Today, we’re unpacking the rise of JD Vance and, more importantly, the powerful network of people who have controlled his career behind the scenes. By the end of this, I want you to ask yourself a serious question: Is JD Vance really the working-class champion he claims to be, or is there a much bigger story hiding behind the “Hillbilly Elegy” brand?
We all know this narrative, shoved down our throats all election cycle: the Appalachian childhood, the bestselling memoir, and Hollywood turning his story into a movie. The Trump campaign used that underdog arc to connect with middle America and paint Democrats as the party catering to the one-percenters. But the truth is, JD Vance’s path to power wasn’t built on “grit,” but through The reality is that JD Vance’s rise wasn’t forged through grit, but through connections, several of which should deeply concern the average American.
Today, we are going to take a look at when and where JD’s journey stops looking like a working-class feel-good story and starts looking like something much stranger.
To begin, we all know about JD Vance’s background, coming from a single-parent household riddled with drugs and whatnot. We all know about his memoir, which was eventually made into a book, Hillbilly Elegy.
Like I said before, throughout the 2024 election cycle, the Trump campaign used JD Vance’s unstable, working-class upbringing to resonate with the middle-class community, and essentially paint the democrats as the elite, aristocratic, out-of-touch party. Well, as it turns out, JD Vance is far from the down-to-earth, blue-collar, hillbilly. His political ascent began in 2011, during his time at Yale Law School, where he met quite a few important people who helped him get to where he is today.
David Frum and Government Surveillance
We’ll start with this guy, David Frum. David Frum is a political commentator and journalist at The Atlantic. He is very pro-Israel, he’s an ardent zionist, and supports Israel’s strikes on Gaza. Now, his claim to fame was being the speechwriter and special assistant for George W. Bush. He pretty much shaped the Bush administration’s economic and foreign policy post 9/11, including the infamous disaster invasion of Iraq. He also pushed for regime changes and wars in the Middle East that the United States did not need to take part in. Along with that gig in the Bush administration, he has several connections to Zionist, Neo-conservative think tanks and federal agencies. Not only that, he published this book called “An End to Evil,” where he promotes these insane ideas that America needs to have more domestic surveillance on civilians who promote anti-zionist or anti-Israel ideas. Now I know David Frum has a lot of crazy narratives to unpack there, but I want you to keep that idea of government surveillance as we go along and meet the others who have propped up J.D. Vance.
So David Frum had an odd, not very publicized relationship with J.D. Vance during the early stages of JD’s career. As far as my research knows, there’s very little information on how the two became close, or why JD Vance was writing under a fake name, JD Hamel. It is clear that the relationship was grey, with plenty of fishy material there. I hope everyone, regardless of their beliefs or who they voted for, can agree all of this information is objectively weird. I really hope or we may done.
As for Vance’s involvement with Frum, JD wrote for Frum’s website, called FrumForum. At the time, FrumForum’s entire ideology was to promote a reformed, neo-conservative Republican Party that was more economically inclusive, culturally modern, and environmentally aware. Like I said, he kept Vance’s identity completely private for 15 years, while he essentially groomed him to become a prodigy of neo-conservative politics. The strange surveillance rabbit hole gets even deeper with JD as we look farther into his career.
Peter Thiel, Palantir, Connections to the CIA
Another critical moment in JD Vance’s rise was when he attended a lecture by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire. This guy Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal and he then founded Palantir Technologies. Thiel’s talk at Yale that JD was at, critiqued sort of a stagnation among the American elites and the lack of transformative technology in government. Now this talk left a profound impact on JD, and JD would later describe this lecture as “the most significant moment” of his Yale experience.
This encounter marked the beginning of a mentorship that would shape Vance’s career, pulling him into this odd Silicon Valley orbit and its mix of ideological and financial networks.
To start with, Peter Thiel is a self-described “techno-libertarian” with views that most would argue are more along the lines of technological authoritarianism. He is several connections to federal organizations, tech oligarchs, and foreign agencies. Now, Thiel saw JD as the perfect person to prop up and back as his curated proxy for his vision of reshaping American politics.
Peter Thiel’s relationship with the CIA began in the early 2000s when he co-founded Palantir Technologies in 2003, alongside Alex Karp. Palantir was built on a fraud-detection algorithm that Thiel’s PayPal team developed to identify financial transactions. Now the developers of PayPal noticed its potential for government intelligence and surveillance operations, and they pitched Palantir to the U.S. government as a tool to analyze vast datasets for national security purposes.
Now this is where Peter Thiel gets really concerning. The CIA’s affiliate venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, became an early investor, funneling millions into the development of Palantir. This partnership gave the company access to classified networks and contracts, cementing its role as a massive player in U.S. intelligence.
