Meet JD Vance, America’s future president

I think the two [Trump] administrations made opposite mistakes. The first administration brought people to power who could not agree with one another, and it was one endless internal struggle. The second administration played it safe and corrected the mistake of the first term, putting in place all these loyalty checks. In the end, we got an administration made up of not very smart but very loyal people. The situation reached a certain exhaustion, and precisely on the Republican side.

This exhaustion, in the famous investor’s view, will affect the results of this year’s midterm elections and could have consequences two years later:

If the democratic socialists, the Democratic Party, seize power, that will be a much more serious problem. And that will be, I don’t know, the end of America.

It is known that Vice President JD Vance is Thiel’s protégé. (“I have a weakness for smart people, and I considered him thoughtful, open to new ideas, and charismatic”.) He worked at the venture fund that Thiel helped found. Thiel was Vance’s main backer on his way to the Senate. It was Thiel who arranged Vance’s meeting with Donald Trump at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, in the spring of 2021. He continues to support Vance, but he is far from certain of his victory in 2028. When asked who would be the better presidential candidate, Vance or Rubio, Thiel replies:

I still support Vance. I’m concerned that it will be very hard for any [Republican] candidate to win, so I don’t know. My pessimistic view is that this is the wrong question.

If the Republicans suffer a crushing defeat in this fall’s midterm elections, then Democrats will think they will win anyway in 2028. Therefore, they will probably not stand in the way very much of an anti-democratic socialist’s victory.

Thiel estimates the Republican candidate’s chances of victory at 50 percent.

So what is to be done? How can “the end of America” be prevented? Thiel is not the kind of person to sit around waiting for the end with folded arms. He is not inclined to publicize his role in American politics, but his articles, lectures, and interviews reveal his extreme concern about what is happening. He has resources he is ready to invest in his future project, access to decision-makers, and connections he can and wants to mobilize.

Silicon Valley’s protégé

During the 2024 presidential campaign, the press paid comparatively little attention to JD Vance. Mostly, his provocative remarks were repeated, such as about “childless cat ladies unhappy in their personal lives”, who, supposedly, are effectively running the country. And although later in his book he admitted that this was “one of the dumbest things I’ve said”, people still bring it up. But we will not dwell on that. It is far more useful to look at his ideology. We have already written about the strange, bizarre worldview that does not fit into the usual definitions of Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Peter Thiel. JD Vance is on the same orbit. His views are much closer to the techno-oligarchs than to Trump, whose mind comfortably combines neoliberalism with neo-mercantilism and nationalism.

He grew up in a depressed region populated by descendants of Scots and Irish, once the center of the steel industry, but since then it has rusted away and come to be called the Rust Belt. At 18, he joined the military, the Marine Corps, and this service, like for many other people from humble backgrounds, became his social elevator: he gained the right to free higher education and then, thanks to his talents, a Yale scholarship. There he met his current wife, Usha, from a wealthy family of Indian immigrants. Among his professors at Yale was Amy Chua, author of the once-famous book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. But that is not her only bestseller. She is a serious political scientist of controversial reputation. It was Chua who persuaded Vance to write a book about his childhood and youth.

In 2016, the honest and talented “Hillbilly Elegy“ was published and immediately became a national bestseller. After the presidential election, the New York Times included it in its list of “Six books that help explain why Trump won”. And this despite the fact that Vance himself was then an anti-Trumpist.

A hillbilly is a rough country bumpkin, literally a “boy from the hills”. Vance describes his rootless childhood in poverty amid family scandals, with fights, a drug-addicted mother, and two stepfathers. Hillbilly is a distinct culture. The most-cited line in the book is one said by Vance’s schoolteacher: “They want us to be shepherds of these children, but nobody wants to admit that these children are born wolves”. Wolves, not sheep. And this is Vance’s self-identificationTranslation by Vladimir Bakanov:

Although I am white, I do not count myself among the Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin and Protestant faith who live in the northeastern part of the country. I consider myself a white working-class American of Irish and Scottish descent. For people like us, poverty is a family tradition. Their ancestors were first day laborers in the slaveholding South, then sharecroppers, and later, closer to our time, miners, machinists, and carpenters. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, and white trash. To me, they are relatives, friends, and neighbors.

