If I had to identify the skill I think they have (and the valley trick in general), it's an ability to reason more accurately than most about replicators, scale and growth.

This is largely orthogonal to any moral basis (although there is a sort of inherent darwinistic streak to the whole enterprise).

There's a certain sort of inevitability about activities that generate momentum and scale, it's like finding a natural force. The opportunity is like a boulder at the top of a hill.

From this point of view, you start to see that someone is going to push the boulder eventually. Some boulders are harder to move than others, and there are great opportunities if you can identify teams proposing to put a lever in the right place.

You can also flip the view a bit, focusing on teams with the "right stuff", and fund them on the basis that they might find a boulder they can move eventually.

There is no shortage in this world of boulders waiting to be rolled down hills, but they are not all the same, you ideally want the biggest ones that need the smallest pushes, with a long way to run. It's better if no one else can copy your action or take your boulder off you or redirect it - and that's not easy - if it were generally easy for everyone, someone else would have done it already.

When you see the huge boulder rolling you might wonder "why didn't they push it that way instead", or "who made them so powerful they're in charge of that thing" or "why do they deserve to be in charge of it". The world isn't quite like that. Sure "they" pushed it, but they had to push it in the direction it "wanted" to move (or else it would have just sat there) and thereafter, things tend to acquire their own momentum.

Some degree of magical thinking is a fairly natural and forgivable response (IMHO) for human beings in uncertain ventures, harnessing powerful forces and involved in complex systems they don't fully understand.