Every political megadonor plays the game in their own way. Some are more transactional, hoping to marshal their access to defang regulators who may one day investigate their companies. Others are more myopic, lured by a photo for their office, an internship for their kid, or an ambassadorship for themself. Old-guard Silicon Valley powerbrokers like Eric Schmidt and Ron Conway have leveraged their influence into political-economic puppeteering in debates over the future of China and San Francisco. But now a younger generation that subscribes to a new kind of governing philosophy —called effective altruism—has arrived, and they’re trying to bring the same mastery that they deployed when buying anti-malaria bed nets to the more cutthroat arena of Democratic politics.