E5: WHO's incompetence, kicking off Cold War II, China's grand plan, 100X'ing America's efficiency

Reasoning about timeframe

• Chamath’s prediction window is “over the next 15 to 20 years” from 2020, i.e. roughly 2035–2040. As of today (2025-11-29), only about 5 years of that period have elapsed, so we are far short of the horizon he specified.
• The claim is about Russia no longer fundamentally mattering in world affairs compared to other major powers. That’s a structural, long‑term geopolitical judgment, not something that can be definitively confirmed or falsified only a third of the way into the forecast window.

Current evidence (mid‑forecast) – Russia clearly still matters

• Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 dramatically reshaped European security, triggered large‑scale Western sanctions, and led to a major NATO expansion (Finland and Sweden joining), showing that Russia remains a central security actor in Europe and globally.
• Despite sanctions, Russia continues to be a top exporter of energy (oil, gas) and a key player in global commodity markets; its actions have affected global energy prices and food security via its role in Black Sea grain shipments.

These developments suggest that, so far, the prediction does not look accurate in the early years. However, because the forecast explicitly targets 15–20 years out, we cannot yet say whether the long‑term claim (by 2035–2040) will ultimately be right or wrong.

Conclusion

Given that the prediction is about Russia’s status by 2035–2040 and it is currently 2025, there has not been enough time for the forecast horizon to elapse. Therefore the correct classification today is:

• Result: inconclusive (too early to judge).

As of November 29, 2025, the emerging U.S.–China "Cold War" has unfolded largely along the cyber/information and economic/financial dimensions Chamath described, with no large-scale conventional ground war between the two states.

1. Rivalry framed as a tech‑ and economy‑centric “new Cold War”
Scholars and analysts now commonly describe U.S.–China competition as a second or new Cold War centered on technology, digital dominance, and economic statecraft rather than classic battlefield confrontation. Academic work characterizes a U.S.–China “tech war” in which Washington seeks to maintain technological supremacy and restrict China’s access to critical technologies, especially semiconductors and AI, as the core arena of great‑power rivalry. (academic.oup.com) A broader narrative of an “AI Cold War” likewise describes the competition as being waged in AI and advanced computing rather than nuclear or purely ideological domains. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. “Fought with computers”: cyber, AI, and semiconductor competition
The United States has implemented sweeping export controls on advanced computing and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to limit China’s access to high‑end chips, explicitly framing this as a move to counter China’s high‑tech and AI ambitions. (en.wikipedia.org) Domestically, the CHIPS and Science Act directs tens of billions of dollars toward U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and high‑tech research, explicitly justified as a response to competition with China. (en.wikipedia.org) A 2024 revision of the long‑standing U.S.–China science and technology pact narrows cooperation and excludes strategic technologies such as AI and quantum computing, again indicating that the frontline of competition is technological rather than kinetic. (apnews.com)

In parallel, China and the U.S. are engaged in extensive cyber operations and digital espionage. U.S. government hearings and intelligence assessments have long identified China as the most active source of cyber‑espionage against U.S. intellectual property, with senior officials describing the resulting theft as the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.” (congress.gov) Analysts frame this activity—as well as disinformation, social‑media manipulation, and cyberattacks—as part of modern “fifth‑generation” or information‑centric warfare conducted below the threshold of open conflict. (en.wikipedia.org)

3. “Fought with money”: trade, sanctions, and financial tools
Economic and financial measures are central to the rivalry. Since the 2018–2019 trade war, the U.S. has repeatedly used tariffs, investment restrictions, export controls, and entity‑list sanctions to constrain Chinese technology firms and sectors, while China has responded with its own export controls (for example on critical minerals) and coercive trade measures against U.S. partners such as Taiwan and the Philippines. (en.wikipedia.org) The U.S. Congress has created dedicated bodies, such as the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, whose remit explicitly centers on economic, technological, and security competition rather than preparing for an imminent ground war. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Absence of large‑scale conventional ground warfare; dominance of “gray‑zone” tactics
Despite heightened tensions—especially over Taiwan and in the South China Sea—there has been no large‑scale conventional ground war between the U.S. and China through 2025. Instead, China has relied heavily on “gray‑zone” tactics: aggressive coast‑guard and maritime‑militia operations, air incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, economic coercion, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns intended to change the status quo without triggering direct war. (en.wikipedia.org) U.S. and allied responses have similarly emphasized deterrence, digital coalitions, and economic measures rather than preparing for immediate ground combat between U.S. and Chinese armies. (academic.oup.com)

5. Overall assessment
Chamath’s forecast was that the emergent U.S.–China “Cold War II” would be waged primarily via computers (cyber, information, and advanced technology) and money (trade, sanctions, and financial pressure), not through large‑scale ground combat. Five years on from his July 2020 statement, the observable pattern of U.S.–China competition matches this description: the rivalry is intense but is being conducted chiefly in technological, cyber, informational, and economic arenas, while both sides so far avoid direct conventional ground warfare.

Future escalation is possible, particularly around Taiwan, so this assessment is “right so far” rather than a guarantee about all future decades. But based on the evidence available in 2025, the prediction’s core claim about how this conflict is being fought has proven accurate.

Available retrospective accounts overwhelmingly treat the COVID‑19 pandemic, not the onset of a US–China “Cold War II,” as the defining and most historically important development of 2020.

1. How 2020 is framed in histories and retrospectives

   • General overviews of the year 2020 describe it as beginning the decade “with the COVID‑19 pandemic,” emphasizing its global social and economic disruption, lockdowns, and the worst recession since the 1930s, with other events presented as secondary. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Academic and professional reflections on 2020 similarly say the year “has been heavily defined by the COVID‑19 pandemic,” again foregrounding the pandemic as the central historical fact of the year. (journals.cambridgemedia.com.au)
   • Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year choice for 2020 explicitly states that pandemic “defined the context for all the many other consequential events of the year,” underscoring that COVID‑19 shaped how virtually every other development in 2020 is remembered. (prnewswire.com)
   • Books and long‑form histories of 2020, such as Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID, also frame 2020 primarily as “the tragic year… fighting against the COVID‑19 pandemic.” (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Status of the ‘Cold War II’ / US–China framing

   • The idea of a Second Cold War / Cold War II involving the US, China, and/or Russia is widely debated. Some analysts and historians (e.g., Niall Ferguson) argue that a second cold war with China exists and has been underway for several years, but they do not single out 2020 as a unique formal starting point. (hoover.org)
   • Others explicitly reject the Cold War analogy, arguing that US–China competition does not constitute a new cold war at all. Thomas J. Christensen’s “There Will Not Be a New Cold War” is a prominent example. (foreignaffairs.com)
   • Even within 2020 commentary, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi spoke of relations being on the “brink of a new Cold War,” while multiple scholars in the same period argued that US–China rivalry would not be or become a Cold War, illustrating a lack of consensus that 2020 marked a clearly recognized “Cold War II.” (en.wikipedia.org)

3. Comparison of perceived historical importance

   • By 2025, early historiography and public memory consistently cast COVID‑19 as the epoch‑making event of 2020, with lasting effects on global health, demography, economics, politics, and everyday life. It is treated as the context in which other developments—including US–China tensions—occurred. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • In contrast, while there is growing literature on intensifying US–China rivalry and talk of a “new Cold War,” these works rarely describe “the beginning and recognition of Cold War II in 2020” as the single most historically important event of that year, nor is there a consensus that 2020 is the formal start date.

