JD Vance’s rise to the vice presidency was no accident. While many on the American right resisted his place on Trump’s ticket, Silicon Valley power brokers like Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin saw in him more than just a running mate. To them, Vance was not a partner to Donald Trump but a future “monarch”—a figure whose intellect, tech-world ties, and populist backstory could fuse the “American Dream” narrative with the Silicon Valley “CEO-as-statesman” ethos. Their vision is not of messy democracy, but of streamlined authority: a single, visionary leader dismantling the old order and remaking it from the top down.
Few would dispute that the fate of leaders in American politics is determined not only at the ballot box but also by the confidence of capital blocs. Trump’s presidential style has at times met with mixed reception within key institutions, including segments of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. This situation has increased the need for a figure who can secure the continuity of the system from within. This raises the question of whether the establishment might position Vice President JD Vance as a ‘post-Trump’ figure—one capable of preserving systemic stability while still resonating with the populist base.
It is worth noting that when Trump’s popularity rose in 2016 amid the collapse of the Rust Belt and the identity crisis of the white working class, Wall Street and Silicon Valley did not actually see him as their first choice. In the Republican primaries, Trump raised nearly half as much in campaign donations as Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Before the presidential election, he collected about $200 million less than Hillary Clinton in campaign donations and nearly $100 million less in SuperPAC contributions.
In a way, Donald Trump’s first presidential term highlighted tensions between the expectations of his electorate and the priorities of major economic actors. His unconventional style, assertive rhetoric, institutional confrontations, the contested 2020 election process, the January 6th Capitol events, and subsequent legal challenges have led some in business circles to view him as a less predictable partner.
However, when Trump’s rise in the Republican Party in the 2024 Presidential Election turned into an unstoppable social wave, the segments of capital that could not find what they hoped for from the Democrats turned to Trump, albeit “reluctantly.” In total campaign contributions, however, he raised almost $500 million less than Kamala Harris.
From the early months of President Trump’s second term, the steps taken made the capital’s preference more fragile. In particular, Trump’s attempt to intervene in the Federal Reserve and the dismissal of Fed Board member Lisa Cook constituted the harshest blow to a 112-year-old tradition of independence. It was inevitable that the market would perceive this move as “the end of institutional independence.” Wall Street fund managers warned that a politicised Fed would, in the long run, trigger inflation and a debt crisis. For financial power brokers, Fed independence is a red line; when Trump crossed that line, confidence was seriously eroded. The second major crisis is the use of the military for domestic security. Trump sent the army to immigrant protests in Los Angeles, and then made a similar decision in Chicago. The courts annulled both moves as violations of the Posse Comitatus Act. Trump’s justification was that “local institutions had lost control.” For key decision-makers in the world of capital, this translated into a more unpredictable investment climate, since legal stability is just as essential to capital as economic stability.
This discomfort inevitably translated into friction within the Administration. Elon Musk became the clearest example of this. After clashing with Trump, he harshly criticised the massive spending package and announced his alternative search with the “America Party” initiative. Yet the same Musk donated $15 million in July to two major Republican super PACs and transferred $45 million to his own PAC, intervening in the elections. This seemingly contradictory stance was actually a conscious strategy: Trump was unpredictable, but the Republican infrastructure had to be funded even without him. Capital, while investing in Trump, was simultaneously seeking an insurance policy for the “post-Trump” era.
In the eyes of many, JD Vance has come to embody that insurance policy. With his book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, which popularised the fragility of the poor white working class, Vance is a figure resembling Trump for the base. But his Yale Law background, investment banking career, and Silicon Valley connections make him more reliable for capital. Vance is a hybrid actor who can address both the populist base and the institutional elites at the same time. Here, the role of Peter Thiel stands out. As one of PayPal’s founders, Facebook’s first outside investor, and owner of Palantir, Thiel acts as a kind of “political venture capitalist” within the Republican Party. His $15 million donation to Vance’s 2022 Ohio Senate campaign should be read not only as ideological but as a strategic investment. Thiel aims to align populist energy with capital without losing it entirely. From this perspective, JD Vance has become the most important project of Thiel’s long-term strategy: a “controlled populist” who can appeal to Trump’s base but reassure capital. Not only Thiel, but also Elizabeth Uihlein, Richard Kurtz, Jimmy Haslam, Paul Simger, Anthony Wood, Margaretta Taylor, and Palmer Luckey supported Vance’s campaign.
According to Federal Election Commission data, a significant portion of donations to Vance’s campaign comes from the technology and private equity sectors. In the summer of 2025, raising $4 million in a single night at fundraising events in Wyoming and Montana revealed the willingness of the national elite to invest in him. Especially new capital groups operating in cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology see Vance as a pragmatic and technology-friendly figure of the “post-Trump” era.
Amid today’s volatile U.S. political climate—with Trump’s legal troubles and the ever-present risk of unforeseen events—the constitutional order leaves little ambiguity: the vice president would step in. In other words, JD Vance could become president overnight. Even if such a development does not occur, it seems almost certain that he will be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028. Capital is already investing in him because the future of American democracy is shaped less by the anger of the people and more by capital’s need for predictability.
JD Vance’s ascent tells us less about chance than about design. He embodies a carefully crafted compromise: populist enough to carry Trump’s base, polished enough to reassure elites, and tech-savvy enough to align with the future-facing ambitions of Silicon Valley. Whether he becomes president by succession or by election, his rise signals how capital seeks to tame populism without discarding it. In the end, Vance is not just Trump’s understudy—he is capital’s insurance policy for America’s next chapter.
