Thiel backing Vance while calling this administration stupid is exactly the design. He is picking a less intelligent candidate. He is picking the most loyal one.
The Loyalist Over the Institutionalist
Vance has spent his entire political career proving he will say whatever the moment requires. Never-Trump to full MAGA courtier, without a single visible principle surviving the transition. Thiel wants precisely that. Rubio at least pretends to care about institutions. Vance treats them as obstacles.
Thiel’s framing of the 2028 race tells you the real project. He is asking which Republican cannot lose. He is asking which Democrat will be weak enough to lose to a more radical successor. His whole scenario depends on Democrats doing well enough in the midterms to get complacent, then nominating someone the donor class considers unelectable. That is speculation.
The End of History as a Weapon
This roadmap leads to managed decline. And the Fukuyama anecdote is the tell. Thiel brings up the end of history not because he wants to debate political philosophy, but because he wants to position himself as the only one who sees what is coming. Fukuyama says a democratic socialist can never win. Thiel says history is not over.
Fine. But the people Thiel funds are not building a workers’ movement. They are building a network of loyalists who will dismantle the administrative state, hollow out alliances, and hand power to autocrats.
Ukraine as the Testing Ground
Ukraine faces this reality directly. The same network that treats American institutions as disposable treats NATO as a burden and Ukrainian sovereignty as a bargaining chip. Thiel’s circle has long laundered the claim that the West is the problem, Zelenskyy a client, and moscovia’s war a rational response to Western expansion. Vance repeats those lines because that is his function.
He wants something other than competence. He is looking for a vehicle. The stupidity is a feature, because smart people ask questions, and loyalists do not.
Breaking the Machine
So when Thiel says the current team is stupid but Vance is still his guy, believe him. The goal is not to win an election and govern. The goal is to break the machine so thoroughly that the next candidate can be even more radical, even more pliant, and even less accountable.
The long game is what matters here. It is already running.