There’s something about JD Vance that makes him almost impossible to assess. Like Bigfoot, he’s a naturally blurry creature. His voice lands somewhere between the parents in Charlie Brown specials and those buzzers they put outside convenience stores to chase off teens. The vice president is hostile architecture in human form, a suit stuffed with charisma’s anti-matter.

This has served him well in his quest for political power. Being instantly forgettable is an asset for someone who made their name as a liberal hillbilly whisperer only to switch to an online edgelord identity at the behest of far-right backers. But if you’re willing to hold and rotate Vance’s recent statements in your mind, you’ll find something uncharacteristically interesting. He’s put the tiniest sliver of distance between himself and President Donald Trump on artificial intelligence, and it provides an inkling of how Republicans might move beyond a decade of Trumpism.

I’ll catch you up on the current AI conversation. Large-language models built by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic keep breaking out of their testing sandboxes. The companies actively promote that their products are breaking the law and hacking into other private businesses, showcasing their power while appearing somewhat concerned with safety. Recently, those same AI CEOs have started pleading for government regulation of artificial intelligence, a “stop me before I kill again” plea that many critics believe is meant to lock in their position at the top of the industry.

Trump has been incredulous about the ask. He has thrown his red hat in with AI boosters and reacted to the idea of slowing down as a slight against his discernment. In a day-long rant on Truth Social, the president said the only “guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart . . .  president.” He said that there was a “sick conspiracy . . .  against AI and data centers” and that slowing down AI development would leave us behind China on the global stage.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” he wrote. “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

In the week since, Vance has taken a slightly more skeptical tone on AI development. On Monday he told reporters on Monday that the U.S. needs to be “careful” about AI. He looked sideways at CEOs’ request for industry regulation, saying that the move might be a “Trojan Horse” masking their true intentions. 

“I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” he said. “Any technology has risks. Any new technology brings both risks and benefits . . . I don’t think Americans should be scared of anything.”

Vance kept up the narrowed-eyes view of AI companies during an event later in the week hosted by the “All-In,” comparing Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Victor Frankenstein, and laid the blame for their tinkering at their feet. “Why is it that the people who are at the frontier of the AI economy are throwing up their hands and saying, ‘Well, we’ve built Frankenstein,’ and the solution to Frankenstein apparently is to create a one world governance structure for artificial intelligence?” Vance said. “What I would say to those people: If you’re building Frankenstein, stop. If the cat is out of the bag, then build the defensive mechanism against Frankenstein.”

The vice president’s words sound good — like a rap on the knuckles of the tech billionaires who can’t stop claiming they’re building doomsday devices. But a half-second of reflection shows that it’s all flash, no different in substance from what Trump was pushing on Truth Social. The end result of Vance’s “knock it off” grandstanding and Trump’s “eternal AI boom” rah-rahing is the same. AI continues to be unregulated. The money keeps flowing. The only thing that’s changed is a skosh of skepticism making the news. 

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The Vance pushback is the tip of an iceberg of AI wariness throughout the Trump White House. Per a Friday report from the New York Times, advisers are urging the president to be more cautious in his blanket statements around AI’s safety. Trump reportedly views AI as a “golden goose” and is desperate to keep up the building boom for data centers. 

Vance is not the only one among the Republican Party’s 2028 presidential hopefuls trying this trick. Likely candidates such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have painted themselves as slightly wary of AI, but not so skeptical as to endanger the money flowing from the Silicon Valley spigot. 

Cruz has been working to block a bill that would require AI companies to submit new models to the government for testing before wide release. He’s said that the idea of an AI-led extinction event is “scary stuff” and called for “some guardrails” on the technology, but he’s balked at extensive government intervention, warning that the market will disincentivize creating Skynet.

“If any company sells a product that causes massive harm, they’ll get sued into oblivion,” he shared on X. “That’s how companies go broke and rich people become poor people.”

Look for this half-twist away from Trump’s over-the-top enthusiasm to appear elsewhere in Republican ranks. Grocery bills and gas prices are rising. The president’s war in Iran, and America’s ongoing support of Israel in its multi-front war throughout the region, are increasingly unpopular. The fight against data centers and private surveillance cameras has crossed partisan lines, bringing erstwhile enemies together in the fight against creepy tech. 