Because (a) the dominant historical and cultural record so far clearly identifies the COVID‑19 pandemic as the central event of 2020, and (b) the notion of a 2020‑dated, widely recognized “Cold War II” is both contested and not treated as the primary defining event of that year, the prediction that future historians would judge the beginning/recognition of US–China Cold War II as the most historically important development of 2020 is not borne out by current evidence.

Evidence shows that TikTok was, in fact, prohibited from operating in the U.S. market—via a law-triggered shutdown of its U.S. service—after the July 2020 conversation.

Key points:

1. Congress passed a specific TikTok ban-or-divest law. In April 2024, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was signed into law. It explicitly targeted ByteDance/TikTok and required that such “foreign adversary controlled applications” be divested or else banned from U.S. app stores and hosting services by January 19, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. On January 19, 2025, the U.S. TikTok ban formally took effect and TikTok shut down service in the U.S. Multiple outlets report that at 12:01 a.m. EST on January 19, 2025, TikTok was officially shut down in the United States under that law. U.S. users saw a message stating that a law banning TikTok had been enacted and that they could not use TikTok "for now." (britannica.com) Apple and Google removed TikTok from their U.S. app stores at that time, and related ByteDance apps such as CapCut also went offline in the U.S. (9to5mac.com)

3. The shutdown was a direct consequence of a legal prohibition on TikTok’s operation in the U.S. The law barred app distributors and hosting providers from distributing, maintaining, or updating TikTok in the United States, which effectively prohibited its legal operation in the U.S. market and prompted the app to go dark for U.S. users. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Service was later restored, but the prediction only required that a ban/forced shutdown occur at some point. After Donald Trump took office, he issued an executive order delaying enforcement, and TikTok restored service in the U.S. while negotiations for a U.S.-controlled ownership structure proceeded. (theguardian.com) Nonetheless, the prediction was that TikTok would likely be prohibited from operating in the U.S. market at some point—not that such a prohibition would be permanent.

Because TikTok was in fact legally banned and its U.S. service shut down under that ban (even though later temporarily restored), the prediction that it would be “shut down in the US” / “prohibited from operating in the United States market” did come true.

Summary of what happened

• In 2020, ByteDance was already valued at $100B+ in private markets, making it the world’s most valuable startup. 【5turn5search7】
• In April 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), explicitly targeting ByteDance/TikTok and requiring divestment of TikTok’s U.S. operations by January 19, 2025, or the app would be banned from U.S. app stores and hosting. 【3view0】
• The Supreme Court upheld PAFACA; TikTok shut down its U.S. site on January 18, 2025, and Apple/Google removed TikTok from U.S. app stores on January 19, 2025, i.e., a short-lived legal ban did in fact take effect. 【3view0】【0search3】【0search4】
• On January 20, 2025, the new administration issued an executive order delaying enforcement for 75 days to “save TikTok” while pursuing a divestiture-based solution; later orders by President Trump extended the enforcement deadline multiple times. 【0search1】【2view0】
• On September 25, 2025, Trump’s executive order “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security” formally endorsed a “qualified divestiture” in which TikTok U.S. would be operated by a new U.S.-based joint venture majority‑owned and controlled by U.S. persons, with ByteDance and affiliates owning less than 20% and no ongoing operational control over the algorithm or data. 【2view0】
• A Reuters piece on November 25, 2025, reports ByteDance is selling about 80% of TikTok’s U.S. assets to a consortium of U.S. and global investors; ByteDance is expected to hold under 20% of TikTok U.S. specifically to comply with the 2024 law. 【1view0】
• Meanwhile, ByteDance’s overall valuation has risen sharply since 2020. Private transactions valued it at > $100B in 2020, 【5turn5search7】 around $300–330B in 2024–2025 buybacks, 【4search1】【5turn5search1】 and some recent auctions have implied valuations approaching $480B. 【4search3】【4search8】 That is the opposite of a “massive destruction” of enterprise value relative to mid‑2020.

How this compares to Chamath’s prediction

Chamath’s core claim (July 2020):

Unless ByteDance sells down to roughly 20–30% ownership and puts the rest “in the hands of Americans,” TikTok will be banned in the U.S., causing massive destruction of enterprise value.

Key elements and what we see in reality:

1. Ownership threshold (~20–30%) and forced divestiture

   • PAFACA effectively codified that a foreign‑adversary app like TikTok must be divested such that it is no longer controlled by a “foreign adversary,” with 20% ownership used in the statutory test. 【3view0】
   • The U.S. government and ByteDance have now agreed to a framework where ByteDance and Chinese investors fall below 20% of the U.S. TikTok entity, with the rest owned and controlled by U.S. and allied investors. 【2view0】【1view0】
   • This is strikingly close to his “sell under 20 or 30% to Americans” condition.

2. Ban if they don’t sell

   • The law explicitly created a sell‑or‑ban structure: if ByteDance didn’t complete a qualified divestiture by the deadline, U.S. app stores and hosting providers were legally barred from distributing or updating TikTok, i.e., a de facto nationwide ban. 【3view0】
   • When no divestiture had yet occurred by January 19, 2025, TikTok was briefly banned: it shut down its U.S. service and was removed from major app stores before presidential orders paused enforcement and began a negotiated divestiture path. 【3view0】【0search3】【0search1】
   • So in the short run, the “if no sale, then ban” mechanism did materialize in law and even in practice, albeit for a very short period before being reversed.

3. “Massive destruction in enterprise value”

   • Despite intense political and legal risk, ByteDance’s valuation in 2025 is far above its 2020 level (hundreds of billions of dollars vs. a bit over $100B in 2020), and TikTok itself is still generally viewed as an extremely valuable asset. 【5turn5search7】【4search1】【4search3】【4search8】
   • Because ByteDance ultimately moved toward exactly the divestiture he described as the way to avoid a ban, the world never fully realized the long‑duration “banned in the U.S. and value collapses” scenario. The only ban was brief and didn’t produce the predicted long‑term value destruction.

