Robert Mercer, the New York hedge-fund magnate whose huge donations to pro-Trump groups in 2016 have been credited with putting Donald Trump in the White House, has kept a low profile since the election. But his daughter Rebekah, who runs the family’s foundation, now has a way to relive the thrill of the campaign with friends around her dinner table. In March, on a ski vacation at a rented house near Vail, Colorado, she brought a batch of copies of the “Rules of Play” for an elaborate parlor game called the Machine Learning President. Essentially, it is a race to the Oval Office in three fifteen-minute rounds. It’s a role-playing game, more like Assassin than like Monopoly, although players of this game do start out with an allotment of “cash” to spend on pushing their agendas, which can include “algorithmic policing” and “mass deportation.”

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“Tonight, the name of the game is POWER,” reads the first page of the “Rules of Play.” Each player, it goes on, “will assume a new political identity.” Instead of becoming Colonel Mustard or Mrs. Peacock, as in the board game Clue, each player takes on the role of a political candidate or a “faction,” in the game’s parlance. Among the possible roles are Mike Pence, Elizabeth Warren, Black Lives Matter, Russia, Y Combinator, Tom Steyer, Wall Street, Evangelicals, the Koch Network, and Robert Mercer himself. (Through a lawyer, Rebekah Mercer acknowledged possessing the game’s “Rules of Play” but denied any role in the creation of the game or that the game reflects her family’s views.)

Rebekah Mercer, the second of Mercer’s three daughters, worked for her father’s hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, before quitting to homeschool her children. Unlike her reclusive father, who once told a colleague that he prefers the company of cats to that of people, Rebekah likes to socialize. She is said to have brought Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon into the Trump campaign, and she is a guiding force at the annual costume ball hosted by her family at its Long Island estate. (For the 2016 party, which President-elect Trump attended, the theme was “Villains and Heroes.”)

The goal of each player in the Machine Learning President is to win the Presidential election, over three rounds of play, designated as Super Tuesday, the Primary, and the General Election. Each candidate or faction starts with a “Briefing Dossier,” which “outlines your starting Cash, Influence, and Tech capabilities.”

“During each round,” the Rules continue, “Candidates and Factions should be building alliances to increase their political Power and Voter turnout.” This can be accomplished through “political bargaining,” by “buying ads,” or by “investing in tech.” Just as the Monopoly player might get ahead by drawing a good Community Chest card, players of Mercer’s game try to utilize “machine learning”—that is, artificial intelligence driven by algorithms—to enhance their odds of winning. The “Rules of Play” don’t mention Cambridge Analytica, the now bankrupt data-mining firm that used vast amounts of online information obtained from Facebook without users’ consent to pinpoint and persuade voters, and in which the Mercer family invested millions of dollars—but the Machine Learning President echoes the firm’s tactics.

In the section of game instructions that lists the possible identities that players can assume, Tom Steyer, the liberal hedge-fund billionaire who is financing a campaign to impeach Trump, is described as seeking “Minimum Wage Increase,” “Universal Basic Income,” and “Full path to citizenship (for undocumented immigrants).” The Rules include a description of Mercer’s father’s “character.” “Robert Mercer,” the instructions say, “sits atop one of the most powerful geo-political networks on the planet,” which is “driven by a next-generation technology stack with a business model.” They go on to note that “the Mercer Family is both a rival and an ally of the Kochs,” and claim that although the Mercers lack the “scale of business” of the Kochs, whose private company is the second largest in America, they compensate for it “with a constellation of over a dozen data analytics, machine learning, and electioneering companies around the world.” They continue, “The Mercers are building a global far-right movement to embed Judeo-Christian values” while “keeping government small, ineffective and out of the way.”

The player who assumes the persona of Robert Mercer starts the game with six hundred million dollars in “cash” to implement his “policy wishlist,” which includes “Mass Deportation of Undocumented Immigrants,” the creation of a “biometrics/Citizens ID,” the use of “Predictive/Algorithmic Policing,” and “Freedom of Religious Discrimination (healthcare, hiring).” In other words, the stakes are higher than buying Boardwalk or sinking your opponent’s battleship. There is no mention of a Get Out of Jail Free card. ♦