Vance Is Positioning Himself For 2028—But No Candidate Is Free

Vice President JD Vance is clearly beginning to separate himself from the disastrous foreign policy that has dragged the United States into another Middle East war. The BBC reported that Vance has accused members of the Israeli government of trying to manipulate American public opinion against diplomacy with Iran. He is no longer speaking in the timid language traditionally used in Washington whenever Israel is involved. He is openly telling Israeli officials that the United States cannot continue financing every military ambition dreamed up in Jerusalem.

Vance asked Israel’s critics of the proposed Iran agreement a question they apparently cannot answer: “What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”

That is an extraordinary statement from an American vice president. Washington has spent decades pretending that every Israeli military operation is automatically in the national interest of the United States. No one is permitted to question Israel and blind loyalty is required on both sides of the aisle, which is perhaps the only aspect Dems and Republicans can agree upon.

Vance also said, “I find this whole freakout in Israel a little bit odd because I think that it comes from a place of mistrust, and I think that America has earned the trust of that region of the world.” He urged Israel to “give a little bit of credit to the United States of America, which I think has been an incredible partner for the Israeli government for a long time.”

Vance can see 2028 coming, and he understands that the MAGA base did not vote for endless war. Trump campaigned against the neocons, condemned the Iraq disaster, and promised to prevent World War III. Yet the United States is now bombing Iran, defending Israel, protecting Gulf shipping, and spending money that Washington does not have.

The Pentagon says the Iran war has already cost the United States $37.5 billion. The administration is seeking nearly $90 billion more in supplemental funding. At least 18 Americans have reportedly been killed and approximately 430 injured. Trump is now threatening to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship Iran attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. This is no longer a limited operation to eliminate a nuclear facility. It is precisely how every forever war expands: one retaliation requires another retaliation until nobody remembers the original objective.

Trump is surrounded by people whose loyalty to Israel is greater than their concern for the long-term interests of the United States. Netanyahu has repeatedly pushed Washington toward regime change in Iran, while Trump has allowed the Israeli government to shape the boundaries of American policy. Netanyahu himself recently said that he and Trump remain aligned on the “big things.” That is precisely the problem. The American people elected Trump to put America first, not to place the United States military at the disposal of another government.

Yet nobody should mistake Vance for some independent farmer who wandered into Washington carrying only a copy of the Constitution. Vance also has a patron, and his name is Peter Thiel.

Thiel gave Vance his start in the elite world of venture capital. Vance worked at Thiel’s Mithril Capital, and Thiel later helped finance Narya Capital, the investment firm Vance co-founded. When Vance entered politics, Thiel contributed $15 million to the super PAC supporting his 2022 Senate campaign. Trump’s endorsement delivered the voters, but Thiel’s money built the runway.

Thiel is also the co-founder and chairman of Palantir, the data-analytics company that has embedded itself throughout the American military, intelligence, immigration, health, and law-enforcement systems. Palantir is not simply selling accounting software. It builds platforms capable of bringing enormous quantities of government and private information together, identifying relationships, tracking individuals, and turning scattered records into operational intelligence.

The U.S. Army awarded Palantir an enterprise agreement worth up to $10 billion over ten years, consolidating 75 separate software and data contracts. ICE awarded the company a $30 million contract associated with ImmigrationOS, a system designed to help identify and track immigration cases. Palantir’s federal contract awards nearly doubled in 2025 to more than $970 million, with most of that business connected to the Department of Defense.

Thirty members of Congress wrote to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in April 2026 warning that Palantir-developed systems could contribute to a “mass surveillance ecosystem.” Civil-liberties organizations have raised concerns that combining medical, immigration, tax, employment, travel, location, and law-enforcement information could produce a centralized digital profile of millions of people.

This is where Vance’s anti-war positioning becomes complicated. He may oppose Netanyahu’s desire to bomb every regional adversary, but the political network that launched his career is deeply connected to the construction of the American surveillance and national-security state.

Trump has become politically bound to the Israeli alliance and to donors and officials who treat unconditional support for Israel as a test of loyalty. Vance owes his extraordinary rise in no small part to Thiel, whose company profits from government intelligence, military AI, policing, and mass data integration. One man is pulled toward a foreign-policy establishment centered on Israel. The other emerged from a technology establishment that wants to manage society through data.

Vance may sincerely believe that the Iran war must end. His criticism of Israel is justified, and his warning that a nation cannot “kill your way out” of every security problem is correct. Netanyahu’s strategy has produced endless retaliation, wider regional conflict, disrupted energy markets, and another enormous bill for American taxpayers. Someone inside the administration had to say it.

If Vance wants to become the genuine anti-war candidate in 2028, he must oppose more than Israel’s effort to prolong the Iran war. He must confront undeclared warfare, intelligence-agency abuse, military contracting, warrantless surveillance, centralized databases, and the companies that profit from turning every citizen into a collection of searchable data. Otherwise, 2028 will offer America another carefully manufactured choice: Trump’s war state or Thiel’s surveillance state. Neither represents the constitutional republic the Founders intended.