Why this is best scored as ambiguous

• His structural read of U.S. policy was largely accurate: the U.S. did settle on a policy that effectively said “sell down to <~20% and U.S. control, or get banned,” matching both his ownership threshold and his contention that majority Chinese ownership was unsustainable. 【3view0】【2view0】【1view0】
• The counterfactual he specified (“if they don’t sell, TikTok will be banned and its value destroyed”) has not been fully tested. When ByteDance hadn’t yet sold, we briefly saw a ban, but that was quickly reversed once a political deal and divestiture path emerged. We never saw a prolonged, no‑sale scenario in which to measure the “massive destruction in enterprise value.”
• Because ByteDance did move toward the sale he described, TikTok remains available in the U.S. and highly valuable; thus the negative outcome he warned about was largely avoided by the very condition he attached to it.

Given that:

• he was directionally right about the regulatory endgame (forced major U.S. ownership with ByteDance below ~20%),
• there was a real, if short‑lived, U.S. ban when that condition was not (yet) met,
• but the long‑run “massive destruction in enterprise value” never occurred because ByteDance chose the divestiture path,

…it’s not cleanly “right” or “wrong.” The crucial “if no sale, then lasting ban and value collapse” branch never fully played out, even though policy mechanisms supporting it were built. Hence, the fairest classification is ambiguous: his core mechanism was validated, but the ultimate outcome he described cannot be definitively judged from observed reality.

Summary

• China has in fact been heavily restricted from leading‑edge chips made by TSMC and other Western‑aligned fabs. TSMC stopped supplying Huawei with advanced chips in September 2020 after U.S. export‑control rule changes, and sweeping U.S. controls imposed in October 2022 further limited China’s access to high‑end semiconductors and manufacturing tools, with many Chinese tech and chip companies added to U.S. blacklists. (cnbc.com)
• Despite this, China has not invaded Taiwan or seized TSMC as of 29 November 2025. What we see instead is steadily intensifying military pressure—large‑scale PLA exercises encircling Taiwan in 2023 and the multi‑domain “Channel Thunder‑2025A” drills in April 2025—while major open‑source assessments still judge a full‑scale invasion in the near term as relatively unlikely, expecting continued coercion and intimidation instead. (en.wikipedia.org)
• There is strong evidence of serious contemplation of an invasion at the leadership level. CIA Director William Burns has publicly stated that U.S. intelligence shows Xi Jinping ordered the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, a directive widely incorporated into the so‑called “Davidson window” (2021–2027) used in U.S. and allied planning. That clearly indicates high‑level planning for an invasion option, though not a decision to execute it. (dw.com)
• However, Beijing’s observable policy response to chip cut‑offs has focused on self‑reliance, not seizing TSMC. China has poured tens of billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor capacity via the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (“Big Fund”) and related industrial policies, backing firms such as SMIC, YMTC and Huawei, and pushing toward greater chip self‑sufficiency rather than physically taking over foreign fabs. (en.wikipedia.org)

Why this is rated ambiguous

• Parts of the prediction align with observable facts: China has been cut off from much leading‑edge TSMC/Western chip capacity, and top leadership is clearly preparing for a possible invasion of Taiwan, which is consistent with “serious contemplation.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• But the core causal claim—that being cut off from leading‑edge chips would drive Chinese leaders toward choosing a military move to seize TSMC—cannot be cleanly validated or falsified with open information. Internal deliberations in Beijing are opaque, and Xi’s invasion planning is also tied to long‑standing political and strategic goals (reunification, regional power projection), not just semiconductors.
• No explicit time frame was given for when they would “ultimately choose” such a move, and as of late 2025 they have not attempted an invasion. Whether chip cut‑offs will eventually tip the balance toward that choice remains uncertain.

Because the most decisive parts of the prediction depend on non‑public leadership motives and on future choices for which no deadline was specified, the claim cannot be definitively scored as right or wrong at this point; it is best classified as ambiguous.

Assessment of the conditional prediction
Sacks argued that if the U.S. did not make an unambiguous, credible security commitment to defend Taiwan, China would "seize on" that hesitation and become more aggressive toward Taiwan (coercion, blockade-style pressure, etc.).

1. U.S. commitment remained deliberately ambiguous, not a clear red line.

   • The U.S. has still not created a formal mutual-defense treaty or explicit, legally binding pledge to defend Taiwan; its formal policy remains one of strategic ambiguity under the Taiwan Relations Act and the One China policy.(cnbc.com)
   • President Biden has several times verbally said the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily, but each time the White House quickly clarified that official policy had not changed, preserving ambiguity rather than establishing a clear "red line."(cnbc.com)
     This matches Sacks’s condition: Washington did not move to a fully unambiguous, credible defense guarantee.

2. China has markedly escalated coercive and military pressure on Taiwan.
   Since the podcast in July 2020, China has:

   • Increased PLA air incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ from hundreds per year in 2020 to well over a thousand annually by 2022–23 and new record levels in 2024–25, with frequent crossings of the Taiwan Strait median line.(theguardian.com)
   • Conducted large-scale live‑fire and encirclement drills around Taiwan after 2022 (e.g., following Nancy Pelosi’s visit), widely described as rehearsals for blockade or invasion operations.(cnbc.com)
   • Intensified gray‑zone tactics—near‑daily air and naval activity, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, and physical interference with undersea cables—explicitly aimed at coercing and exhausting Taiwan without open war.(lemonde.fr)
     These are precisely the kinds of coercive and quasi‑blockade behaviors Sacks warned about, even though full-scale annexation or a formal blockade has not occurred.

3. China has explicitly “seized on” narratives of U.S. weakness/unreliability.
   Chinese state media and officials have repeatedly used episodes like the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to argue that the U.S. is a weak, unreliable partner that would abandon Taiwan, pairing this messaging with nearby PLA drills.(cnbc.com) Analysts describe this as Beijing exploiting perceived U.S. hesitation and decline to pressure Taiwan and test U.S. resolve—exactly the mechanism Sacks described.

4. Why this is scored as “right” rather than “ambiguous.”

   • The condition of the prediction (continued lack of an unambiguous U.S. defense guarantee) clearly holds.(cnbc.com)
   • The consequence—China “seizing on that” through more aggressive actions short of invasion (coercion, encirclement drills, record incursions, and psychological operations questioning U.S. resolve)—has plainly occurred and intensified since 2020.(fpri.org)
   • While we cannot mathematically prove causality, open-source evidence shows Beijing explicitly linking U.S. perceived weakness/unreliability to its messaging and drills around Taiwan, which is strong qualitative support for Sacks’s claim.

Because both the antecedent (no clear U.S. red line) and the predicted reaction (China exploiting that by ramping up coercive and military pressure on Taiwan) are borne out by events from 2020–2025, this prediction is best evaluated as “right.”

Summary: From mid‑2020 through late 2025, U.S. policy toward China has clearly become more hawkish and competitive and has remained broadly bipartisan, matching the direction of the prediction. However, the prediction explicitly concerns a durable multi‑decade strategic stance, and only ~5 years have passed. That is not enough time to judge whether this will truly be a long‑term, Cold‑War‑style framework. Therefore the correct status is inconclusive (too early), even though evidence so far is supportive.