Later, articles appeared claiming that Vance is “not a real hillbilly”. In any case, the voices of the rejected, the “losers of globalization”, did indeed help Donald Trump and became his electoral base.

Silicon Valley techno-oligarchs saw political potential in Vance. In 2021, he became the Republican Party’s candidate in the Senate race, winning the primary over six more experienced party colleagues. When he did that, Trump endorsed his candidacy.

In September, on Jack Murphy’s podcast, then one of the leaders of the English-language manosphere, Vance admitted that he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, that it was a mistake, and that now he had “seen the light” (he said red-pilled — an allusion to the “red pill“ from the film ”The Matrix“). He said that he himself had ”never even fully realized“ how he ended up among Silicon Valley’s elite. In such an environment, ”you start to lose sight of where you came from and who you were“, but ”by the grace of God or by lucky chance“ Vance did not lose that compass. He voted for Trump in 2020 and was sure that Trump would become president in 2024 if he decided to run. However, ”the movement needs new leaders“, and he himself ”would perhaps like to play a role in saving this country, which I love so much“.

“Take up a circular defense and load the rifles”

Senator Vance’s record is both extensive and barren. In two years in the Senate, he delivered 45 speeches in the Senate and introduced 57 bills, none of which were passed by the upper chamber. Vance also became a co-sponsor of 288 bills and resolutions, of which only 37 were approved by the Senate and only two resolutions by both chambers, but President Biden vetoed both.

He consistently voted against increasing aid to Ukraine and every major budget spending package, as well as against raising the national debt ceiling.

In July 2023, Vance and House member Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill that would have declared gender-affirming medical care for minors a federal crime punishable by up to 12 years in prison. The bill “died” in committee when Congress’s term expired. In June 2024, Vance sponsored a law to eliminate DEI, which would have banned related federal programs and funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion for agencies, contractors, and organizations receiving federal funds. That bill also peacefully expired in committee.

Incidentally, Senator Vance wrote a review in 2023 of Patrick Deneen’s book “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future”. The review appears on the dust jacket:

Deneen not only shows how the current ruling class has declared war on beauty, tradition, and the social institutions that make life worth living. He formulates a vision of populist politics capable of restoring what has been destroyed.

What is this book about?

The political science professor at Catholic Notre Dame University, Deneen, writes that classical liberalism created an exploitative ruling class — a technocratic elite that serves the interests of the “few” at the expense of the “many”. Modern liberal democracy masks this divide with consumerism and a progressive social agenda. In Deneen’s view, destroying the ruling class through a mass uprising is naïve. A new ruling class must be created “from the top down”.

Even more interesting is Vance’s foreword to the book by Kevin Roberts, “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America”. Kevin Roberts is a Republican political strategist and president of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, which became the headquarters for developing “Project 2025” — the program for Trump’s second presidential term. “Dawn’s Early Light” is a quote from the U.S. national anthem, which begins with the wordstranslation by Maxim Naimiller: “O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?”.

In his foreword, Vance likens liberals to a short-sighted gardener:

Imagine a well-kept garden on a sunny plot. Of course, it has some flaws and a lot of weeds. In an attempt to get rid of the bad, the well-meaning gardener treats the garden with a chemical solution. This kills many weeds, but it also kills many good plants. Ignoring the warnings, the gardener keeps adding the solution. In the end, the soil becomes unfit for cultivation. In this analogy, modern liberalism is the gardener, the garden is our country, and the voices discouraging the gardener are conservatives.

But in the final paragraph, the peaceful analogy turns military:

Now we all understand that it is time to take up a circular defense and load the rifles. In the battles ahead, these ideas will become indispensable weapons.

