Who is really powering J.D. Vance’s political rise? Tech bros not hillbillies

There are talented politicians, there are untalented politicians and then there’s J.D. Vance – I mean, he tried to calm the furor over his “childless cat ladies” remarks by feebly deadpanning that he’s “got nothing against cats”.

Now, he’s just gaslighting, claiming that Kamala Harris called for an end to the child tax credit, even though as part of the Biden administration, she, of course, supported a major expansion of the tax credit that greatly reduced child poverty but expired in 2022 in the face of unified Republican opposition.

JD Vance may be an even worse politician than his detractors expected.Credit: AP

So, how did this guy end up as the Republican vice presidential nominee? Who’s his constituency? Despite the Handmaid’s Tale vibe of his views on women and reproductive rights, he doesn’t have deep roots in the religious right. And he’s a late adopter of the MAGA worldview, having once fretted that former president Donald Trump could wind up being “America’s Hitler”.

Vance’s ascent has, to a significant degree, been powered by a small group of technology billionaires with Peter Thiel, who poured millions into Vance’s 2022 Senate race, at the centre.

There’s clearly overlap between this coterie and the tech types who a year ago briefly swooned over Robert Kennedy Jr. Their enthusiasm for Kennedy seems to have waned as they’ve realised the obvious – that he’s a crank who could still play the role of spoiler, but not a serious presidential contender in his own right. On the other hand, the elevation of Vance – who seems to be a worse politician than even his detractors realised, looks harder to reverse. Although it’s technically still possible to replace Vance on the GOP ticket, Trump is probably stuck with him.

In any case, you really want to think of Vance as an avatar, not of hillbillies – as the title of his memoir would have you believe – but of tech bros.

Now, it would be misleading to suggest that Vance represents all of Silicon Valley. His boosters – and in general, the tech billionaires who strongly support the Trump-Vance ticket – are a relatively small if immensely wealthy group. So, what do they have in common?

To start, right-wing political leanings. Some used to present themselves as libertarians, but they’ve now made their peace with Trump, who, with his promises of mass deportations and his hints that he will prosecute political opponents, is anything but libertarian.

Some right-wing techies have also descended into conspiracism. Leading the pack, Elon Musk has taken to promoting false claims that Democrats refuse to deport immigrants living in the country illegally because they expect to receive their votes.

In general, as I’ve noted in the past, paranoid politics comes surprisingly naturally to the ultrawealthy, and not just in the tech sector. Partly that’s because it’s hard for some billionaires to avoid surrounding themselves with people unwilling to tell them when they’re talking nonsense. Partly it’s because some seem to feel a peculiar sense of grievance over the things money can’t buy: If I’m so rich, why can’t I shape the world to my liking?

Donald Trump made a pitch to the Bitcoin 2024 conference on the weekend, although he once called bitcoin a “scam”.Credit: AP

Tech-bro support for Trump and Vance also seems to have a lot to do with one specific issue: cryptocurrency. In 2017, pro-Trump tech mogul David Sacks – who had a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention this month – told CNBC that “bitcoin is fulfilling PayPal’s original vision to create ‘the new world currency’“. Last year, Thiel’s Founders Fund invested $US200 million in two cryptocurrencies. Also last year, Politico reports, Vance “introduced a bill that would shield banks from regulatory pressure to cut off crypto customers”. This year, he circulated “industry-friendly” draft legislation that would “overhaul how the SEC and the CFTC police the crypto market”.

What is crypto? On Saturday, Trump, addressing a bitcoin conference, declared, “Most people have no idea what the hell it is” – which is true, and almost surely applies to Trump himself, who once dismissed bitcoin as “a scam” against the dollar but now says that the “attacks on crypto” are coming from “left-wing fascists”.

The truth is that bitcoin, which was introduced 15 years ago, an eon in tech time, remains economically useless: A 2022 survey found that transactions involving crypto assets “are seldom used for payments outside the crypto ecosystem”. A couple of exceptions to its uselessness are money laundering and extortion.

But many crypto boosters now appear to believe that with Trump, they have crucial political support. They’ve already managed to get key parts of their wish list inserted into the 2024 Republican Party platform: “Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.” (Strange stuff to include in a fairly short document presumably aimed at voters, when I’m sure only a tiny handful of voters have the slightest idea what any of that is about.)

At Saturday’s conference, Trump appeared to go even further than his party’s platform, calling for the creation of some form of national bitcoin reserve – a government bailout for a scandal-ridden, value- and environment-destroying industry.

Oh, and Vance was to headline a fundraiser Monday at the home of Mike Belshe, chief executive of BitGo, a digital asset company.

Anyway, the backing of tech billionaires is a key reason Vance ended up as a vice presidential contender. He pitches himself as a champion of working-class America. But behind his cynical culture-warring – behind his professed allegiance to Everyman totems such as Mountain Dew - he’s closely tied to a tech-sector ethos that’s anything but populist.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.