EPOCHTV
- Dec 10, 2023
- 22 min read

How Utah Is Giving Up on Freedom and Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution

"You may be surprised what's happening in your backyard if you start peeling back the layers."

Alexia and Jason Preston are hosts of the Utah-based podcast, “We Are The People.” They’ve been exploring how institutions like the Chinese Communist Party, the World Economic Forum, and the United Nations have been influencing local politicians and policy for decades.

"It's really not to see what people want. It's how to get the programs they want passed through, so then they can bring it to legislators and say, ‘Well, 98 percent of the community wants walkable communities, so they want smart cities.’ So, they're shifting perspective in that way and shaping perspective," says Ms. Preston. "You're seeing programs roll out in a way that it is really testing the public to see just how much will be allowed to roll out in Utah."

Watch the clip:

"We need to stop. We need to look at where we're heading as a nation, where we're heading as states," says Mr. Preston. "Is this technology that can be used for good or bad—is this going to lead our children towards a safer future? Or is this potentially going to lead them to a future like China?"

🔴 WATCH the full episode (38 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1031JasonAlexiaPreston

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek: Alexia and Jason Preston, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Alexia Preston: It's great to be here with you, Jan.

Jason Preston: It's very good to be here, thank you.

Mr. Jekielek: I don't talk about Utah very much on the show, but when you contacted me I got very interested. You typically think of Utah as a very conservative state. You don't think of it as a place where there's a lot of experimentation with things like 15-minute cities, digital IDs, or other modern innovations that comport with a more top-down vision for the world. You have been looking at this closely. Alexia, what's going on?

Ms. Preston: Jason is originally from Utah, and I come from the East Coast. Utah is a very unique state, and you would think that Utah is a conservative red state. We quickly learned that it's actually in a very interesting transition period, and there are a lot of these pilot programs going on. There is a lot of shadow government in the form of regionalism stepping in with programs such as smart cities.

Many people say we elect Republican, but we govern Democratic. These programs roll out in a way that it is really testing the public to see just how much will be allowed to roll out in Utah. One of the programs is the 15-minute smart city. We've had confrontations with the governor where he has flat out denied these are in existence.

Governor Cox: I don't know what you're talking about. There's no such thing as a smart city. Stop making up stuff to try to make me look bad.

Mr. Jekielek: Meanwhile, he's hosting luncheons that are showcasing how we could be the first smart state.

Governor Cox: And allow us to continue to lead the nation in technological advancements in smart cities. And really, there's no reason we can't be the first smart state as we use these partnerships.

Ms. Preston: It's an interesting contradiction. We moved there thinking that it was going to be conservatively governed, and yet it’s now leaning in a much more progressive direction.

Mr. Jekielek: Maybe this is just a great interest in technology. People that are interested in doing things this way, they're not thinking of imposing authoritarian control. They're just thinking, "There is this great new technology. Why don't we use this to make people's lives better?"

Mr. Preston: You're right. We have a lot of legislators who are thinking they're doing what's in the best interest of the state. Klaus Schwab talks about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. If you don't really understand who Klaus Schwab is, what the World Economic Forum is, what their objectives are, and you just hear that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is about introducing more technology, I'm sure it can seem innocent.

Too much of that power in the hands of the wrong people can be dangerous. If things go south, what happens with the next crisis in the hands of the wrong person? That's what my concern is. We're really moving down this road very quickly. I don't think any of the public is having any conversation about it, or is even as aware of what's happening. That’s my concern. Shouldn't we have some public conversation about what is happening here?

Mr. Jekielek: Utah is a very Mormon state, and Mormons put a very high value on autonomy. This is why they are in Utah in the first place. What you are describing doesn't make sense.

Mr. Preston: Yes, it's interesting. I do legislative research, and I work all around the country. When we moved to Utah in 2017, I was excited, because part of the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that the Constitution is literally inspired by God, and that God directed the Founding Fathers in creating it. We came from Florida, where you saw Florida standing up against the federal government and really pushing back. We thought, “We're going to Utah, Let's go on with this trend.”

We were shocked at once when we got to Utah, because we were really expecting that mindset. Then all of a sudden we saw how soft they were on immigration, and how their elections were ranked so poorly. The more issues we started to see, the more we got involved, and the more we got ingrained in Utah, we went from being very naive, thinking that this was the great patriotic state, to realizing that they were setting themselves up to lead the nation in the wrong direction.