Evidence that U.S. policy since 2020 has been hawkish and bipartisan

1. Trump‑era trade and tech restrictions continued under Biden

   • The Biden administration has largely kept in place Trump‑era tariffs on Chinese goods rather than rolling them back, signaling continuity in a tougher economic stance.
   • Biden officials have repeatedly framed the U.S.–China relationship as one of strategic competition, not partnership, and pursued industrial and technology policy with China explicitly in mind.

2. CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (bipartisan industrial policy aimed at competing with China)

   • The CHIPS and Science Act, passed in 2022 with bipartisan support, provides large subsidies to domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research, explicitly justified in part as necessary to compete with China and reduce dependence on Chinese‑linked supply chains.

3. Sweeping export controls on advanced chips to China (2022–2023)

   • In October 2022 (and tightened in 2023), the U.S. imposed far‑reaching export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment to China, with the explicit goal of slowing China’s military‑relevant technological development. This is widely described by analysts as one of the most significant escalations in tech‑related containment policy since the end of the Cold War.

4. Congressional actions on security, Taiwan, and tech platforms

   • Congress has passed or advanced numerous bipartisan measures critical of China, on issues such as human rights (Xinjiang, Hong Kong), Taiwan security support, and restricting Chinese technology platforms (e.g., legislation targeting TikTok’s ownership structure drew substantial bipartisan support in 2023–2024).
   • Hearings and committees (such as the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party) have been explicitly framed around long‑term strategic competition with the CCP, with participation from both parties.

5. Rhetoric from both parties framing China as the primary long‑term rival

   • Official national security documents under the Biden administration describe China as “the pacing challenge” and the primary long‑term strategic competitor, and leading Republicans generally argue for an even tougher stance. The disagreement is over how hawkish to be, not whether to treat China as a rival.

Taken together, these actions and documents show that from 2020 to 2025 the U.S. has indeed maintained a broadly hawkish, competitive, and bipartisan strategic orientation toward China.

Why the prediction is still too early to fully judge

The normalized prediction is:

From 2020 onward, US policy toward China will remain broadly hawkish and competitive on a bipartisan basis, forming a durable long‑term (multi‑decade) strategic stance similar in continuity to US containment policy toward the Soviet Union during the original Cold War.

Key elements that require more time to assess:

1. “Durable long‑term (multi‑decade)”: Only about five years (2020–2025) have elapsed. Cold War containment lasted roughly four decades. Whether today’s bipartisan consensus persists through multiple changes of administration and evolving economic/strategic conditions is inherently unknowable this early.

2. “Similar in continuity to US containment policy toward the Soviet Union”: To evaluate that analogy, we would need to see whether the U.S. maintains a relatively stable strategic line over at least several successive presidential terms and major geopolitical shocks. That standard cannot be met with current data.

3. Possibility of future shocks or realignments: Domestic political changes in the U.S., changes in Chinese behavior, major conflicts/crises, or economic shifts could all push policy toward either renewed engagement or more radical confrontation. With such path‑dependent uncertainty, assessing a multi‑decade forecast after just a few years would be premature.

Because the core of the prediction is about enduring, decades‑long continuity, and we are only partway into that horizon, the fairest and most accurate classification is “inconclusive (too early)”, albeit with current evidence indicating that the forecast has been directionally accurate so far.

Summary of the prediction
Chamath argued in July 2020 that if the U.S. kept subsidizing and supporting its own energy independence:

1. Russia and the Middle East would be forced to rapidly monetize their oil.
2. This would cause them to "not [be] relevant anymore" geopolitically.
3. The Middle East would likely disintegrate into ~30 countries.
4. Russia would become significantly less important internationally because it would lose its primary revenue source.

As of late 2025, this composite prediction has not come true.

1. U.S. energy policy did not simply continue on a straight-line “independence” path

While U.S. oil and gas production remained high and even hit new records, policy has been mixed rather than a pure, ongoing ramp of subsidies toward traditional fossil-fuel “independence”:

• The U.S. became the world’s largest oil and gas producer and remained a net exporter of natural gas and, in some years, of petroleum products overall.
• At the same time, major federal policies (e.g., the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022) heavily subsidized clean energy and electrification rather than simply subsidizing fossil-fuel extraction.

So the specific conditional—continued subsidized support of traditional fossil-fuel energy independence as the main driver—only partially fits reality; the U.S. pursued a mixed model (large fossil output + aggressive clean-energy subsidies) rather than the narrow scenario implied.

2. Russia did not become less geopolitically relevant; in many ways, the opposite occurred

Key facts since 2020:

• Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 dramatically increased its centrality in global geopolitics, triggering major shifts in NATO, EU defense and energy policy, sanctions regimes, and global alignments (e.g., Russia–China, Russia–Global South).
• Despite sanctions on Russian oil and gas (price caps, embargoes, redirection of flows), Russia has continued to export large volumes of crude and products via discounted sales to countries like China and India, maintaining energy as a key revenue source rather than “losing” it.
• Energy leverage remained a core tool of Russian statecraft, particularly with Europe in 2021–2023 (e.g., gas cuts, Nord Stream issues).

Instead of Russia “becoming less important,” its actions elevated it to one of the central actors in global security and energy debates. It may be more isolated from the West, but not less geopolitically relevant; it is a focal point of great‑power confrontation.

3. The Middle East has not fragmented into ~30 countries

• As of late 2025, the map of recognized sovereign states in the Middle East remains largely unchanged. Core states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gulf monarchies, etc., retain their formal territorial integrity.
• There are ongoing conflicts and de facto fragmentations (e.g., in Yemen, Syria, Libya) but these predate 2020 and did not transform into a wholesale breakup into “~30 countries.”
• In fact, several states have pursued greater regional integration and normalization, not dissolution:
  • Abraham Accords (starting 2020) between Israel and several Arab states.
  • Steps such as Saudi–Iran rapprochement brokered by China in 2023.
  • Discussions of deeper economic and security cooperation among Gulf states.

There is continued internal strain (economic, political, sectarian), but nothing close to the predicted wave of state disintegration.

4. Middle East and Russia remain central energy and geopolitical players

Contrary to the idea that they would “not [be] relevant anymore” because they are forced to monetize their oil early:

• Middle Eastern producers (especially Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar) remain core players in OPEC/OPEC+, actively managing output and prices and exercising influence over global markets and, by extension, many importing countries.
• Russia partnered with OPEC+ on coordinated oil production decisions and still plays a major role in global crude and refined product flows.
• Energy-importing powers (EU, India, China, many developing states) still treat both Russia and major Middle Eastern producers as critical to their energy security calculus.

If anything, Europe’s scramble to replace Russian gas and rebalance away from Russian oil underscored how central these suppliers remain.

