage tech start up to being a founding member of a classical academy. In this episode, Zhang discusses the core philosophy behind classical education—built upon three tenets: truth, goodness, and beauty. She reveals how intensive training in classical Chinese dance, ballet, visual arts, and music causes students to develop habits of perseverance, focus, and attentiveness that transfer to academics. In an age dominated by instant gratification and digital distraction, Zhang explains how the structure of classical arts provides order that children long for. One student, Hugo, came to the San Francisco High School of the Arts unable to focus and with failing grades. After one year at the school, he began to prosper academically, and his mother was stunned. His story is just one among many, Zhang 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.

    35 min
  4. How Cartel Mega-Tunnels Move Hundreds of Millions in Narcotics Into America | Sara Carter

    Jun 13

    How Cartel Mega-Tunnels Move Hundreds of Millions in Narcotics Into America | Sara Carter

    🏆Sponsor: FreedomProject Academy enrollment open now! 10% discount on tuition w/code: EPOCH10 Click here: https://ept.ms/ATL—FPE U.S. federal investigators recently discovered a sophisticated tunnel 55 feet underground between Mexico and California—among the largest ever found—with electricity, a rail system, ventilation, reinforced walls, and a complex hydraulic lift system. White House “drug czar” Sara Carter estimated that it was used to transport narcotics worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This is just one of the over 200 tunnels of varying sizes and sophistication that have been discovered in the last four decades, with many more likely still undetected, she said. As Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Carter is fighting to end the narcotic epidemic killing Americans, seize cartel finances, and make a drug-free life the new norm in America. Deaths from illicit narcotics in America have been rising for decades and reached an all-time high in 2022, with 112,000 Americans dying in a single year. Since the Trump administration took office, that number has dropped to about 68,000 for the 12-month period ending in November 2025. But Americans of all ages are still dying. In this episode, Carter breaks down the complex pipelines that are driving this epidemic and how the Trump administration has been going on the offensive to attack both the supply and demand sides of this crisis. How exactly do illicit narcotics and precursor chemicals make their way into the United States? How have America’s enemies weaponized these deadly drugs? And how can we begin to comprehend the truly devastating human cost—the many young lives that were abruptly cut short and the families left behind? Carter revealed that she always thinks to herself, “This could be my child.” On the evening of our interview, she told us she would be heading to meet an Angel family who recently lost their son, a recent law graduate, to a line of fentanyl-laced cocaine. “His parents had all the hopes in the world for him. … He went to a party after law school in Miami and made a huge mistake. He did a line of cocaine that had fentanyl in it, seized, had a heart attack, and died in an instant in the party,” she 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.

    49 min
  5. Why Women Can’t Find Good Husbands | Timothy Goeglein

    Jun 12

    Why Women Can’t Find Good Husbands | Timothy Goeglein

    “We are definitively, with no debate, in a demographic winter in the history of the United States of America. We have never had a lower marriage rate, and we’ve never had a lower fertility rate,” says Timothy Goeglein, vice president of External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family. Goeglein is the author of multiple books, including most recently “What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family.” In our interview, we explore how America ended up where it is today. Why are millions of prime-age men neither working nor seeking a job? Why do women find it so hard to find a good partner? What is the antidote to America’s high rates of suicide, drug overdose, pornography addiction, and family dysfunction? “The biggest single challenge facing America in its 250th year … is a spiritual crisis of a pretty substantial order,” Goeglein said. He believes we are witnessing in America “the practical ramifications of destroying an objective moral code … of saying you can’t really define good and evil.” Luckily, this is not the whole story. In this interview, Goeglein explains the signs of hope he sees and what he calls “a quiet Renaissance.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    43 min
  6. How Constitutional Liberties Moved Into Hidden Algorithms | Jacob Siegel