The book was supposed to be published in the summer of 2024, at the height of the election campaign in which Vance was running as the vice-presidential candidate. But the foreword text leaked to the press, Trump’s campaign distanced itself from “Project 2025”, and Roberts postponed the book’s release so as not to harm the Trump–Vance campaign. And here is the blurb for the book, posted on the Heritage Foundation website:

America is on the brink of destruction. A corrupt and incompetent elite has undermined our way of life and is brainwashing the next generation. Many so-called conservatives are just as guilty as their progressive opponents. In this ambitious and provocative book, Heritage Foundation president Dr. Kevin Roberts announces the emergence of a new conservative movement. His message is simple: global elites — your time is up...

Chapter by chapter, the book identifies the institutions conservatives need to create, others we need to take back, and still more that are too corrupt to save: Ivy League universities, the FBI, the New York Times, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education, BlackRockthe world’s largest international investment company, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy — and that is only a few of them.

All of this must be dismantled if we are to pass the American way of life on to future generations.

Also notable is the epigraph to the book’s first chapter:

A flame burst forth in the soul, anger stirred before death
To repay her for her homeland.

This is a line from Book IItranslation by Sergey Osherov of Virgil’s “Aeneid”. Aeneas walks through burning Troy and sees Helen, who caused the war. But his mother, the goddess Venus, does not let him kill Helen: Aeneas is destined to leave Troy and found a new city. So, supposedly, the new generation of conservatives is to build a new America on the ruins of the old one.

Peter Thiel’s networks

Although Trump denied any familiarity with “Project 2025”, by now it has been implemented more than halfway. The inconsistency of the president is what prevents the ideologues of this creeping coup from achieving more. They now place their hopes on Vance.

To move from theory to practice, Peter Thiel and his colleague Orin Hoffman created the closed club “Dialog” back in 2006, which periodically gathers politicians and entrepreneurs for its “retreats”. Its existence became known last year, and in June of this year the well-known Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew, aka Tillie Kottmann, obtained and published the full list of participants in the Dublin retreat on August 12–16. Among the people who attended “Dialog” retreats are U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Director of National Intelligence (now former) Tulsi Gabbard, Maryland Governor and Democrat Wes Moore, Democratic Senator Cory Booker, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, Garry Kasparov, Jared Kushner, U.S. Secretary of the Army (also now former) Dan Driscoll, U.S. commander in Europe General Alexus Grynkewich, Vice President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas (she denies taking part), cytogeneticist and Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, as well as former high-ranking officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations who retain high status and authority. The club’s events are hardly to be seen as secret gatherings of conspirators. It is more of what is called networking — weaving a network, a platform for informal communication and making connections, even matchmaking — not for nothing are participants asked in the questionnaire about their marital status and whether they are satisfied with their sex life. Nevertheless, the list is impressive.

Even more interesting is the organization called Rockbridge Network, founded in 2019 by JD Vance and conservative columnist Chris Buskirk. It is a limited liability company registered in Delaware and intended to finance political campaigns. It brings together several nonprofit foundations that operate with so-called “dark money”. They publicly report their spending, but are not required to disclose their sources of funds. Under the law, these organizations may engage in political activity if that activity is not their main purpose. The assumption is that non-primary activity should account for no more than half of expenses. But the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has never set an exact percentage. Besides Thiel, Rockbridge includes, for example, billionaire Rebecca Mercer, the Republican Party’s largest donor, and the Winklevoss brothers, known for their lawsuit with Zuckerberg and since then the world’s first bitcoin billionaires.

In a brochure published in 2022, Rockbridge describes itself as “something like a political venture firm”.

Our goal is to bring together investors dissatisfied with the current political state of affairs and raise capital to finance projects that will disrupt but advance the Republican agenda. We are focused on supporting people and projects that can put an end to decline and revitalize our country... The Rockbridge network will replace the current Republican ecosystem of think tanks, media organizations, and activist groups that have contributed to the party’s decline with more effective and action-oriented people and institutions focused on winning.

Investors do not just give money — they finance specific projects. One of them, for example, aims to “weaponize the law” and “identify points of leverage where the law allows bad actors, including the media, to be held accountable”. Another project is working on something similar to the British system of forming a shadow cabinet. A third is creating electoral maps favorable to Republicans. Whether a shadow cabinet already exists, we do not know, but the new maps and the “weaponization” of the law are there for all to see.

