Chart and overview of key links for J.D. Vance with mentor Peter Thiel, the little-known Rockbridge Network and 2016 kingmaker Rebekah Mercer
Since Donald Trump announced J.D. Vance as his running mate, there have been reports on Vance’s misogynistic statements criticizing “childless cat ladies” and controversial views such as that childless Americans should pay higher tax rates. Social media is awash with memes about couches and how Vance is weird. There are more nefarious reports like this on how Vance and his mentor Peter Thiel follow Curtis Yarvin, who wrote in 2008 that unproductive people should be converted into biodiesel. Yarvin later said he was kidding but then said that a humane alternative to genocide was to imprison unproductive people in a virtual reality world – a nightmare scenario akin to the movies Soylent Green or The Matrix.
J.D. Vance’s addition to the Trump ticket shows how much influence a radical far-right group of tech billionaires have and how much more influence they will have if Trump wins in November. If Trump does not win there is no doubt this group will do everything possible to undermine a Harris administration.
Chart of some key people in J.D. Vance’s network
The following chart and article show how some key people are connected, in large part through the Rockbridge Network, co-founded by J.D. Vance and Chris Buskirk. This is a small slice of the network linked to Vance. The media has focused on Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and other tech billionaires – but they should not leave out Rebekah Mercer who, with her father Robert largely financed Trump’s 2016 win. Rebekah Mercer has strong connections in this network and is once again acting to repeat her role as political kingmaker along with Peter Thiel.
The tech broligarchs and Rebekah Mercer
In 2018 Carole Cadwalladr broke multiple stories on how Cambridge Analytica, funded by Rebekah and Robert Mercer, harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and built tools to use the data to target U.S. voters. The Cambridge Analytica reporting exposed the risks of how far-right politicians and donors can leverage technology and personal data to sway elections.
My initial research and reporting started in 2017 with this chart of SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica companies, which I have continued to report on since.
Recently Cadwalladr wrote about the tech “broligarchs” including J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk who support Trump.
Several patterns that emerged in 2016 with billionaire donors, technology and data are continuing in the 2024 election.
Some tech broligarchs emerging as new power players are getting ample media coverage. Others like Rebekah Mercer are leveraging past experience to support their right wing agenda and should be included in the coverage of this broligarch network.
How Peter Thiel became a tech broligarch
Peter Thiel may now be the most prominent ‘would-be’ kingmaker heading into the 2024 election, although he sometimes seems to be vying for this title with Elon Musk who recently endorsed Trump. Thiel and Musk both earned their fortunes and became tech broligarchs as co-founders of Paypal.
In the late 1990’s as the world was preparing for Y2K, Peter Thiel founded an online payments software firm called Confinity that merged with Elon Musk’s original X.com and was renamed PayPal. Musk briefly ran PayPal and when it was sold to eBay in 2002 he used the money from the sale to launch SpaceX.
Peter Thiel went on to launch and co-found several venture capital firms including Clarium Capital (since closed), Founders Fund, Thiel Capital, Mithril Capital and Valar Ventures. He was the first outside investor to invest $500,000 in Facebook for around 10% ownership.
In addition to his venture capital and investment firms, Thiel launched software and data analytics company Palantir Technologies. Palantir has had hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts with the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services and others – before, during and after the Trump administration – giving Palantir access to a vast amount of government data.
As he built his fortune Peter Thiel has also developed a network of proteges, many who are aligned with his far-right views. Two of these proteges J.D. Vance and Blake Masters both coincidentally (and separately) met Thiel while they were in law school. Vance was a student at Yale law school when he attended a speech by Thiel. Another budding lawyer-to-be Blake Masters met Thiel when he took a class with him at Stanford called “Sovereignty, Technology, and Globalization.”
J.D. Vance and Blake Masters both went on to work at firms founded by Thiel. And then ahead of the 2022 midterms Thiel spent tens of millions of dollars to try to get these two proteges to win seats in the U.S. senate.
Thiel donated $15 million to PACs supporting Vance who ran for senate in Ohio in 2022 and won.