    Jun 6

    How Constitutional Liberties Moved Into Hidden Algorithms | Jacob Siegel

    🏆Sponsor: FreedomProject Academy enrollment open now! 10% discount on tuition w/code: EPOCH10 Click here: https://ept.ms/ATL—FPE There are few people who understand the machinery behind modern disinformation and censorship better than Jacob Siegel. He’s a special features editor at Tablet Magazine and author of the new book “The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control.” In this episode, we trace the origins of modern information control, from President Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda office during World War I and President Barack Obama’s “whole-of-society” framework, to the policing of information during the COVID-19 pandemic. He breaks down how government agencies, major tech platforms, and large nonprofits can work together behind the scenes to control who gets to speak and who does not, and what ideas are expressed and which are obscured. “If you can control the information, you can control the society,” Siegel said. And the digital age makes this possible to a degree never reached before, he added. So, how has this transformed our society and our liberties? “The principles of the constitutional order, the principles of the liberal nation state have begun to be profoundly eroded by this new kind of information-based political regime,” Siegel said. “Those rights are relocated into the digital code, so the question of who can speak, who can express their ideas, is no longer clearly defined and delimited by these print-era documents. Now it becomes a question of who controls the digital code.” According to Siegel, the transition to the digital era has resulted in a vast “sweeping away of previously existing local organizations [and] civic organizations.” And more recently, we have been witnessing, whether we are aware of it or not, what he calls the “vast acceleration of the erasure of core remnants of civil society.” So how do we navigate this new digital arena, especially with the rise of 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.

    1h 25m
  7. What the End of the Orban Era Means for Hungary and Its Constitution | Marton Sulyok

    Jun 5

    What the End of the Orban Era Means for Hungary and Its Constitution | Marton Sulyok

    Hungary is undergoing a major transformation with the election of a new prime minister. After 16 years in power, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party was swept from office in a historic landslide election in April and with an equally historic turnout of almost 80 percent. The new Tisza party, led by Peter Magyar, won the largest super-majority in Hungary’s post-communist history with a platform focused on anti-corruption and national renewal. They’ve promised major changes to Hungary’s constitution, known as the Fundamental Law. So what does this election mean for Hungary and how might the new leadership reorient its relationship with America, the European Union, Russia, and China? Orban was known for his pro-family and pro-tradition domestic policies, while at the same time cultivating close ties with Russia and communist China and distancing himself from the EU. Joining us today to break all this down is Hungarian constitutional law scholar Marton Sulyok, a visiting researcher at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Sulyok is, notably, also the son of Hungary’s current President, Tamas Sulyok. Magyar has demanded the resignation of Sulyok and other Orban allies. It remains to be seen whether they will be forced out by constitutional amendment or other means. Despite his family ties, the younger Sulyok has remained strikingly detached. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    58 min
  8. One Key Fact About America’s Founding That Isn’t Taught Anymore | Eric Metaxas

    May 30

    One Key Fact About America’s Founding That Isn’t Taught Anymore | Eric Metaxas

    Ahead of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, New York Times bestselling author and talk show host Eric Metaxas is publishing his latest book, a 600-page volume titled “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World.” In the book, he argues that the American Revolution is the “only genuine revolution in the history of so-called revolutions.” So what separated the American Revolution from other revolutions? What made it succeed? And what critical aspects of the American Revolution are no longer being taught in schools today? Metaxas argues that America is currently facing its third existential crisis, after the American Revolution and the Civil War, and understanding the core principles behind America’s founding story is critical to preserving the liberties of this nation. In the interview, we confront some key questions: How is the erosion of spiritual faith transforming American society? How does self-government work without the “moral and religious people” that John Adams described as a prerequisite for self-government? What is the proper role of a good citizen? Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    50 min
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At a time when our nation is portrayed as increasingly polarized, media often ignore viewpoints and stories that are worthy of attention. American Thought Leaders, hosted by The Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek, features in-depth discussions with some of America’s most influential thought leaders on pertinent issues facing our nation today.

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