National candidates who previously toed the MAGA line will need to find a way to put breathing room between themselves and the agenda they supported, without risking the anger of Trump’s blindly loyal base. Side-eyeing the people responsible for the problem while dutifully stepping out of their way solves that tricky equation. It’s a neat trick — even when Vance does it.

The post Vance’s “Frankenstein” AI defense is a blueprint for 2028 appeared first on Salon.com.

Grim Look Toward 2028

JD Vance got what he wanted: a bunch of headlines coming out of the GOP midterm convention declaring him Trump’s all-but-assured successor. He achieved this by rolling out his usual schtick as not the second coming of Trump, but something perhaps useful to the movement in a different way: MAGA with an intellectual tinge. A Claremont Institute type of guy. “We were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous,” he declared, a rallying cry for his iteration of the GOP that is, to my mind, not beating the “racism” allegations. While not explicitly calling to restrict birthright citizenship, his speech dwelled on how Democrats had in his estimation polluted the American “birthright,” a term he returned to eight times.

Earlier in the night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) hit similar notes, calling out individual Democratic politicians by name.

“When [New York City mayor Zohran] Mamdani says he wants to ‘seize the means of production,’ he means it,” Cruz said.

“He should be shot!” one person in the crowd yelled.

“When [Michigan Democratic Senate nominee] Abdul El Sayed says he has an ‘obligation’ to comply with Sharia law, he means it,” Cruz said.

“He should be shot,” the person cried again.

“And when [Texas Democratic Senate nominee] James Talarico says he wants to ‘dismantle capitalism,’ he means it,” Cruz concluded.

Again, at least one person yelled: “He should be shot.”

Trump himself took the stage to wrap up the evening. “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell,” he said. “Go out and vote, go out and vote!”

Denny Hoskins Narrowly Dodges Contempt

By now, you probably know at least some details of how Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ big day played out.

• First, as Kate Riga reported for TPM, the same federal district court judge who, on Tuesday, ordered Missouri to use the new, Hoskins-championed, friendlier-to-Republicans maps, on Thursday declined to intervene to block the Missouri state Supreme Court from holding a hearing on whether Hoskins should be held in contempt for not following its order that he not use those maps. “No profit would be gained by upsetting the federalism and comity principles at hand,” U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark wrote.
• Then, the Supreme Court (as Kate also reported) stayed Clark’s Tuesday decision, ordering Missouri to use the new maps. That left the state Supreme Court’s ruling — that Missouri must use the old maps — as the only order left standing. That will probably remain the situation through the midterms, experts predict.
• Hoskins’ contempt hearing got underway. Immediately after, Hoskins finally said he would comply with the state Supreme Court and use the old maps.
• The state Supreme Court put out a decision saying it was going to hold Hoskins in contempt had he not relented.

Chief Justice Powell says that Hoskins ~was~ in contempt of court, but has "since corrected his contemptuous conduct" by telling election officials to use the '22 maps

— Kate Riga (@kateriga.bsky.social) 2026-09-10T19:08:26.293Z

Tabs

• Republican leaders at the convention reportedly ran though where they feel ok about the Senate, and where they think they’re in trouble. In Alaska, Maine and Michigan, GOP senators reportedly feel they can win, according to Politico. In Georgia and and North Carolina, they have their doubts. They’re leaving Texas — where comically corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing James Talarico — to Trump to figure out.
• The Wall Street Journal: “Iran has resumed its production of ballistic missiles using stockpiled components and working in underground facilities, officials from the U.S. and Middle East familiar with the matter said, eroding what the U.S. and Israel have touted as a major achievement of the war.”

Man of the Hour

Joe diGenova, the longtime right-wing lawyer who was brought on by Trump’s DOJ to investigate the president’s political enemies — reportedly including a sweeping roster of figures from the Obama administration through the Biden administration — abruptly resigned Thursday. “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” he told the New York Post. Its a notable statement coming from a man who worked on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Someone else told the Post this is diGenova’s own fault:

Another source added that the diGenova had been sharing “unrealistic expectations” for the probe with the president about what was possible and not possible, leading to a confrontation with Attorney General Todd Blanche.