By Mallory Culhane, with help from John Hendel, Steven Overly and Brendan Bordelon
TECHIES, MEET J.D. VANCE — The official Republican candidate for vice president was elected to the Senate in 2022 with a $10 million infusion from PayPal founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel. But his relationship with Thiel and the broader tech world go way back.
— A long history: Vance initially encountered Thiel in 2011 while Vance was still attending Yale Law School (class of 2013). After hearing Thiel speak on campus about the decline of American elites and technological stagnation, Vance called the talk the “most significant moment” of his Yale education: “He saw these two trends … as connected,” Vance later recalled. “If technological innovation were actually driving real prosperity, our elites wouldn’t feel increasingly competitive with one another over a dwindling number of prestigious outcomes.”
Two years after he graduated, Vance joined Thiel’s San Francisco-based venture capital firm Mithril Capital.
Even as Vance wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler” and vowed not to support him, he remained in close contact with his administration via Thiel, who had been a major donor to the GOP and served on Trump’s executive transition team. In 2017, Vance told POLITICO that Thiel “is one of the brightest and most thoughtful people out there” and that “to the degree he’s involved with technology and innovation policy, the whole country will benefit.”
Beyond his work with Thiel, Vance also worked at former AOL CEO Steve Case’s D.C.-based VC firm Revolution LLC in 2017 to launch the “Rise of the Rest” fund, which invests in small companies in places outside Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston.
In 2020, Vance launched his own VC firm, Narya Capital, with funding from Thiel and other Silicon Valley heavyweights Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt and Scott Dorsey.
Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said Vance’s close ties to tech investors could open up “a big infusion of tech money into the Trump campaign.”
“For a while, many people in the tech sector have had reservations about Trump,” West said. “I think the Vance selection and the fact that he’s close to some of the leading lights in the tech sector will reassure others about the administration’s efforts in that area.”
As early evidence, Vance helped organize a fundraiser recently for Trump in San Francisco with prominent tech venture capitalists David Sacks (who gushed “God bless JD, God bless Trump, and God bless the USA” on Monday) and Chamath Palihapitiya.
Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican presidential candidate, told Brendan at the Republican National Convention that he sees Vance as defined more by his life story as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” than by his ties to the tech industry.
“[Vance is] a lot of things. That’s one of the things he’s done, but I think he’s somebody who’s also an American Dream story, and I think that’s the more relevant part of this,” Ramaswamy said Monday following the announcement.
— In terms of actual policy: Vance sits on the Senate Commerce Committee and has teamed up with Democrats to try to extend the Affordable Connectivity Program, which helped 23 million households pay their internet bills until the program ran out of cash in May. The effort failed when Republican lawmakers pushed back, arguing that any extension should come with reforms.
In a March interview with Fox, Vance called for breaking up Google, calling it “one of the most dangerous companies in the world.” He’s also advocated for the repeal of Section 230, the tech industry’s coveted liability shield, for companies “over a certain size” — with exceptions for smaller platforms like Trump’s Truth Social.
Vance has supported efforts from competition regulators to crack down on anticompetitive practices in the tech industry, and has introduced legislation that would take away a tax break for large mergers when the companies involved have a combined annual revenue of $500 million or more. He’s also proposed hiking taxes on corporations.
“I think if you are one of the Big Five — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, maybe throw in Nvidia, you’re probably concerned,” Evan Swarztrauber, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and a Republican former FCC official, told John after the announcement. “Because maybe you were thinking a Trump second term would just be more of a hands-off big business.”
Medium-sized tech companies and startups are likely “going to see a potential ally there” based on Vance’s record, Swarztrauber predicted.
“At a time when folks are wondering how much policy would shift if Trump were to be elected, there’s a potential continuity with what the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are doing vis-à-vis Big Tech,” he added.