Ms. Preston: But it hadn't always been like that. If you go back to the seventies, it was people like Ezra Taft Benson, who was not just church leadership, but was also political leadership. There has been a gradual shift over time. Some of the programs in our state like Envision Utah have used religion to shape the thinking and the mind frame of the state, and subvert the state with some of these programs.

Mr. Jekielek: Let's talk about that. I was looking at some of the literature that Envision Utah has put up on its website. They're speaking very transparently about getting people to conform to their policies, by using people’s existing ways of thinking. They're actively engaged in doing that.

Mr. Preston: We've had James Lindsay and Trevor Loudon on recently, and they really started digging into everything that’s going on. James Lindsay said, "This state is one of the best examples of subverting people's values." This state was so strong for property rights, and so strong for the Constitution and constitutional principles. This is the last state you would expect to see pushing regional governments. This is the last place you would see pushing special districts. This is the last place you would expect to be pushing digital ID, mail-in voting, ranked-choice voting, and all these progressive things.

What Alexia and James Lindsay are really getting to is that you even see Envision Utah bragging about how they have subverted Utah. They even publish their studies, and they've put money and marketing into understanding people's values with focus groups. Then they say, "Okay, here are their values." They've done such a great job that there are articles explaining what they have done, which they call the Utah Model. They are now trying to use it to teach other governments how to do that in other areas.

Mr. Jekielek: Regional governance doesn't sound like a bad thing. That sounds like something you might actually want, but you made it sound like it's something you don't want. Please explain that. What is the Utah Model? What does it mean?

Ms. Preston: The Envision Utah process is how they use focus groups and plan what's important to Utah, so they can shift messaging and determine what is going to stick. Essentially, it's really not to see what people want. It's how to get the programs they want passed. Then they can bring these studies to legislators and say, "Well, 98 percent of the community wants walkable communities, so they want smart cities." They're shifting perspective in that way, and then shaping perspective. This is something that has been creeping in for the last several decades. We're seeing that with Envision Utah, and through other groups that are using public opinion to create policy.

Mr. Preston: John Crist came out to Utah to do a comedy show in June. He posted his story on Instagram, and we reposted it. He said, "What has happened to Utah? Has any state given up and flown the white flag so fast? This state used to stand up and it used to be so conservative. Now there's a gay flag on every corner. They just threw up their hands and gave up."

You have a lot of very good people with very good values. But the problem is that certain values have been elevated and pushed through the media as higher values; the values of tolerance, belonging, acceptance, and love. The values of truth and protecting our children are not talked about. The values of liberty, freedom, property rights are not talked about. They only elevate their selected principles. What happens then? You have a lot of these great people thinking, "We want people coming to the state to feel loved, to feel welcomed, and to feel safe."

Mr. Jekielek: That's a good thing.

Mr. Preston: It is a good thing. It is a good thing to be loving and tolerant, but the problem is what's behind that agenda. That flag is not about kindness and love. There's a much darker side to it. The challenge is that people are not seeing that.

Ms. Preston: You asked why we think regionalism can be a bad thing, because it does sound like a good thing on the surface. We look at it through the lens of shadow governments and pushing boundaries, not just pushing boundaries in the progressive way, but literally overstepping boundaries, and creating these new forms of government. A perfect example would be the first model of a smart city called The Point, which is right on the border of Salt Lake and Utah counties. In terms of governance there is not necessarily going to be a mayor or a city council. It is a mix of these unelected shadow governments that will be the authorities.

Mr. Preston: When you say shadow government, not everyone will understand that.

Ms. Preston: We actually have hundreds of them. Some of the most well-known ones in Utah are the Utah League of Cities & Towns, and the Wasatch Front Regional Council. They are unelected officials, but they are the ones behind this. We've even done shows with Trent Staggs, mayor of Riverton, who is running for Mitt Romney’s Senate seat, now that he has resigned. He has acknowledged that these are the ones that are creating policy and writing legislation behind our elected officials.

Mr. Jekielek: How did they get into these positions of power in the first place? If they are unelected, who appointed them?

Mr. Preston: You can look at it as a special district, and basically, it's a corporation that has bought this land. We'll talk about The Point, which formerly was a prison at the point of a mountain in Utah. You have a public-corporate, public-private partnership that is building this. But the problem is that it's not part of any existing city. You have former mayors, former politicians, and high profile people that sit on this board.

