Happy New Year—I hope you had a great holiday. I spent my downtime hitting my 34th, 35th, 36th, and 37th U.S. National Park, and feel recharged for the year ahead.

I’ll start 2024 with a reminder that this is my actual email—and that you can always write or reply to me here with something that you think I should cover. Know anything that the richest people in the world are up to behind the scenes? Heard something surprising in the world of big-money politics or big-money philanthropy or big-money family offices? Make it your New Year’s resolution to anonymously tell me more things.

Before jumping into my ’24 predictions, a few smaller items…

• Whale Watching on Oahu: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s New Year’s resolution is apparently a big fundraising expedition across the country, according to invites I’ve seen. These “Private Receptions with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” unofficially began on New Year’s Day, with a private reception in Aspen, notably co-hosted by Anthony Kennedy Shriver, one of the few Camelot family members to support his bid. They will continue on Jan. 6 in Lake Oswego, Oregon; then Glendale, California, on Jan. 8; Raleigh on Jan. 12; Atlanta on Jan. 14; and then two spectacular sounding fundraising events in Hawaii.

  On January 16 on Oahu, attendees are invited to wear “aloha attire” for a reception with Kennedy and Cheryl Hines over “heavy pupus and cocktail hour at sunset for maximum donors.” Then, on Jan. 18, you can go whale watching with R.F.K. Jr. “on a beautiful catamaran.” On Jan. 26, he’s fundraising in Charlottesville; on the 28th he’s in Isle of Palms in South Carolina; on Feb. 3 he’ll be in Hayward, California; and on Feb. 10 he will be in Detroit. Of course, Kennedy needs to raise serious money to make the ballot in as many states as he can.

• Merry Christmas, Sam?: In case you missed it, prosecutors announced late Friday, the last business day of 2023, that they will not proceed with a second trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, on foreign-bribery and other non-core charges. That means there will be no second media spectacle, no second hauling of S.B.F. and his parents before the media, and no second excavation of Sam’s multibillion-dollar fraud. That was mostly expected, given that he’s already been convicted once. “The Government has concluded that the public interest in a prompt resolution of this matter outweighs the interest in holding a separate trial,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Now, Sam and his friends and family can move on, so to speak, until March, when he’ll be sentenced. More on that below…

So with 2024 finally upon us, here are my five predictions for Silicon Valley politics and philanthropy in the year ahead…

Since then, of course, Sam’s investing record has looked more and more prescient—so much so that FTX debtors might actually be made whole. That’s mostly due to his multi-hundred-million-dollar bet on Anthropic, the effective altruist-aligned A.I. company that, over the course of 2023, raised money from Amazon and Google and is on the cusp of reaching a valuation of $18.4 billion. That’s almost five times its valuation at the beginning of 2023. (FTX and Alameda’s stake in the company is probably worth around $3 billion or $4 billion today.)

FTX’s lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell claim to have recovered about $7 billion in liquid assets since the collapse of the crypto futures exchange. But that still leaves a hole, which is why FTX is pursuing litigation against entities they claim haven’t returned customer money, including investor Michael Kives’ firm, K5 Global, and S.B.F.’s parents, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried. But what happens if S.B.F.’s Anthropic investment fills the gap?

Of course, no credit would go to Sullivan & Cromwell, but at that point the white-shoe law firm would have an excuse to declare victory and drop the litigation against S.B.F.’s parents and Kives, or settle it for some smaller amount. Working against this prediction: Sullivan & Cromwell is being paid handsomely for all this work, and FTX is incentivized, as a fiduciary, to maximize returns for all debtors.

But I believe the sentencing won’t be as severe as many expect, in part because of Anthropic. “No harm, no foul” isn’t exactly a legal argument, but there is a line of thinking, among some S.B.F. allies, that the harm to FTX customers will have been minimized if they all (eventually) get their money back. And the feds’ decision to not pursue a second trial also means that S.B.F. will face fewer potential convictions and the possibility of consecutive sentencing. I’ll take the under and predict Bankman-Fried gets 20 years. More than Elizabeth Holmes, but less than Bernie Madoff. We can compare notes again in March.

But I suspect the backlash has gone overboard. Effective altruism is still ascendant in our political and philanthropic culture, and especially so in Silicon Valley. I agree with Patrick Collison, the always thoughtful co-founder of Stripe, who tweeted the other day that the E.A. movement’s commitment to A.I. safety is “not a crank view” and that it should be credited for being among the first to address the risk of both pandemics and artificial intelligence. “Assessments that deride E.A. as a cult while failing to acknowledge these counterintuitive successes strike me as unreasonably uncharitable,” he continued. “If asked ‘which 2018 community now looks most prescient based on how the intervening 5 years unfolded?’, I think it’s hard to come up with better nominations than E.A.”

There is already a growing schism within the so-called rationalist community about whether E.A. should return to its stripped-down focus on investments like anti-malaria bed nets and other data-backed, real-world interventions, and veer away from zanier, “long-termist” concerns like nuclear war and A.I. armageddon. But either way, I’ll bet that effective altruism will still be a major player in politics and philanthropy in five years.

There’s a similar correction coming for crypto’s role in politics. Look no further than the news that a group of investors has put $78 million into a super PAC, Fairshake, backing pro-crypto candidates, far eclipsing the amount that crypto interests spent in 2022. It’ll be particularly interesting to watch the political plays of Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and their eponymous firm, which are among the leaders of the push. The two have stayed largely out of politics over the last few years, especially since Trump was elected, but they’re now being very public about their desire to reenter the fray and beat back anti-crypto (or more broadly anti-tech) candidates in primaries.

I’ll also bet that Peter Thiel returns to the political fold to boost Trump, despite telling Barton Gellman in The Atlantic that he wanted to go on-the-record about his desire to sit out 2024, specifically so that he couldn’t back out of it later. I don’t doubt that Thiel wants to stay out of politics, given his disappointing foray in the 2022 midterms and Trump’s efforts to strong-arm his support. But I also know that Thiel loves being in the media and cultural mix; that he would love to repair his relationship with the possible next president of the United States; and, frankly, that he will feel tremendous pressure from the MAGA establishment to help beat Joe Biden.

The right-wing backlash to progressive ideas in Silicon Valley has been one of the major themes of my reporting since 2020, when Biden’s victory empowered conservatives to express their politics without having to defend Donald Trump. With a Democrat in office, there’s been a renaissance in Republican political engagement within the tech industry, who sometimes argue politics these days as if we’re in a Trump-free universe. Short of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the apotheosis of this trend has been the sensational rise of the All-In podcast, and the groupies that surround personalities like Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks. I’ve argued that they are legit political players in the post-Trump era. But if Trump becomes the nominee, I’d bet that they become less involved in politics, and focus more on their media ventures than partisan combat. In short: Tech’s conservative backlash will be challenged by Trump’s return.