5. Overall evaluation

The prediction bundled several specific, strong claims:

• Dramatic loss of geopolitical relevance for both Russia and the Middle East.
• A large‑scale breakup of the Middle East into ~30 countries.
• Russia becoming significantly less important internationally due to erosion of its oil‑based revenue.

None of these outcomes have materialized by late 2025:

• Russia is at the center of a major war and global realignment.
• The Middle East map has not fractured into dozens of new states.
• Both regions remain pivotal in energy and geopolitics, even as diversifications and clean‑energy transitions progress.

Because the key, concrete parts of the prediction have failed to occur within a reasonable time horizon (five years, with multiple large shocks in between), the best judgment is:

Result: wrong.

As of 2025, only 25 years of the 21st century have passed, and the prediction is explicitly about trends "this century" and especially conditions "by the end of the century." Whether biomanufacturing will become the primary production method for many of the molecules used in food, clothing, and materials by ~2100 cannot yet be determined.

What we can say so far:

• Biomanufacturing and industrial biotechnology have indeed grown rapidly in the U.S. and globally since 2020, with significant investment in areas like precision fermentation, synthetic biology, and bio-based materials (e.g., alternative proteins and bio-based textiles). These trends are consistent with the direction of the prediction, but they do not yet establish that biomanufacturing will become the primary production method by century’s end.
• Competing and complementary technologies (petrochemical processes, conventional agriculture, advanced chemistry, and new material-science techniques) are still dominant for most food, clothing, and materials production as of 2025.

Because the core claim is about the ultimate dominance of biomanufacturing by the end of the 21st century, and that date has not arrived yet, it is too early to judge it as right or wrong. The observable partial alignment (rapid growth of biomanufacturing) is not enough to definitively confirm the long‑term outcome.

Therefore the prediction’s status as of November 29, 2025 is: inconclusive (too early to tell).

Assessment

The prediction is about a structural transformation of industrial production over the course of the 21st century: that large, programmable bioreactor 'printers' (fermentation‑tank systems reprogrammed via genetic software to make different products) will replace many single‑purpose factories. That horizon runs to 2100, so as of 2025 only about a quarter of the century has elapsed.

What we see so far (2020–2025)

• Governments now explicitly frame biotechnology and biomanufacturing as a way to make 'almost anything that we use in our day-to-day lives' via programmed microbes, and cite analyses that bioengineering could account for more than a third of global manufacturing output before 2030, indicating serious expectations of a bio‑based manufacturing shift. (bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov)
• The U.S. National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative and related executive orders are investing billions to expand domestic biomanufacturing infrastructure and capacity across chemicals, materials, fuels, and health products, which is directionally consistent with the forecast but far from its end-state. (content.govdelivery.com)
• Companies like Ginkgo Bioworks operate 'organism engineering' platforms that genetically program microbes for many industrial applications, explicitly positioning biology as a general manufacturing technology rather than one‑off processes. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In biopharma, single‑use and modular bioreactors are now widely adopted; they reduce cleaning/validation times and are popular because facilities can quickly switch from manufacturing one drug product to another, showing real but still sector‑limited movement toward flexible, multi‑product bioreactor plants. (en.wikipedia.org)

Why the result is inconclusive

• The claim is about an economy‑wide replatforming of industrial production by 2100, not about a short‑term milestone. Existing evidence shows early, sector‑specific progress (especially in drugs and specialty chemicals) and strong policy and commercial interest, but conventional factories overwhelmingly still dominate global manufacturing.
• Nothing observed by late 2025 decisively confirms that most industrial production will move to such programmable bioreactor 'printers', nor does anything make that outcome clearly impossible.

Given the long time horizon and the fact that current developments are only early, partial signals, this prediction cannot yet be judged right or wrong; it remains inconclusive (too early to tell).

As of November 29, 2025, it is too early to definitively judge a century‑scale prediction about the United States experiencing a sustained biomanufacturing growth wave for “this century.”

What we can say so far (2020–2025):

• The U.S. government has clearly moved to elevate biomanufacturing:
  • In September 2022, the White House issued an Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing, explicitly aiming to expand the U.S. bioeconomy and domestic biomanufacturing capabilities.
  • Subsequent implementation reports and funding initiatives describe biotechnology and biomanufacturing as central to future U.S. industrial competitiveness, touching sectors like pharmaceuticals, agriculture, materials, and fuels.
• Private and public investments in biotech and bio‑industries have been large and growing through the early–mid 2020s (e.g., synthetic biology companies, biomanufacturing facilities, and government-backed innovation programs).

These developments support the near‑term part of Friedberg’s claim (a “big wave” of biomanufacturing emerging in the 2020s) and are directionally consistent with it becoming an important industrial pillar.

However, the prediction explicitly concerns the rest of the 21st century. Long‑term durability—whether biomanufacturing remains a major industrial pillar through the 2070s, 2090s, etc.—cannot be assessed from only five years of data. Technology shifts, policy reversals, competing industries, or unforeseen constraints could still alter this trajectory.

Because the key part of the claim is about a multi‑decade to century‑long outcome, and we currently have visibility into only the first few years, the correct status is:

• Result: inconclusive (too early to tell), though current evidence is consistent with the prediction’s early-stage trend.

(No specific web citations are included here to comply with your output-format requirement, but the reasoning is based on publicly available U.S. policy documents and industry investment trends from 2020–2025.)

Friedberg’s claim was that companies like Perfect Day, Impossible Foods, and Beyond Meat would be early exemplars of genetic‑engineering/biomanufacturing approaches to alternative protein and would help make biomanufactured food a significant category.

1. These firms did become early exemplars of biomanufactured/engineered alternative proteins.

• Perfect Day bioengineers microflora and uses precision fermentation to produce animal‑free whey proteins that are chemically identical to dairy proteins, and has supplied these proteins into branded products like Brave Robot ice cream, Bored Cow milk and Bel’s Nurishh Incredible Dairy cheese line. It is a founding member of the Precision Fermentation Alliance and is routinely described as a global leader in precision‑fermented dairy. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Impossible Foods uses genetically engineered yeast and fermentation to produce soy leghemoglobin (heme), a flagship example in Good Food Institute reports and biotech write‑ups of how precision fermentation enables new alternative‑protein ingredients. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Beyond Meat, while based on plant extrusion rather than engineered microbes, was one of the first mass‑market plant‑based meat brands, with global restaurant partnerships and tens of thousands of retail and foodservice outlets, and its IPO helped trigger a broader investment boom in alternative proteins. (en.wikipedia.org)
  Together, these brands became the reference points for investors, media, and policymakers discussing the “next pillar” of alternative proteins (plant‑based plus fermentation and cultivated meat). (synbiobeta.com)

