In his AI speech, he sounded more like the kind of traditional conservative that Vance and his boosters usually deride as old-thinking zombie Reaganites.
Our editorial lauds JD Vance’s speech in Paris on artificial intelligence. It was, indeed, a fine speech. But it was also jarringly different from what we’ve become accustomed to hearing from Vance. He sounded more like the kind of traditional conservative Republican that Vance and his boosters usually deride as old-thinking zombie Reaganites.
Vance talked up the dangers of excessive regulation. He pointed to the hazards of too much government involvement in shaping where technology would lead us. He argued that more automation would actually create more jobs and opportunity. He enthused about economic growth. This is all good.
That is, for the most part, not how Vance has talked since he entered politics in 2021. Far more often, as exemplified by his 2024 convention speech, his rustpolitik approach has painted the economy as a zero-sum game in which shadowy market actors exploit the working man, competition is all about somebody else taking your slice of the pie, and we need more regulatory protection, more autarky, more walls and barriers and guardrails. That’s one way in which he is so thematically at odds with the more fundamentally optimistic politics of growing Sun Belt states with Republican governments.
What explains the different tune? Perhaps it’s just that he’s speaking to a different audience, or that the election is over. But I’m inclined to think as well that this is Conquest’s First Law at work: Everyone is most conservative about what he knows best. Vance spent five years working in Silicon Valley in venture capital and the tech sector. None of his other professional incarnations — Marine, lawyer, writer, senator — lasted as long. Put him in a room full of tech people talking about a topic like AI, and suddenly he starts sounding like a libertarian, gushing about how we can expand the pie and benefit knowledge workers and hardhats alike if we can just keep the grubby hands of government (ours and those abroad) off the business. That’s good! I’d just like to see more of that mindset applied in other areas of the economy.