Vance makes his debut as VP on the international stage at a high-stakes AI summit in Paris

United States Vice-President JD Vance, centre, carries his daughter Mirabel as he arrives at Paris Orly Airport, ahead of an Artificial Intelligence Action Summit taking place in Paris, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

PARIS — JD Vance stepped onto the world stage this week for the first time as U.S. vice president, using a high-stakes AI summit in Paris and a security conference in Munich to amplify Donald Trump’s aggressive new approach to diplomacy.

The 40-year-old vice president, who was just 18 months into his tenure as a senator before joining Trump’s ticket, is expected, while in Paris, to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.

The AI summit has drawn world leaders, top tech executives, and policymakers to discuss artificial intelligence’s impact on global security, economics, and governance. High-profile attendees include Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling Beijing’s deep interest in shaping global AI standards.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday the Paris AI summit is “a wakeup call” for a European strategy to get competitive in a tech world now dominated by the U.S. and China.

Macron also called on “simplifying” rules in France and the European Union to allow AI advances, citing sectors like healthcare, mobility, energy, and “resynchronize with the rest of the world.”

“We are most of the time too slow,” he said.

The summit underscores a three-way race for AI supremacy: Europe striving to regulate and invest, China expanding access through state-backed tech giants, and the U.S. under Trump prioritizing a hands-off approach.

Vance’s debut abroad

Vance has signalled he will use the Paris summit as a venue for candid discussions with world leaders on AI and geopolitics.

“I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, frankly -- bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically there -- and so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France,” Vance told Breitbart News.

Vance is expected to meet separately Tuesday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a person familiar with planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, with Ukraine and the Middle East on the agenda. Vance, like Trump, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the broader approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office.

Vance also addressed what he called an “evil trend” in Europe toward censorship.

“We want people to be able to speak their minds, and we believe that free and open debate is actually a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of our European friends have gone the wrong direction there,” he said.

Vance is attending Munich again, where he may meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

European leaders have been monitoring Trump’s recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out of Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends -- an idea flatly rejected by Arab allies.

Fostering AI advances

The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, “is the first time we’ll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI,” said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. “I see it as a norm-setting moment.”

A global public-private partnership named “Current AI” will be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest.

Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance by “moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead.”

However, it remains unclear if the United States will support such initiatives.

“There’s a lot of complicated questions to resolve” around issues like the ability to control AI systems, Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, founder of Google’s DeepMind research lab, said. “But also I think even more complicated are maybe the geopolitical questions about things like regulation.”

A small group of protesters gathered at Paris' Bastille square called for a pause on development of ever-more advanced AI systems, warning that they could post catastrophic risks for humanity. Another group protested the AI industry’s role in exacerbating climate change through fossil fuel emissions. But negotiating strict limits was not expected to be on the agenda of world leaders gathering this week.

Macron’s AI pitch

Macron touted newly announced investments in France worth 109 billion euros (US$113 billion) over the next five years.

The amount includes 50 billion euros (US$52 billion) from the United Arab Emirates for a one-gigawatt data center and other tech facilities, 20 billion euros from Canada’s Brookfield to deploy AI projects and 10 billion euros from UK’s Fluidstack to build a giant one-gigawatt calculator.

“If you compare with some big recent announcement made in the U.S., it’s at the right scale,” Macron said in reference to Trump’s support of the OpenAI-led Stargate AI data centers project.

Macron said one key asset for France is its “low carbon pilotable available energy” as the country gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, the highest level in the world. Mentioning Trump’s slogan “drill baby drill,” Macron said. “Here there’s no need to drill, it’s just plug baby plug.”

Modi is co-hosting the summit

Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron in an effort to prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”

Macron and Modi will visit the southern French port city of Marseille Wednesday to inaugurate an Indian Consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site.

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By Sylvie Corbet, Aamer Madhani And Thomas Adamson

Kelvin Chan and Angela Charlton in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi, contributed to this report.