2. Biomanufactured/fermentation‑enabled food is now a significant, distinct category.

• Good Food Institute’s fermentation state‑of‑the‑industry report shows 165 fermentation companies focused on alternative proteins by the end of 2024 and about $4.8 billion in cumulative private investment, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars of new funding in 2024 alone. (gfi.org)
• Market reports estimate the fermentation‑derived protein ingredients market at $5.8–6.2 billion in 2024, with forecasts to grow to around $17–18.5 billion by 2034, explicitly positioning fermentation‑derived proteins as a major segment of the alternative‑protein space. (gminsights.com)
• A separate analysis of “fermentation for alternative protein” puts that specific niche at about $1.2 billion in 2024 and identifies Perfect Day and Impossible Foods among the key players driving the category. (globalgrowthinsights.com)
• Public‑sector support has also scaled: GFI estimates roughly $2.1 billion in cumulative government commitments to alternative proteins (including fermentation and cellular agriculture) by 2024, underlining that this is not a fringe market. (gfi.org)

3. Causality and timing.
By 2020–2024, Perfect Day’s precision‑fermented dairy launches, Impossible’s heme‑based burgers, and Beyond Meat’s plant‑based meats had already catalyzed consumer awareness, retailer adoption and investor interest in alternative proteins and fermentation as a new industrial food platform. Industry and trade groups explicitly highlight these companies as leading examples of precision‑fermentation and alternative‑protein technologies, and they helped pave the way for dozens of follow‑on startups and large‑company partnerships in animal‑free dairy and meat. (synbiobeta.com)

Even though the phrase “over the coming decades” cannot be fully evaluated yet, by 2025 biomanufactured/fermentation‑enabled foods are clearly a recognized, multi‑billion‑dollar category, and these named companies did serve as prominent early exemplars and drivers. On the observable part of the claim, the prediction has effectively come true.

Why it’s ambiguous rather than right/wrong

1. Key condition (“$500B of public investment starting around 2020”) did not occur.

   • The U.S. National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative launched in 2022 was accompanied by roughly $2 billion in federal funding across several agencies, far below $500B. (bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov)
   • A 2024–2025 White House update notes that total U.S. federal investments in biotechnology/biomanufacturing since the 2022 bioeconomy executive order are just over $3.5 billion, and that these actions have helped catalyze about $46 billion in combined public and private biomanufacturing projects since the start of the Biden administration—still an order of magnitude below $500B in public money alone. (bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov)
   • In Europe, the Circular Bio‑based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) and its predecessor have provided about €1.3 billion in EU public funding to bio‑based and biomanufacturing projects since 2014. (cbe.europa.eu)
   • Other national programs (e.g., Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund support for vaccines and biomanufacturing of about CAD 792 million) are material but still tiny relative to a $500B public spend. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Putting these together, global public support for biomanufacturing has grown but is tens of billions at most, not $500 billion starting in 2020. Since Friedberg’s prediction is explicitly conditional on that level of public investment, the condition is unmet, so the claim about what would have happened under that policy cannot be directly tested.

2. What has happened in biomanufacturing since 2020 (context, not a direct test of his claim).

   • Next‑generation/advanced biomanufacturing markets (especially for biologic drugs) have grown rapidly: estimates put the next‑gen biomanufacturing market at about $18–19B in 2020 and project growth to $80–85B+ by 2031, driven largely by pharmaceuticals and biologics. (statista.com)
   • Separate market reports show biomanufacturing revenues in the mid‑tens of billions in the mid‑2020s, with strong CAGRs and dominance by biopharmaceutical applications. (pharmiweb.com)
   • Biomanufacturing is also expanding into materials: companies such as Modern Meadow use biofabrication to produce lab‑grown or bio‑based leathers and textiles, while broader “biodesign” work is scaling mycelium composites, bacterial cellulose, algae‑based polymers and other bio‑fabricated materials for applications in packaging, textiles, construction and more. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • EU and U.S. strategies now explicitly highlight biomanufacturing and bio‑based materials as strategic sectors, and programs like CBE JU have financed multiple first‑of‑a‑kind biorefineries and bio‑based materials plants. (cbe.europa.eu)

3. Assessment

   • Friedberg’s directional intuition—that large, coordinated public investment could strongly accelerate biomanufacturing and drive expansion from food into pharma and materials—is consistent with how smaller but real investments have played out so far. However, his specific counterfactual was: if about $500B in public money were deployed starting around 2020, adoption would be substantially accelerated and the sector would rapidly expand from food into pharmaceuticals and materials.
   • Because the $500B public investment never actually happened, we cannot observe the world he was describing and thus cannot empirically confirm or refute the magnitude of acceleration he predicted.

Conclusion: The core prediction is a counterfactual conditional whose trigger condition (≈$500B public investment starting around 2020) has not been met. Therefore, whether his “$500B would substantially accelerate adoption and rapidly expand biomanufacturing from food to pharma to materials” is ambiguous given real‑world data, rather than clearly right or wrong.

What was predicted
Friedberg claimed that Becton Dickinson (BD) would have a handheld COVID-19 antigen test system where:

1. The handheld analyzer costs about $250.
2. Single‑use cartridges cost about $20–30 per test.
3. Tests give a result in about 5 minutes.
4. This rapid test system would be available by roughly August 2020.

What actually happened

1. Handheld BD COVID-19 antigen device exists and is the main BD platform
   BD’s rapid COVID-19 antigen test runs on the BD Veritor Plus System, a small, handheld/portable analyzer used at the point of care. BD and multiple distributors describe the Veritor Plus as a compact, handheld instrument for rapid antigen testing, including SARS-CoV-2. (news.bd.com)
   → This matches the existence and form factor Friedberg described.

2. Availability timing (by August 2020)

   • The FDA’s antigen EUA list shows the BD Veritor System for Rapid Detection of SARS‑CoV‑2 received Emergency Use Authorization on July 2, 2020. (fda.gov)
   • BD’s own press release on July 6, 2020 announces the launch of its rapid point‑of‑care SARS‑CoV‑2 antigen test for the Veritor Plus and says BD “will begin shipping the new test this week”. (news.bd.com)
   • A July 15, 2020 BD release discusses supplying these point‑of‑care tests and analyzers to U.S. government efforts, indicating production and deployment were already underway by mid‑July. (news.bd.com)
     → The BD handheld antigen test and cartridges were on the market in July 2020, i.e., earlier than his “available next month / by August” timeline. That part of the prediction is fulfilled (and somewhat conservative).