That's what she refers to as a shadow government, because they're not actually an elected government. They are making these decisions, "Here's what we're going to do with this land. Here's how we're going to develop it. We're going to have everything within walking distance.” It's also coordinated with the state, but this new form of government is completely unconstitutional.

It is similar to Disney in Orlando, although Disney didn’t really own that property. In general, people are starting to realize this type of thing may be a bad idea. But in Utah, that's what we're pushing forward—more of this type of government.

Mr. Jekielek: It is basically a completely privatized municipality that has some government influence. Is that correct?

Mr. Preston: Yes, it's almost more like a corporation that has a board. Initially, the people who live there would be able to elect people to that board. It blurs the lines of the constitutional government our Founding Fathers gave us. That's a huge red flag, especially when you're putting in the elements of a smart city with more surveillance and more digital ID.

That's to me the recipe for disaster. That is not the type of country our Founding Fathers intended for us to be living in. Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum, and the UN are very big on these regional governments. What is the World Economic Forum? It is basically the same thing— unelected leaders creating a self-proclaimed government.

Ms. Preston: Then you add in the emergence of technology and the influence of technology. It said that Utah is the birthplace of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. You have this technocratic, authoritarian government coming in and putting through legislation and policy.

Mr. Preston: That's what they're calling it. There have actually been a few articles in Deseret News about Utah being the birthplace of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Interestingly enough, the author of that article is actually a board member of Envision Utah.

Ms. Preston: Also, representatives of the major media outlets sit on the board of Envision Utah.

Mr. Preston: One of our concerns with Envision Utah is that you have several governors on that board. You have the media on that board. You have some of the biggest business players in the state on that board. You have church leadership on that board.

Mr. Jekielek: I want to break down these new technologies and understand how far this development of a smart city has gone. Is it simply just an idea? Is it just pre-planning that has been done, or has construction begun? People will say, "These are technologies that can be used for good," which indeed they can.

You made the point earlier that things could end up in the wrong hands. Looking at the American Constitution, the idea was that things had to be set up carefully, because they could get into the wrong hands. You have to take it for granted that it will happen. How do you set up a system where things do not go very dark, very quickly, when that happens?

Mr. Preston: Yes. The thing that concerns me is what's going on in China with their social credit system. You can look at what happened during Covid. It was shocking to see how quickly we gave up our rights and freedom, and how aggressively those were trampled on. There is a growing swell of people that are not very trusting of the people in power right now. I can imagine Rome before it collapsed when all that power was being accumulated in the hands of those very few people at the top. I imagine it attracted some of the worst at the very end, because there was less control.

People can sense that. People are frustrated with where we are politically as a country. We feel like we have lost control of DC. You've got the FBI saying that mothers standing up at school board meetings are domestic terrorists. It's frightening to have a president who stands up with two Marines behind him and says that anyone who really got behind our last president is a threat to this country. There are a lot of red flags about where we are heading as a country. It's clear that we are putting our children in a very dangerous situation.

It is our responsibility to stop this. We need to look at where we're heading as a nation and where we're heading as states. Is this technology going to be used for good or bad? Is this going to lead our children towards a safer future, or is this potentially going to lead them to a future like China? The World Economic Forum, the UN, and China are arms of the same octopus. They're not competing with each other. They have the same end goals. Again, the term Fourth Industrial Revolution was coined by Klaus Schwab. It should be concerning to people that we have unelected leaders in our own backyard saying, "Utah should be the birthplace of this."

Mr. Jekielek: There is also a lot of interest in Chinese Communist Party relationships in Utah. Please tell me about that.

Ms. Preston: Yes. There was actually a great article that came out from the Associated Press. It's hard to get truthful reporting because of the media reporters and publications sitting on Envision Utah. But the Associated Press came in, took a deep dive, and looked at the 25 percent of our legislators that have known Chinese ties. They have tried to pass CCP-friendly legislation. There are personal business trips that these legislators are taking to China that can go completely unaccounted for. There's no need for reporting them in Utah. This opens up the door to all types of backdoor deals and discussions that are really not in the best interest of the state.

Mr. Jekielek: A lot of churches have ministries in China, which is something the CCP can use to its own ends.

Mr. Preston: There is a gentleman in Utah named Taowen Le. The Associated Press and the FBI spotlighted him as a national security threat with clear ties to the CCP. He came to Utah in 1989, and was baptized a year or two later. There have been several of these individuals that have been very engaged in working with our legislators.

