SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
But first, the Republicans. Night 2 of the GOP convention was a night of rivals coming together to back Donald Trump, including his final primary opponent to drop out, Nikki Haley.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NIKKI HALEY: I'll start by making one thing perfectly clear - Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.
(CHEERING)
PFEIFFER: Tonight, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance will accept his party's vice presidential nomination.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
You might be aware of Vance's roots in Appalachia, thanks to his bestselling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." Less known are his roots in the worlds of Silicon Valley and venture capital. As NPR's Bobby Allyn reports, Vance's close ties to tech billionaires could supercharge Trump's reelection bid.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Shortly after J.D. Vance published his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," in 2016, another career began to rise in San Francisco. He was hired to work in a venture capital firm run by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal who was one of the most powerful figures in Silicon Valley. Here's writer Max Chafkin, who wrote a book on Thiel that mentions Vance.
MAX CHAFKIN: Vance worked for Thiel for a relatively short amount of time - less than two years - and then moved to Ohio, where he continued to invest but clearly was starting to, you know, think about his political future.
ALLYN: But before his political life even started, he launched his own VC fund, with backing from Thiel and other tech heavy hitters like investor Marc Andreessen. In other words, he was compiling a deep-pocketed tech roster that came in handy when he ran for Senate in Ohio and won with financial help from Thiel and other tech investors. And now, as Trump's vice president pick, Vance is tapping his tech billionaire contacts once again, and a growing group of them are embracing the MAGA movement, says author Chafkin.
CHAFKIN: It's tempting to paint this with a broad brush and say all of Silicon Valley is getting behind the former president. But what's actually happening is that Silicon Valley's right wing has been activated and persuaded to open their pockets.
ALLYN: A new tech-aligned political action committee called America PAC was unveiled just after Trump announced Vance as his running mate. Elon Musk is poised to flood the group with cash. Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz also plan to contribute. On the duo's podcast on Tuesday, Horowitz said he wished they didn't have to pick a side.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEN HOROWITZ: But the future of our business, the future of technology, new technology and the future of America is literally at stake.
ALLYN: Many big players in Silicon Valley traditionally sat on the sidelines for presidential elections or voted for Democrats, but now that has changed. Samuel Hammond is an economist at the right-leaning think tank Foundation for American Innovation. He says many of the new financial backers of Trump and Vance are placing big bets on two industries - artificial intelligence and crypto.
SAMUEL HAMMOND: Whether that bet pays off depends entirely on the policy of the U.S. government.
ALLYN: Chafkin, the book author who is also a reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek, says there is a fear that AI policy in the Biden White House will be too heavy-handed.
CHAFKIN: They perceive - you know, to some extent, I think, correctly - that Joe Biden, less so than pretty much any president that they have encountered in their lifetimes, is not as willing to accommodate them.
ALLYN: Newly added to the Republican Party platform just in time for the RNC - repealing Biden's AI executive order that attempts to provide some modicum of AI oversight.
Bobby Allyn, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