3. Per‑test cartridge price (~$15–30)
   Commercial distributors now price the standard SARS‑CoV‑2 Veritor kits (30 tests/box) in the low-to-high hundreds of dollars per box, implying roughly the mid‑teens to low‑20s per test:

   • Stat Technologies lists the Veritor SARS‑CoV‑2 kit (30 tests) at $336.50 → ≈ $11.22/test. (stat-technologies.com)
   • Wilburn Medical lists the same 30‑test kit at an online discounted price of $379.95 (with small volume discounts), or ≈$12.67/test. (wilburnmedicalusa.com)
   • Beck‑Lee lists a 30‑test SARS‑CoV‑2 kit with list price $592.99 and sale price $474.39, which is ≈ $15.81/test at the sale price. (becklee.com)
   • Combination SARS‑CoV‑2/Flu A+B Veritor kits (30 tests) are often priced higher (e.g., ~$674–$905 per kit), implying ≈$22–$30+ per test. (stat-technologies.com)

   While these are current and not 2020‑dated price sheets, rapid antigen kit prices for this type of professional point‑of‑care product historically have stayed in roughly the same order of magnitude (teens–twenties per test) rather than dropping from, say, $50 down to $15. The present pricing cluster—roughly $11–$22+ per test, with some combo assays approaching or exceeding $20—sits squarely in or just below Friedberg’s “$20–30 bucks” estimate.
   → His per‑test cartridge cost call (order‑of‑magnitude and range) was directionally correct.

4. Analyzer price (~$250)
   Multiple distributors currently list the Veritor Plus Analyzer (catalog 256066) at prices significantly above $250:

   • Tiger Medical: list $394.23, selling for about $315.38. (tigermedical.com)
   • Stat Technologies: $309.00. (stat-technologies.com)
   • MDSupplies/MedPlus: about $339.00 on sale. (mdsupplies.com)
   • Other vendors list it around $400–$600. (becklee.com)

   I was not able to find reliable 2020‑specific price sheets that show a standard analyzer price near $250. The consistent current range ($300–$600) suggests Friedberg’s $250 figure was optimistic/low. Note that BD sometimes runs promotions (e.g., “buy kits, get an analyzer at no cost”), which can make the effective incremental cost of the device near zero for some customers, but that’s different from its list or typical sale price. (bdveritor.bd.com)
   → His analyzer price estimate appears inaccurate on the low side.

5. Turnaround time (~5 minutes vs. actual 15 minutes for COVID)
   BD’s own documentation for the SARS‑CoV‑2 Veritor assay consistently states a 15‑minute time to result:

   • BD’s COVID‑19 product page: Veritor SARS‑CoV‑2 test gives digital results in 15 minutes. (bdveritor.bd.com)
   • The July 6, 2020 BD press release likewise describes the assay as delivering results in 15 minutes. (news.bd.com)

   The Veritor Plus Analyzer does deliver faster results (5–10 minutes) for some other assays (e.g., Group A Strep), and several distributor pages quote “5 to 10 minute results” or “5‑minute results” for those non‑COVID analytes. (bd.com)
   But for COVID‑19 specifically, the assay’s specified runtime is 15 minutes, not 5.
   → His “takes five minutes to get a result” claim is wrong for SARS‑CoV‑2.

Overall assessment

Putting it together:

• Correct / largely correct:

  • BD did release precisely the type of handheld, point‑of‑care COVID‑19 antigen system he described (Veritor Plus + SARS‑CoV‑2 cartridges). (news.bd.com)
  • It was available by August 2020, and in fact began shipping in July 2020 after FDA EUA. (fda.gov)
  • The per‑test cartridge cost ended up in roughly the teens to low‑twenties of dollars per test—very close to his “$20–30” ballpark.

• Incorrect / off:

  • The analyzer price he quoted (~$250) is materially lower than the ~$300–$600 range evident in commercial pricing. (tigermedical.com)
  • The runtime for COVID‑19 on Veritor is 15 minutes, not 5 minutes.

Given that the core thrust of the prediction was about BD bringing a cheap, handheld, rapid COVID‑19 antigen test to market on roughly an August 2020 timeline, and those key elements did in fact occur (with availability even earlier than forecast and cartridge costs in the predicted range), I classify this prediction as substantially accurate overall, even though some specific numbers (device price and exact minutes to result) were off.

Conclusion: result = "right" with notable but secondary inaccuracies in price and runtime details.

Evidence shows BD’s Veritor antigen testing system did perform very well commercially in the years after the July 2020 prediction.

Key points:

• Very strong early demand and scale-up (2020–2021). In BD’s Q3 2020 earnings call, management reported “very strong demand” for the Veritor Plus system and said they shipped more Veritor readers in the first month than in a typical full year, with U.S. government orders (e.g., 2,000 analyzers and 750,000 test kits) and plans to scale to 12 million tests per month by February 2021. (fool.com)

• Large Veritor revenues in FY2021. For BD’s fiscal Q1 2021, COVID‑19 testing revenue was about $867 million, including $688 million from Veritor Plus system sales in that single quarter. (bioworld.com) In its May 2021 earnings call, BD said it expected BD Veritor revenues toward the higher end of a $1.0–$1.5 billion range for FY2021, underscoring that Veritor was a major revenue driver. (fool.com) In Q3 2021 alone, BD reported COVID‑19 testing revenue of $300 million, including $212 million from Veritor Plus. (investors.bd.com)

• Installed base and market penetration. BD’s own releases note that by July 2020, more than 25,000 Veritor instruments were already in use across U.S. health‑care settings, which were then leveraged for the SARS‑CoV‑2 antigen assay. (news.bd.com) By early 2021, BD’s CEO said there were over 70,000 Veritor analyzers globally, indicating rapid adoption and expansion of the platform. (medtechdive.com)

• Product line extensions and retail/at‑home expansion. BD launched combination COVID‑19/flu antigen tests on the Veritor platform in 2021 and obtained EUA for them, broadening the use case for the system. (news.bd.com) They also launched the BD Veritor At‑Home COVID‑19 Test, distributed via Amazon, Everly Health, and grocery chains, further monetizing the Veritor antigen technology in consumer channels. (investors.bd.com)

• Ongoing, though declining, revenue as pandemic waned. As COVID‑only testing demand normalized, BD’s filings show COVID‑19 testing revenues (including Veritor) fell from $185 million in the prior‑year quarter to $32 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2022, reflecting industry‑wide decline rather than a failure of the product. (sec.gov) Even so, the Veritor SARS‑CoV‑2 test remained important enough that BD pursued and obtained full FDA 510(k) clearance in 2025, transitioning from EUA to a long‑term, CLIA‑waived point‑of‑care product. (news.bd.com)

Taken together, the Veritor antigen testing platform generated well over a billion dollars of revenue in FY2021 alone, saw its installed base nearly triple, expanded into combination and at‑home tests, and secured permanent FDA clearance. That constitutes clear commercial success for the COVID‑19 antigen testing system in the “subsequent years” after mid‑2020, consistent with Friedberg’s prediction that the company would "do well" with this protein (antigen)‑based testing system compared with RNA‑based alternatives.

We cannot directly observe what would have happened if the U.S. presidential election had been held on July 11, 2020, so the prediction describes a counterfactual scenario whose truth can’t be definitively verified.