Thiel donated $13.5 million to PACs supporting Blake Masters for senate in Arizona. Masters lost to Mark Kelly who is now being considered for Vice President for Kamala Harris. Masters is now running for congress and was recently endorsed by Trump.
J.D. Vance’s career milestones with support from Peter Thiel
Vance’s history with his mentor Thiel has been covered extensively elsewhere, including in this recent Washington Post article which has a great overview of Vance’s background and support from Thiel and several other big tech donors.
Thiel made him wealthy, setting him up to invest in companies that became popular with the MAGA set. He shepherded Vance’s entry into politics, bankrolling, alongside other Silicon Valley donors, his successful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2022.
Following are highlights of some key milestones in J.D. Vance’s career and life:
In 2011 when J.D. Vance was a student at Yale Law School he met Peter Thiel.
When Vance graduated he worked briefly in the law field before he was hired by Circuit Therapeutics CEO Frederic Moll as a favor to Thiel.
In 2016 Vance married Usha Chilukuri Vance whom he had met at Yale Law School.
Over the years Vance changed his name multiple times (including after his parents divorced and later taking his grandmother’s maiden name Vance). Variations include: James Donald Bowman, James David Hamel, J.D. Hamel, and J.D. Vance.
In 2016 Vance published his memoir Hillbilly Elegy which became a bestseller and a film.
Vance briefly worked at venture firm Mithril Capital, which was co-founded by Thiel.
In 2017 Vance became a partner at venture capital firm Revolution, founded by America Online co-founder Steve Case.
In 2019 Vance converted to Catholicism and wrote that Thiel “was an original inspiration for his path to Christianity despite previously calling himself an atheist.”
In 2020 Vance co-founded venture firm Narya Capital with Colin Greenspon who had previously worked at Thiel’s Mithril Capital and had originally hired Vance there. Narya was launched with funding from Peter Thiel, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and billionaire tech entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen. (An interesting note is that many firm names for Thiel’s companies Valar, Mithril, Palantir and Vance’s Narya all come from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” which is a favorite of Thiel and Vance).
In 2022 Vance won a senate seat in Ohio with $15 million in support from Peter Thiel.
In 2024 Vance was selected by Trump as his Vice President on the Republican ticket.
With Peter Thiel’s protege J.D. Vance now positioned to become the vice president it is helpful to understand part of the network connecting them, including the little-known Rockbridge Network.
The Rockbridge Network was co-founded by Chris Buskirk and J.D. Vance with funding from Peter Thiel, Rebekah Mercer and others
In 2022 the New York Times published a story on secret coalitions created by wealthy Republican donors such as the Koch brothers, who spent over $250 million in 2020, and the Rockbridge Network funded by Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer.
There has been significant coverage of Charles and David Koch, especially since Jane Mayer’s 2016 book Dark Money described how their oil fortune funded a sprawling network of nonprofits, think tanks and academic and political institutions to support their right-wing ideology and policies and candidates who would help them protect and grow their billionaire wealth.
There has been much less coverage of the more recently formed Rockbridge Network which was created in part as a younger tech focused alternative to the Koch network.
The Rockbridge Network includes some of Mr. Trump’s biggest donors, such as Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer, and has laid out an ambitious goal — to reshape the American right by spending more than $30 million on conservative media, legal, policy and voter registration projects, among other initiatives.
A 2023 Puck story described how the Rockbridge Network was co-founded in 2019 by two close allies of Thiel – J.D. Vance who was then a best-selling author of his Hillbilly Elegy memoir and a budding venture capitalist and Chris Buskirk, the editor and publisher of a conservative journal called American Greatness.
Rockbridge Network meetings included speeches by Peter Thiel, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and David Sacks
J.D. Vance and Chris Buskirk built the Rockbridge Network to be a young political power hub in Silicon Valley with events held twice a year with speakers such as Tucker Carlson, casino magnate Steve Wynn, Peter Thiel, David Sacks and others.