There was a legislator back in 2021 who wanted to condemn what China was doing with the Uyghurs. We all know what is happening to the Uyghurs is one of the biggest human rights abuse issues in the world right now. I thought, "That's a great thing for one of our legislators to do. Hat's off to him.” Taowen Le sends him a text message and says, "Don't be so hasty in condemning China. You should think of this in the same way members who are not part of your church condemn Joseph Smith, the original prophet of your church." He used that strategy. Then he says, "Pray to God and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit before you make this decision."

Pray to God and ask the Holy Spirit if condemning China for what they're doing to the Uyghurs is right? Guess what? The resolution failed the next year. Someone else tried to make a similar resolution and it went nowhere. Yes, they even use religion.

Was this legislator a bad guy? No. He was trying to do the right thing. But there are these China-Utah relationships that the Associated Press talked about. China said that there is no state where they have greater influence, or where they can push legislation forward or stop legislation they don't like. This was a clear example.

Mr. Jekielek: That is very telling, because even at the federal level, very pointed resolutions have been passed about forced organ harvesting against the Falun Gong practitioners and also the Uyghur genocide. But somehow, it's impossible to pass that in your state legislature.

Ms. Preston: Even in the school system, the children are encouraged to write letters to Xi Jinping, and they are happy when they get a message back. They praise him for being a cool grandfather. You see how the narrative and perspective shift in Utah is even in our schools and our education system, not just in the legislature.

Mr. Jekielek: Run this by me again.

Mr. Preston: It was basically that one of our schools sent some letters. They were Happy New Year's letters to Xi Jinping in China, and he sent a letter back to this school. We had two state senators; one from the Senate floor talking about how exciting it is to be acknowledged by Xi Jinping, and another one on his conservative radio show gushing about how Xi Jinping is noticing these Utah students. Other people commented saying, "This is basically exactly what China wants, to be able to use this type of PR to show that to their own people, and to show what great leadership they have." This is one of the most brutal dictators they have had in decades.

Mr. Jekielek: It's basically what you would call propaganda, which can be used to demoralize dissidents. I know a number of dissidents who had this type of propaganda video played for them, and then they were told, "Look, you think the Americans are going to help you? No, the Americans are on our side."

Mr. Preston: We had one representative, who after being taken to China and spending some time there, came back and put together a resolution expressing solidarity for the CCP after Covid was released.

Ms. Preston: Something similar happened in Wisconsin, but it got shut down for being propaganda.

Mr. Preston: They tried to pass something in Wisconsin, and the Senate president blasted it as a piece of propaganda. In Utah, we're pushing this stuff out. But Wisconsin sees this stuff and says, “It's propaganda.” I've been concerned about China for a long time. We have been feeding this wolf that is climbing the hill to take us down. The strength that wolf gets comes from us feeding it through trade deals.

When Trump got in, one of the things I was most thankful for is he started turning off the money train to the communist party. What do our reps do? They reach out to the Chinese press and say, “Utah is not like America. Utah has a long friendship with China.” Why are we doing this? They have animosity towards us, and they're looking to take this country down. Why are we fueling it?

Mr. Jekielek: I want to hear more about this specific 15-minute city that is in development. I also understand there is a pilot project happening around digital ID as we speak.

Ms. Preston: Legislators actually shut down the bill that would put forward digital IDs, so we would have to give credit to them.

Mr. Preston: It was interesting what happened when they tried to pass that about a year or two ago.

Ms. Preston: They have tried it a few times, but then it just got shut down every time.

Mr. Preston: We had a ton of grassroots conservatives show up and say, "No way." To our legislators' credit, they said, "All right, we're not passing digital ID."

Ms. Preston: Then just earlier this year it came through as a pilot program. The state typically keeps pushing out the sunset date on these pilot programs until they just come to be. They worked around the legislators to put this forth. You can't have some of the infrastructure for these smart cities without having digital ID.

Mr. Jekielek: Please explain how this works. The legislature said no multiple times, but now there's a pilot program.

Mr. Preston: The governor.

Mr. Jekielek: How does that work?

Ms. Preston: The governor just signs it into law, and basically it’s a backdoor around the legislators. You even have people from the county commission level that are involved. It's confusing to us as well. Things like this that should follow a proper path essentially get backdoored into law. But that's just one of the examples.

