Winning the AI Race Part 2: Vice President JD Vance

Vance said deportations should accelerate now that ICE has more funding and the administration has won favorable court rulings. He acknowledged frustration inside the administration over the pace and described himself and Stephen Miller as among its hardest-line voices on immigration.

The administration’s immigration compromise is enforcement without amnesty, while using automation to reduce industries’ dependence on migrant labor. Vance singled out agriculture as technologically behind and said automation is his preferred answer when employers argue they cannot operate without immigrant workers.

Vance described the administration’s AI strategy as deliberately choosing rapid technological development over Europe’s more cautious regulatory approach. His goal is not merely beating China but spreading an American technology stack globally, while still addressing privacy, consumer protection and intellectual-property risks.

A foreign leader privately proposed to Vance a NATO-like alliance outside Europe built around countries using American technology and sharing access to weapons. Vance said the idea came only the previous week and was so new that he had not yet discussed it with President Trump.

On China, Vance wants American companies selling broadly into the Chinese market while withholding technologies whose transfer could compromise critical intellectual property. He framed the objective as reversing an imbalance in which Chinese firms can access American markets while U.S. products face barriers in China.

Vance is less worried about robots eliminating jobs than about technology companies laying off Americans while simultaneously claiming they need foreign workers. After hearing that Microsoft had cut roughly 9,000 jobs, he began examining the issue, but explicitly admitted he had not yet confronted Microsoft about it. (Podspun)

The administration intends to use government-backed partnerships selectively to rebuild industries and technologies it considers strategically indispensable. Vance cited weapons, basic research and critical industrial capacity as areas where government can create demand or financing while leaving execution largely to private companies. (ebs.publicnow.com)