Last year Rockbridge claimed to have around 125 members who had committed to spending $100,000 per year on programs recommended by the network.
Rockbridge held its first summit in Arizona in 2021 and featured a speech by tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
In 2022 the Rockbridge Network circulated a brochure describing the group as “a kind of political venture capital firm” and they held a private summit at Mar-a-Lago featuring a speech by Donald Trump.
At a 2024 Rockbridge meeting at Mar-a-Lago Donald Trump, who was in New York for his hush money trial, called in and his son Don Jr. spoke at the event. Other attendees included Trump’s co-campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, GOP donor Rebekah Mercer (whom I have covered here, here and here), billionaire Woody Johnson, Trump’s “Court Whisperer” Leonard Leo (whom I covered here), cryptocurrency entrepreneur Erik Voorhees and former Uber executive Emil Michael.
Vance was recommended for VP at a Silicon Valley fundraiser
A July 2024 New York Times story described “How a Network of Tech Billionaires Helped J.D. Vance Leap Into Power.” A June fundraiser was held in California at the home of David Sacks, a South African-American tech entrepreneur and investor.
In 2007 Fortune published a piece on “The Paypal Mafia” that showed Paypal founders including Peter Thiel and David Sacks. The article coined the phrase “Paypal Mafia” that has been used frequently since to describe some of the new tech broligarchs.
The July event was co-hosted by Sacks with his podcaster colleague Chamath Palihapitiya. At a private dinner held after the fundraiser with two dozen tech and crypto executives and investors, Trump did an informal poll about whom to select as his VP and Sacks, Palihapitiya and others all picked J.D. Vance.
The July fundraiser was not affiliated with the Rockbridge Network, but J.D. Vance met David Sacks through Peter Thiel and Vance’s work running the Rockbridge Network which was meant to build power in Silicon Valley was likely a large reason for the overwhelming support for Vance at the Silicon Valley fundraiser.
1789 Capital co-founded by Chris Buskirk, Rebekah Mercer and Omeed Malik was formed after a Rockbridge event in 2022
This NBC News story described how the idea for a new fund called 1789 Capital was developed at a 2022 Rockbridge Network event.
For people like Malik, the network also functions as an ideas exchange and generator. It was at a Rockbridge event in 2022 that the idea for Malik’s fund 1789 Capital was hatched. It is now behind Tucker Carlson’s new media venture, with the fund leading financing for the former Fox News host’s latest venture.
1789 Capital was co-founded by GOP donor and Cambridge Analytica funder Rebekah Mercer, along with Rockbridge co-founder Chris Buskirk, and ‘anti-woke’ businessman Omeed Malik.
I wrote extensively about Omeed Malik here and his work with Rebekah Mercer and Chris Buskirk at 1789 Capital – and noted that one notable name listed as an advisor is Peter Thiel’s protege Blake Masters.
The Wall Street Journal reported that 1789 Capital led a $15 million seed funding of a new media venture run by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel. The next investment was in Firehawk, a startup that makes 3D-printable rocket fuel for missiles that it claims is safer and cheaper than traditional methods. Several months ago Firehawk announced a new round of funding that featured 1789 Capital. In this recent story on Rebekah Mercer I detailed several SEC filings that reported over $12 million raised by 1789 Capital in recent months.
Rebekah Mercer, J.D. Vance and the Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation has been featured prominently in the news recently as the creator of the presidential transition Project 2025 which details plans to staff the government with Trump loyalists, to vastly reduce protective regulations and reduce or dismantle areas such as the Department of Education, the EPA and much more.
Trump has tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s radical far-right Project 2025 presidential transition plan.
But J.D. Vance wrote the forward to a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, the key sponsor of Project 2025, showing how closely aligned Vance is with Heritage leadership and goals.
I wrote this piece on Rebekah Mercer who is one of eighteen trustees of the Heritage Foundation and in past years the Mercer Family Foundation has been a donor to Heritage. In addition, Mercer is also one of only five board members at the Heritage Action for America, a nonprofit affiliated with the Heritage Foundation. This shows a deep level of involvement with Heritage where she is both a trustee and director for two affiliated nonprofits.
