Have you noticed how much more you’re now paying for that burger or steak? The cost of meat in the United States is soaring. Demand for meat is up, but for some reason, cattle herds are shrinking, ranchers are going out of business, and the industry is facing some serious trouble. Behind it all may be something bigger. A cartel is being accused of effectively causing these problems artificially – using a global monopoly to set prices and squeeze the industry.

Why do medications cost so much in the United States? You’ll get a radically different answer to this, depending on who you talk to. Some say it’s the lack of socialized medicine. Others say it’s the fault of greedy CEOs. But others say it’s caused by something else entirely—that global policies have worked to squeeze the prices so that people in some countries end up shouldering the costs for others. But is this really the case? Well, it’s undeniable that we pay a lot more for prescription drugs than people in other countries. Even among first-world, high-income countries, we pay a lot more. And this isn’t about socialized medicine or anything like that. It’s about what the companies themselves are charging us.

There’s been a fundamental shift in what it means to buy something, and this change happened so slowly that you might not have even noticed.

Imagine a world where all information is controlled. History has been rewritten in favor of an all-controlling party. Language has been remade to eliminate subversive concepts. Your every action is monitored, and a looming threat hangs over you as a reminder of what happens if you step out of line.

This is part of the image that George Orwell painted in his book, “1984.” But all of these factors are in place in the world we know today in one form or another. We have politically correct language. Certain words are off limits. Various concepts are forbidden. Private businesses and big data have already largely eliminated privacy in the digital world where much of modern life takes place. And already, we see sweeping pushes for mass censorship – an expansion of all these controls.

We’re now seeing this come to the forefront in a new battle unfolding between the United States and governments throughout Europe.

You’ve probably heard of the affordability crisis. Everything is too expensive. Wages aren’t going up. The kids are accepting a fate where they’ll never own a home. And the kids are not OK. At least not with that. Basically, it’s hard to get by.

Then things get really weird. We’re being told mixed messages on why this is happening. The old narrative was that the problem was single-family homes. Then we heard major investment firms were buying all the single-family homes. We’re told there just aren’t enough homes to go around. But then we also find red tape is stopping more from being built.

So what's the real reason why you can't afford to buy a home?

How do we define private property? Normally it’s what we work to build or own. Our own labor and effort are what establish ownership. We strive. We write songs. We create movies. We innovate. We invent. And we build. But what happens when all that effort just goes away? Artists don’t need to draw anymore. Poets don’t need to reflect. Musicians don’t need to play. Everything is created in an instant, with a single command. Who owns the result? And if everyone is creating like this constantly, how long before every possibility is owned and locked away?

This is the challenge we’re now facing with artificial intelligence, as it runs into intellectual property laws.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a plan to control America’s food supply, and with this, Congress has raised concerns over the weaponization of food. At the center of this debate has been China buying up American farmland.

In this investigative feature, Joshua Philipp, Senior Investigative Reporter at The Epoch Times, discuss with experts on the deeper plans of the CCP, and the risks to the United States of having a foreign adversary control its farms.