Palantir’s software, notably its Gotham and Foundry platforms, has since been used by the CIA, NSA, and FBI for “counterterrorism” as well as immigration enforcement. ICE uses Palantir to track and deport migrants, which, to some, may be seen as beneficial, depending on where you fall on the political compass. However, this is particularly shady under the Trump administration, because it essentially enables human rights abuses. By now, Palantir has secured over $113 million in federal contracts, including a “super-database” for government agencies and real-time tracking systems for civilians. Critics such as myself argue that Palantir’s integration with the intelligence community makes it an extension of the surveillance state, blurring the line between private profit and public power.
See, Palantir is in this grey area now, functioning as a private company with the resources and reach of a government entity. Unlike traditional defense contractors, Palantir operates as a private company. You can buy shares of it, but it almost exclusively relies on government contracts, particularly from the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies. This hybrid status allows Palantir to skirt accountability that public entities face while being used by the government to gather intel on civilians. It also has a huge role in the Department of Defense’s Project Maven, which developed AI drone targeting.
One of the major concerns with Peter Thiel is that his influence extends internationally, specifically through Palantir’s deep ties to the Israeli Defense Forces. Since 2017, Palantir has provided the IDF with AI-powered surveillance and targeting systems, which have been utilized in military operations, including the war in Gaza. These systems have integrated with Israel’s Lavender AI tool, and have reportedly flagged thousands of Palestinian civilians as potential threats, contributing to an unfathomable number of innocent people dead.
His worldview raises many alarms through his unreal stance on AI. During a 2023 interview, when asked whether he would prefer the human race or AI to dominate the future, he sat there in silence and refused to pick a side. This is a movie-style supervillain who wants to govern the world with AI and surpass the human race.
See, after Palantir was founded and JD Vance is done with law school, Peter Thiel facilitated JD’s entry into the tech world and Silicon Valley. Thiel got J.D. a role at Circuit Therapeutics, a biotechnology firm, where the CEO, Frederic Moll hired him as a favor to Peter Thiel. After that, in 2015, Vance joined Mithril Capital, Peter Thiel’s original venture capital firm.
His backing and funding of J.D. Vance is a calculated move to extend his influence into the political sphere. Since meeting Vance at Yale Law School in 2011, Thiel has mentored and steered him from law to venture capital to politics. In fact, he donated 15 million dollars to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign, funneled through a Super PAC. It was a record-breaking investment. Vance’s rise serves Peter Thiel’s agenda in multiple ways. As a senator and now vice president, J.D. can advocate for policies that favor Palantir’s interests, such as expanding government contracts for AI and expanding mass surveillance technologies on civilians.
By JD being in the White House, Thiel would gain and even more direct line to power, using his proxy to shape policy while Palantir’s tools quietly watch civilians and kill innocent people in Gaza.
Plain Folk Propganda in Hillbilly Elegy, Silicon Valley, Vance in the Mainstream
So now reflect back on Hillbilly Elegy, Vance published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 while still working for Peter Thiel. The book became a bestseller, catapulting Vance into the national spotlight as a commentator on working-class America. During this period, J.D. was in the spotlight for the first time. Now although J.D. already had these deep connections with the tech world, this was his first time in the public mainstream eye. He infamously went on and positioned himself as a “never-Trump” conservative, criticizing Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies in interviews, even going on to compare Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Behind the scenes, Peter Thiel’s financial and ideological support continued to shape JD Vance’s trajectory. Peter Thiel, who actually backed Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign when those ideas were very controversial in Silicon Valley, saw JD as a potential political asset. Keep in mind, at this time, Vance is still strictly a Silicon Valley guy who is being fed these political ideologies and meeting with theorists, who we will get into later. However, as of this time truly nothing in mainstream politics yet. He eventually left Mithril Capital in 2017, but he then joined Revolution, a venture capital firm founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case.
In 2019, Vance returned to Ohio, co-founding Narya Capital, another venture firm, with significant backing from Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt the former google ceo, and other tech luminaries. Narya’s principal idea was to invest in startups outside traditional coastal tech hubs, aligning with Vance’s public narrative of revitalizing Middle America. These midwestern focused venture moves aligned with his growing political ambitions, being fed and truly believing in these weird ideas given to him by Peter Thiel, David Frum, all those guys. Of course then Thiel encourages JD to consider a Senate run.
One of these strange political figures JD began engaging with is a guy named Curtis Yarvin, a blogger and former programmer known as Mencius Moldbug, who is a central figure in the “neo-reactionary” or “Dark Enlightenment” movement. Now Curtis Yarvin’s writings, which advocate for dismantling democracy in favor of a centralized, corporate-style monarchy, have found a receptive audience in Silicon Valley’s libertarian-leaning circles. Vance met Yarvin through, not surprisingly, Peter Thiel. This meeting was in 2015, and JD Vance has since cited him as a friend, publicly referencing his ideas on restructuring government by replacing bureaucrats with tech loyalists. Vance’s strange fixation and admiration of Curtis Yarvin, who is also a neo-reactionary aligns with this dystopian vision of dismantling the traditional bureaucratic obstacles and creating a tech and AI-driven state.
