It was after 11 p.m. on Monday evening, and Sam Bankman-Fried was concocting some potato-pepper-onion fake meat stir-fry in his Bahamas kitchen while regaling me with the origin story of his admittedly longshot political effort to spend about $12 million of his own money to elect a totally unknown Democrat named Carrick Flynn to Congress. Truth be told, S.B.F. had never even met the guy, but that didn’t stop the crypto billionaire from launching a record-shattering super PAC effort, spending more than any single outside group ever in a single House primary race. The unusual plan was befitting S.B.F., the electrified hair, perma-shorts-wearing FTX founder whose Spock-like utilitarian philosophy of effective altruism—using data and experimental design to maximize positive change—has generated both money-hungry excitement and deep suspicion in Democratic circles.