Other initiatives that have been signed into law are things like license plate scanners, and even just putting up new streetlights. It seems pretty benign, but these are things that you need to create the infrastructure of a 15-minute city, or smart city. But they all equate to this surveillance state that you'll need in order to govern a 15-minute city.

Mr. Preston: If you go to utah.gov there is a citizen portal, which is the background for your digital ID. You can look in there, and it says personality type, where it has each individual's personality.

Mr. Jekielek: For actual individual people?

Mr. Preston: Yes, it is their interests and their likes.

Ms. Preston: They create an actual avatar for each individual, and they have the infrastructure there that they're creating for this internet of things.

Mr. Jekielek: For anyone that's seen the film, The Social Dilemma, we know they create these virtual avatars and colloquially say that they know more about us than we know about ourselves. You're saying the same thing is being built on the government website with respect to personality and interests.

Mr. Preston: I don't want them dialing up my girls' personalities and their interests. Why does the government need to know that about my daughters? Why do they need to know that about my wife? Why do they need to know that about me? To me, that's an absolute abuse of privacy.

I want the government out of my life, and not knowing my personal tastes, my likes, my interests, and my habits. Again, that is tied to your digital ID. That is tied to digital currency. What are we doing? This is actually not Utah, and this is not who we are. Most of the people in Utah would not be okay with this.

Even with the focus groups out there, even with the rebranding, if people knew what was going on, and knew outright what was happening, people would stand up and say, "No." We've been focusing on our own backyard in Utah. Your listeners should be asking, "What is happening in my backyard?" Because you actually have control over that. You might be surprised at what is happening in your own backyard if you start peeling back the layers.

Mr. Jekielek: During Covid, one of the silver linings was that people got to see what was being taught to their kids through Zoom. They were appalled and it motivated them to say, "We don't want that." It's almost like they were forced to look at it. In this case, it may well be that there are very troubling things being sold in a very pleasant disguise. How did you both get into this? Please tell me about yourselves.

Ms. Preston: Jason has worked in legislative research for some time now. In 2022, we both got fed up with what was going on in the state, even before pulling back the layers and seeing some of these other programs.

Mr. Jekielek: In 2017, you moved to Utah. What was your motivation?

Mr. Preston: We moved for our family. It was a family decision to move, so our kids could be where we needed to be. This was when things were going bananas politically, so obviously, we were very attuned. By 2021, we realized a red wave was coming again. You can remember the Tea Party movement that happened when Obama was in office. That led to a huge red wave that eventually led to Trump.

Even before Trump, during Obama's second term, there was a massive house cleaning in the U. S. Senate. By 2021, we knew that there was going to be another massive red wave, although it got a little crushed. We just started looking around in Utah.

I had been so frustrated. Every time I would sit with a legislator, I would ask them about the proper role of government and ask them about the Constitution. It was always disappointing. Because they would get up on stage and would say everything right. Then as soon as you asked them a few questions, you realized there was no depth. They didn't understand the principles of liberty.

It was always a frustrating thing. I'm not a politician and don't have the pedigree for being a politician, but I love the Constitution. I understand the principles of freedom, and I understand the proper role of government. We felt very compelled to do this, and it was an incredible experience.

Mr. Jekielek: You ran for Congress?

Mr. Preston: Yes, I ran for Congress. That's when we really fell in love with Utah at a whole new level, because there are so many great people out there. I've had political conversations with people all over the country. When you get down to Florida, Alabama, and Texas, there are some just great ride-or-die patriots.

In Utah, because of that culture where the Constitution has been inspired by God, it is literally in so many people's DNA that there is nothing more important than defending liberty. You have some people that literally would give everything for the cause of liberty. We met a lot of those people, and it was so inspiring.

But in contrast, you can see what's happening in our state. We said, "What is going on here?" It just didn't make sense to have these two extremes. You have people who just love the Constitution and liberty, and you have a government that absolutely was not reflecting this. The more we got involved, we asked, "What is going on here in Utah?" All of a sudden, we realized that over time, this state had been subverted to some degree.

Mr. Jekielek: You started talking about this on your podcast.

Ms. Preston: We made the congressional run with great grassroots support. It was a really encouraging thing to go through. There was a resurgence of the grassroots that you haven't seen since Mike Lee's early campaign when he first got into the Senate. We took that momentum from the congressional run, and we rolled that into a local radio show, which was great. Doing the local radio show, we decided that we needed the message to go out broader than just the Valley. That became the We ARE the People podcast, which has been growing exponentially in the past year.