There is no indication that Vance and Mercer worked together with the Heritage Foundation, but they both have separate strong ties to the organization.
Rebekah Mercer, Stephen Bannon and Chris Buskirk formed an alliance in 2017
The connection between Rebekah Mercer and Chris Buskirk goes back several years prior to when Buskirk co-founded the Rockbridge Network with Vance.
The New York Times reported that Stephen Bannon and Rebekah Mercer were forming a political coalition in 2017 to support candidates, such as Roy Moore, who ran a failed campaign for Senate in Alabama. Peter Thiel was described as close to Bannon and the Mercers and was expected to play a key role in the coalition. Chris Buskirk, the publisher of online journal American Greatness was recruited to help communicate policy positions of the coalition.
It is notable that Mercer, Thiel and Buskirk were involved in this coalition a few years before Buskirk and Vance launched the Rockbridge Network with Mercer and Thiel. It seems possible that the 2017 coalition was an early iteration of Rockbridge.
Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica and Thiel’s data company Palantir
In 2018 Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told U.K. lawmakers that Cambridge Analytica, which was funded by the Mercers, had worked with staff at Peter Thiel’s data company Palantir in an unofficial capacity.
“That was not an official contract between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica, but there were Palantir staff that would come into the office and work on that data,” Wylie told lawmakers. He added that Palantir staff “helped build the models we were working on.”
A spokesperson for Palantir denied this claim and said the company has never had a relationship with Cambridge Analytica and has never worked on any Cambridge Analytica data.
Thiel, Vance, Mercer and social media platforms Parler and Rumble
While J.D. Vance ran his venture firm Narya Capital he advised Rebekah Mercer on her investment in social network Parler, and he later became an investor in conservative platform Rumble.
During this time, Mr. Vance became interested in backing tech platforms favored by conservatives, including the social network Parler. He advised Rebekah Mercer, Parler’s controlling shareholder and a major Republican donor, and considered investing in the company, two people with knowledge of the discussions said. Narya did not ultimately invest in Parler, but invested alongside Mr. Thiel in Rumble, a YouTube competitor favored by conservatives, in 2021. Narya also invested in AppHarvest, a Kentucky-based indoor farming company, which went public in late 2020. AppHarvest filed for bankruptcy last year.
I wrote this piece on Rumble and how closely aligned it is with Trump’s Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). The Chief Information Officer of Trump’s TMTG is also the CTO for Cosmic Development, a key Rumble partner with offices in Macedonia.
Key Rumble investors have include J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel and Darren Blanton, who invested in firms with Mike Flynn’s associates and was a director of GTV Media run by Steve Bannon’s partner Guo Wengui.
In June 2023 David Sacks, who co-founded Paypal and hosted Trump’s Silicon Valley fundraiser, became a director of Rumble after the firm purchased his podcasting and live-streaming platform Callin.
Omeed Malik is a business colleague of Thiel protege Blake Masters
This piece I wrote about Malik described how he co-founded 1789 Capital with Mercer and Buskirk and also reported that Malik has launched two special purpose acquisition companies, known as SPACs, which were created to combine with existing established business.
Malik’s first SPAC Colombier Acquisition Corp. merged with PSQ Holdings, Inc. (aka PublicSquare), a leading marketplace of patriotic businesses and consumers that competes with Amazon.
Malik became a director of PSQ Holdings along with venture capitalist and Peter Thiel protege Blake Masters.
Other board members of PSQ with Malik include Nick Ayers, the former Chief of Staff for Vice President Mike Pence and Kelly Loeffler the former U.S. senator from Georgia and a key Trump donor.
The Rockbridge Network is focused on voter registration
This NBC News story described how one of Rockbridge’s big 2024 projects is voter registration.
The group registered 125,000 voters in 2023 and is hoping to double that in 2024, according to the source at last week’s gathering who is familiar with Rockbridge’s operations. The organization is funding a program to target new registrants based on issues important to them and an “ambassador” outreach structure that sees ten new voters each assigned to one organizer who gets to know them.