The organization holds its “summits” twice a year. In April 2024, the latest “summit” was held at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida estate. A seat at the table costs from one hundred thousand to one million dollars a year. There were the same Bessent and Gabbard, as well as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received a $100,000 speaking fee at the “summit” in Las Vegas three months before his appointment as U.S. Secretary of Health. Tucker Carlson also spoke there. This year, Rockbridge members were gathering for a “cowboy” party in Dallas just before the Republican convention.

Conspiracy theory

Money can do a lot, but not everything. Club members understand this perfectly well. It is no accident that one of the Dublin retreat panels was called Money (Does?) Buy Happiness — “Does money buy happiness?” The market for political advertising is not elastic, and a refrigerator and a gas pump are more convincing than television. That is why Peter Thiel predicts a difficult fight for Vance in 2028. How can it be made easier?

This is where conspiracy theory begins. In March of this year, Scott McConnell, journalist and founding father of the magazine The American Conservative, suddenly wrote on X:

My advice to Vance: announce that you support a transfer of power under the 25th Amendment. The vice president will be, say, Chris Murphy or someone like that. Announce that you will NOT run in 2028. Use your position and access to the media to explain why this is necessary. Do not resign.

The tweet was posted at the moment it became clear that the blitzkrieg against Iran had failed. At the time, Vance was described as a “skeptic” of strikes on Iran, and the president said that he and the vice president had small “philosophical” disagreements on the issue. Vance reluctantly joined the White House’s pro-war propaganda, and Tulsi Gabbard lost her intelligence chief post precisely because of these small disagreements. The 25th Amendment to the Constitution sets out the procedure for removing a president from power due to incapacity. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy is one of the sharpest critics of U.S. military action in Iran and is considered a centrist.

A strange tweet. They shrugged and forgot about it. But in May, Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton cabinet, author of many books and still an active commentator, wrote on his blog:

Recently I had lunch with a group of political strategists — seasoned people who have advised politicians and candidates for years. At the table they shared with me their fantasy, which they estimate has a 30 percent chance of coming true over the next four months.

In my interlocutors’ fantasy, Trump’s failed war will lead to such a significant and prolonged rise in gasoline and food prices that a large part of the Republican base will begin to turn against Trump. And Trump’s mental problems will become even more obvious.

A majority of cabinet members is needed for the decision to be adopted. If we assume that Bessent, Lutnick, Kennedy, and Wiles, who attended Thiel’s events, are “for”, then the rest can probably be persuaded, intimidated, or bought. Reich continues:

This allows Vance and Rubio to avoid the difficult 2028 primaries, in which they would face each other... As president and vice president, Vance and Rubio repeal Trump’s tariffs and his war, which drove prices sharply higher, upset the Republican base, and turned much of the world against America...

The cabinet decision is made while Trump is in Mar-a-Lago. He is simply told by phone that he is no longer president. It resembles Khrushchev’s removal. Though Khrushchev was at least summoned from Pitsunda to Moscow to preserve appearances.

Reich concludes:

“I couldn’t decide whether to be happy or worried”, I replied. They laughed, but I was serious.

Who knows what political strategists talk about over a drink! And four months have already passed. But the plan, it must be admitted, is good.

Once Vance and Rubio take office as president and vice president, they will be able to distance themselves from the unpopular Trump. In 2028, it will be much easier for them to win the election (the administrative resource has not been abolished). They just need to do all this when less than two years remain before Trump’s term expires. Then Vance can run for two full terms and remain in power for almost 10 years in total. That is why nothing happened in September (four months later). Of course, this would be a coup unlike anything in American history. We already know how the coup plotters will save the country.

On reflection, one can imagine another possible scenario, and without any conspiracy — impeachment. It is quite possible that, once they become the majority in both houses or at least one house of Congress, Democrats will launch impeachment again — and, to their own surprise, receive Republican support. In 2025, seven Republicans voted with Democrats to convict Trump. They were only 10 votes short of forcibly removing him from power.

All of this is, of course, fantasy, but as Vance put it, anything can happen. Including his refusal to take part in the adventure.