Mr. Preston: We realized that we have an information problem. We have a lot of good people across the country who are blind because they don't know where to look. They don't understand the problems. We thought, "Instead of running for office, it is more important to let people see what is actually happening in our own backyard." That's where our focus has been.

There are so many groups like the Utah Freedom Coalition and Defending Utah. We could go down the list of the incredible influencers and groups. Utah is a really an interesting place because you have some of the greatest patriots, groups, and organizations. Yet, on the flip side, it is the supposed birthplace of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It feels like it’s ground zero.

Mr. Jekielek: I've really enjoyed learning about this, because there's so much to know out there.

Ms. Preston: What's nice about our program is the demographic that we reach is actually the younger generation. We have a lot of college age and young adults that have been learning about local politics through our program. That has been the really fulfilling part, actually knowing that we are making a difference in our state. We're also engaging a new portion of the population that previously might not have been that politically motivated.

Mr. Preston: Our biggest demographic is young men. It's shifting a little bit older lately, and we constantly watch those numbers. It was 18 to 24, and now it's more 24 to 28. It's a shift that's happening organically. With a lot of these young college kids, the garbage has been pushed down their throats so far that they are starting to push back.

Mr. Jekielek: As we finish up, I still want to talk about The Point, which is the 15-minute city that's in development. What is the status of that? Let's also talk about why this concept is so problematic, because it seems so efficient and helpful, at least in the messaging.

Ms. Preston: They have demolished the prisons at the site, so they are full steam ahead with planning. They have monthly meetings which are open to the public for input. However, in the way they speak about it, they of course try to show the positive spin of it. But what we like to highlight, and what you've done so well before on your show as well, is that when these smart cities are rolled out, mostly in the UK, you can see what this actually looks like for the residents of those cities. It's very restrictive on when you can leave, if you can leave. It ties into your social credit score, like what we're seeing in China.

It becomes a very restrictive lifestyle, but it's being sold as "Everything is so convenient. It's just 15 minutes away. It's a walkable community." It's definitely marketed to the population as something that is positive. But when you pull back the layers, it is a total surveillance state which is essentially tied to your social credit score.

Mr. Preston: Initially, it probably will not be like that. Initially, it will be this cool, walkable city with minimal vehicles. The question is, with this framework, the next time there's a lockdown, what are they able to do with this? Everything becomes smart meters, smart this, smart that, and everything is controllable. What happens when you get on the wrong side of the powers that be? What happens the next time there is a lockdown, and you don't want to wear your mask, and you don't want to obey the government? What happens then?

How easy would it be to restrict you, or turn off your freedoms, or your ability to leave that city? The way those smart cities are set up, it is the perfect breeding ground for exactly what they have been doing in China. It doesn't take a lot of imagination when you look at what is happening right now in China. When you jaywalk, the camera picks up your face or your gait, and your social credit score goes down. Then your friends know your score. If you hang out with somebody whose score is low, then your score goes down as well. Personally, I don't want this.

Ms. Preston: The best way to look at it is technocratic governance vs. constitutionality. If we're living in a regime where we don't have the freedom that is granted to us in the Constitution, are we really even free?

Mr. Jekielek: This is a foundational question of our time. Alexia and Jason Preston, such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Preston: It was great to be here with you.

Mr. Preston: We're very thankful to be here. We love everything you are doing at The Epoch Times. There is a huge need for real, honest media, and people are fed up with the mainstream garbage. The most important fight is information warfare, and you are leading the fight.

Ms. Preston: There is so much to fit into such a short period of time. We try to dive into a lot of these things in our program. If anyone wants to learn more about smart cities, the associated legislation, and Envision Utah, we have a four-part series on that. Please come to our channel and check it out.

Mr. Preston: A lot of the research that has come to us is through regular people, and that's the neat thing. We live in a day where the average person can make a huge difference. Who are we? Nobody special. We just got involved. We are doing what we can, where we're at right now. If your listeners are frustrated and want to get involved, they don't need to be elected to a political office to make a difference in the country right now. You can just dig in. Make a difference. Get involved. Anybody can make a difference right now.

Mr. Jekielek: The local level is where to do it. That's what everyone is telling me. Again, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Preston: Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Alexia and Jason Preston and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.