A newly formed super pac called ‘America PAC’ was in the news recently when the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk had committed to donate $45 million per month to America PAC to support Trump – a claim Musk later denied.
I wrote about America PAC here with details on the full list of initial donors and an overview of the two main vendors funded by the PAC. The initial donors are largely tech entrepreneurs and investors, many with close ties to Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. The focus of America PAC is to encourage Republican-leaning voters to vote early or by absentee ballot and their two vendors Raconteur Media and In Field Strategies are focused on canvassing, field operations and digital, text and phone services.
There is no reported connected between Rockbridge Network and America PAC, but it seems possible that there may be links between the two given their overlapping focus on voter registration and Silicon Valley and venture capital funders.
RNC photo of various Silicon Valley investors
As I was drafting this article, researcher SlickRockWeb brought to my attention this photo which shows an interesting network of people including several described earlier. The additional names described further below fill in more detail on some of the people linked to the tech billionaire network that is now supporting Trump and Vance.
This photo shared on X aka Twitter by Teddy Schleifer shows from front left clockwise to back right: Ken Howery, Shervin Pishevar, Shane Coplan, Donald Trump, Jr., Omeed Malik and David Sacks.
I wrote earlier about Omeed Malik and David Sacks and briefly Don Jr., and their connections with J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer.
Following is more information on the other three people in this photo, Ken Howery, Shervin Pishevar, and Shane Coplan, showing their links to Thiel, Elon Musk and the right wing tech broligarchy.
Ken Howery – was a co-founder of PayPal and Founders Fund along with Peter Thiel. Howery was the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden from 2019-2021 under President Donald Trump. I wrote about the full list of original funders for America PAC here, and Ken Howery was one of the donors who made four donations of $250,000 for a total of $1 million.
Shervin Pishevar – is a venture capitalist and was an investor in Uber and Hyperloop. In 2013 Pishevar travelled to Cuba with Elon Musk. Pishevar co-founded Hyperloop in 2014 to commercialize technology developed by Elon Musk. This 2016 Moscow Times story described how Pishevar had travelled to Russia to meet with several heads of Russian sovereign wealth funds and he met directly with Vladimir Putin. He later left Hyperloop after it came under scrutiny in 2016 because it had received two investments from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). In 2017 Bloomberg reported that Pishevar was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women.
Shane Coplan – is the founder of betting platform Polymarket (aka Blockratize, Inc.) which has been growing quickly by offering bets on sports, pop culture and the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Polymarket has raised $70 million from two rounds of funding, which includes $45 million led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and other funding from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In 2022 Polymarket was ordered by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to pay a $1.4 million settlement for operating an illegal unregistered or non-designated facility for event-based binary options online trading contracts, known as “event markets” and Polymarket now prohibits Americans from trading on its platform. Despite that the site continues to grow, with over $275 million in trades in July. Polymarket recently hired pollster Nate Silver as an advisor. This Wall Street Journal article describes the growth of the crypto betting platform and the risks as “detractors worry that election bets warp voters’ incentives and encourage election manipulation.”
As we head into the November presidential election, it is essential to continue exposing the networks supporting Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Regardless of who wins in November, this network will continue to organize, fund raise and plow forward to implement their radical far right agenda. And if Trump does not win, it’s likely that something akin to the Tea Party movement during the Obama administration will rise up against President Harris, especially if the Democrats don’t hold the Senate or win the House. But this time it may be a right-wing tech crypto billionaire movement — a techno-fascist party led by the network that helped get J.D. Vance on the Trump ticket
Thanks to SlickRockWeb and NFTethics for contributing some research included in this article.
Thanks for shedding light on these networks!
This is a phenomenal piece of work, Ms. Siegelman. I had heard only tangentially about Rebekah Mercer and the others but am astounded at how tightly meshed and well monied they truly are.
Your article will keep this research nut busy for several days at least. Thank you.