His exposure to Yarvin’s ideas, particularly his concept of “RAGE”, which stands for Retire All Government Employees, resonated with Vance, aligning with his growing distrust of the traditional federal bureaucracy. Yarvin has this vision of replacing democracy with a corporate-style “patchwork” of mini-states, each run by a tech-like CEO. These aligned with Thiel’s critiques of government inefficiency. Vance actually echoed these ideas in a 2021 podcast, suggesting Trump should fire mid-level government employees and replace them with loyalists, directly quoting Curtis Yarvin in the podcast.
By 2021, Vance had fully pivoted to politics, and he announced his candidacy for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat. Suddenly, JD Vance, who was once calling Trump Hitler, embraces Trump and his platform, aligning with the MAGA movement and adopting the Tucker Carlson-esque populist rhetoric on immigration, trade, and other typical conservative cultural issues. Thiel bankrolled Vance’s campaign with that record-breaking $15 million donation to the Protect Ohio Values Super PAC, supplemented by contributions from other conservative mega-donors. David Sacks, another Peter Thiel ally, donated $1 million. This financial support, coupled with endorsements from Trump and Tucker Carlson, gave JD Vance a Senate victory in November 2022. Vance’s campaign leaned heavily into the New Right themes that were directly influenced by Yarvin and Thiel. He advocated for these, while aligning them with Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint for a second Trump administration that is taken from Curtis Yarvin’s call for dismantling federal agencies.
Rupert Murdoch’s Media Influence
Now we look into the more present-day JD as we know him. So while this is a less central factor than Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, who is a known libertarian, and his media empire, have also played a huge role in Vance’s rise. Murdoch’s outlets, especially Fox News, overly promoted Vance’s profile in the post Hillbilly Elegy era, with figures like Tucker Carlson, who is a known Neo-conservative populist with connections to the CIA. Like I said, Rupert Murdoch would promote his Senate campaign on Fox or the New York Post much more than other typical Republicans running for Senate. Murdoch’s media has historically aligned with Peter Thiel’s conservative network, promoting the New Right tech figures and causes, so JD
Vance and the new right can hit the old Fox News traditionalist conservative demographic.
2024 Election Cycle
Anyway, this brings us into the 2024 election cycle. In July 2024, Trump selected Vance as his vice presidential running mate, a decision heavily influenced by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who lobbied Trump on Vance’s behalf. This was the moment that cemented JD’s role as the bridge between the Silicon Valley tech CEO’s and the MAGA movement. At the Republican National Convention, Vance’s tech allies, including Google CEO David Sacks, praised his agreements with their vision of a tech-driven, populist future. Just to put it in perspective, after JD Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, that’s when you saw Elon get vocal about his support for Trump. Elon Musk reportedly donated $45 million monthly to a Trump super PAC.
Now, as the vice president-elect, Vance has continued to draw on Curtis Yarvin’s ideas, particularly in advocating for a “de-wokification” program and mass firings of federal employees, as well as aligning with Project 2025’s goals. JD allegedly even called Curtis Yarvin a “reactionary fascist” at a party, and the two of them smiled and laughed about it. The thing is, Vance’s traditional policies, like opposing the ideas of abortion, gun control, and progressive economic measures, psychologically resonate with these traditionalists in the Republican party, while Silicon Valley gains power in the shadows.
The Future: Do Not Vote for JD Vance
Looking ahead to 2028, I am genuinely unsure how a single human in their right mind would vote for JD Vance. This butterfly effect has the potential to be one of the most perilous developments our country has ever faced. I am not saying I would support whoever runs against him, and I’m not saying whoever runs against him will not be corrupt, because trust me, I really don’t see a possibility there, but I want a bipartisan awakening where we realize that this guy is not who he says he is. He is not this hillbilly guy who made it to the top the working-class way. He is not a “normal family guy.” The Republican Party does an excellent job of pandering on issues that really don’t matter to the average person. In 2024, the idea of men in women’s sports was a major talking point for Republicans. Would you rather have a man in women’s sports and be governed by AI, or would you rather take one for the team, accept a man or two in women’s sports, and guarantee our future for the most part? Republicans and conservatives, all I ask is do not fall for the irrelevant culture wars in 2028, and please think about the future.
With that being said, I welcome any feedback anybody has. If I got anything wrong, let me know. I plan on doing more of these, so let me know if there’s a corrupt politician on either side I should look into.