'Pure incompetence': Critics say JD Vance captured on camera committing security breach

Critics pounced on Vice President JD Vance Monday over what some alleged to be “operational security” failing captured on camera during the ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations in Switzerland.

Vance was photographed Sunday working on a laptop while sitting beside Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, who in the photograph is seen gesturing and looking directly at the laptop screen.

With Qatar not being a signatory to the U.S.-Iran tentative peace deal, some critics, such as Travis Akers, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer, argued that Vance may have breached standard protocols relating to data security.

“This photo was published [by] the Prime Minister of Qatar, Vice President JD Vance and Jared Kushner. What’s the problem?” Akers wrote in a social media post on X to his nearly 180,000 followers. “Giving a foreign leader visual access to a [United States government] laptop, while using someone else’s [Common Access Card] to log in. Pure incompetence at every turn.”

Fred Guttenberg, a gun-safety advocate whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, echoed Akers’ assessment.

“Incompetence at every step of the way,” Guttenberg wrote in a social media post on X to his more than 460,000 followers. “America is less safe and less secure because of this administration.”

Takaya Suzuki, an assistant professor at Tohoku University in Japan, sarcastically invoked the rallying cry "But Hillary's emails" – a reference to the email controversy that dogged Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and became a fixation of conservative critics.

And Dave Vorland, a former Biden administration appointee, called on voters to send a message regarding Vance’s alleged security breach at the ballot box in November.

“Yes, this is all true and we should expect and demand better,” Vorland wrote in a social media post on X. “But that needs to come at the ballot box, we already knew that a Trump Administration would be terrible at data security and operational security.”