Making sense of what matters most in Washington.

Chase Koch is one of those billionaires who blends into a crowd without much effort—whether he's mingling with his family’s super-rich friends or the paper-pushing nerds in think tank circles, whether he's talking about the success rates of addiction recovery programs or an epic eight-hour Phish show he attended while in college. It’s not until he casually notes that his family’s reach helped him set up a conversation about the war on drugs between Snoop Dogg and his father, the 90-year-old billionaire industrialist Charles Koch , that you realize this 48-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, truly represents the next generation of raw power—one as comfortable talking Pink Floyd as principles-based management.

As Chase Koch is discretely taking over the philanthropic machine established by his father and uncle —which, yes, he concedes still invests hundreds of millions of dollars in influencing elections—he is focused on making sure it continues beyond any one…