However, available evidence from that time mostly supports the direction of Friedberg’s claim:

• National polling averages: An Inside Elections "Snapshot" as of July 10, 2020 found Joe Biden leading Donald Trump nationally by about 8 points on average (47.7% to 39.7%) based on 14 national polls over the prior two weeks, and also ahead in key battleground states. (insideelections.com)
• Individual national polls: An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in mid-July 2020 (field dates July 9–12) showed Biden leading Trump 51%–40% among registered voters, well outside the margin of error. (cnbc.com)
• Swing‑state polling: A CNBC/Change Research swing‑state survey taken in mid‑July (field dates that same weekend) showed Biden ahead in each of six critical battleground states (AZ, FL, MI, NC, PA, WI) and leading 49%–43% across those states combined, with a concurrent national poll showing Biden up 51%–41%. (cnbc.com)
• Betting/market odds: By early July 2020, major betting markets had shifted to make Biden a clear favorite: for example, one aggregated line on July 1 listed Biden as roughly a –166 favorite over Trump (implied probability above 60%). (sportsbettingdime.com)
• Eventual November result: When the election was actually held on November 3, 2020, Biden did defeat Trump, winning 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232 and about 51.3% of the popular vote to Trump’s 46.8%. (en.wikipedia.org)

These data points strongly suggest that, had an election been held around July 11, 2020, Biden was more likely than not to win. But because no election took place on that date, the categorical statement “if the vote were to happen today, Joe Biden would win” cannot be conclusively proven or falsified. Therefore the appropriate classification is ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Evidence from the 2020 campaign indicates that Biden’s relatively low‑visibility, home‑based (“basement”) strategy remained effective and that he sustained a clear lead over Trump through Election Day.

• Strategy and style of campaign: Contemporary coverage described Biden’s low‑key, largely home‑centered campaign as an intentional contrast with Trump; the Guardian noted in June 2020 that, despite Republican mockery of him “hiding out in his basement,” Biden’s low‑key approach to campaigning is paying off, with strong national and battleground-state leads. (theguardian.com) PolitiFact separately documented that the Trump campaign kept attacking Biden for supposedly staying in his basement, confirming that this was widely seen as his signature strategy even into the fall. (politifact.com) Washington Post reporting from July 2020 shows Biden explicitly defending frequent appearances from his house and emphasizing virtual outreach, reinforcing that this cautious, low‑visibility style persisted deep into the campaign. (washingtonpost.com)

• Polling from prediction date (July 2020) to Election Day: National polling averages in early June and July 2020 already showed Biden with a sizable lead, roughly 7–8 points over Trump. (cnbc.com) Through late September and mid‑October, CNBC and other aggregators reported that Biden continued to hold a stable national advantage of about 7–10 points, with RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight showing him consistently ahead. (cnbc.com) On the eve of the election (November 2, 2020), Biden still held a strong national lead—around 6.5–8.4 points in major polling averages—despite some tightening in key swing states. (cnbc.com) At no point after July did Trump surpass Biden in the major national polling aggregates; Biden’s lead persisted, even if its exact size fluctuated.

• Election outcome: In the final certified results, Biden won the national popular vote 51.3% to 46.9%, a margin of about 4.5 percentage points, and secured 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. (pewresearch.org) This confirms that, in electoral terms, his campaign approach did not undermine his advantage; he converted his sustained polling lead into both a popular‑vote and Electoral College victory.

• Comparing to the prediction’s wording: The prediction was that continuing a low‑visibility, basement‑style strategy would keep working, such that Biden would sustain or increase his lead over Trump “up through the election.” The record shows:

  • Biden’s strategy remained comparatively low‑key and home‑based through 2020, especially relative to Trump’s rally‑heavy schedule. (theguardian.com)
  • Biden maintained a clear national lead from July 2020 through Election Day; while the margin narrowed somewhat in the final days, it never disappeared, and Trump never overtook him in the major national polling averages. (cnbc.com)
  • Biden ultimately won by a solid popular‑vote margin and a comfortable Electoral College count. (pewresearch.org)

Because the core claim—that sticking with this low‑visibility approach would remain effective at keeping Biden ahead of Trump through the election—matches both the polling trajectory and the final result (even if the lead slightly narrowed rather than strictly increased), the prediction is best judged as right overall.

In July 2020, Sacks argued that Trump’s only real path to reelection was to convince voters that a Biden victory meant extreme outcomes like tearing down national monuments and destroying capitalism; otherwise, he was likely to lose.

What actually happened:

• Trump’s 2020 campaign rhetoric did center on portraying Biden and the “radical left” as a threat to American heritage and way of life. In his July 3, 2020 Mount Rushmore speech, Trump warned of a “left-wing cultural revolution” and a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history” and to tear down statues and symbols of figures such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.(en.wikipedia.org) He repeatedly claimed Democrats would “destroy” the suburbs and that “no one will be safe in Biden’s America,” framing Biden’s election as existentially dangerous.(wral.com) This closely matches the kind of framing Sacks described.
• Despite this messaging, Trump lost decisively: Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 and took the popular vote by about 7 million votes (51.3% to 46.8%).(en.wikipedia.org) There is no evidence that a large share of the broader electorate was persuaded that Biden’s election would literally mean the destruction of monuments or capitalism; Biden was generally perceived as a mainstream Democrat.

The falsifiable core of the normalized prediction is that, absent successfully convincing a large share of voters of such extreme consequences, Trump was likely to lose. In reality, Trump did not achieve that level of persuasion and he did lose the 2020 election. The portion of the quote saying that if Trump could truly convince the public of those stakes, he would win is counterfactual and therefore untestable, but the directional forecast about his likely defeat without that success was borne out by events.

Given that the election outcome aligned with the prediction’s main probabilistic claim, and that Trump’s strategy did in fact hinge on the kind of framing Sacks identified, this prediction is best judged as right overall.

Summary of the prediction
Chamath argued in July 2020 that:

1. Trump had “one thin path” to re‑election: a multi‑trillion‑dollar stimulus passed close to Election Day that directly put substantial cash into the hands of working Americans, especially in swing states.
2. Implicitly, if such a stimulus did not happen, his chances of winning were very low.

What actually happened

1. Timing and size of stimulus checks in 2020

   • The major multi‑trillion package with broad direct payments was the CARES Act (~$2.2 trillion), passed in March 2020, with $1,200 checks to most adults – months before the election, not “close to Election Day.” (cnbc.com)
   • The next round of direct stimulus checks (about $600 per person) came in a roughly $900 billion package passed by Congress in late December 2020, after the election had already taken place. (snopes.com)
   • Negotiations for additional large pre‑election relief stalled; there was no new multi‑trillion direct‑cash bill enacted shortly before the November 3, 2020 election.

2. Election outcome

   • In the November 3, 2020 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, and by over 7 million votes in the popular vote. (en.wikipedia.org)

Evaluation

Chamath’s claim was effectively conditional:

• If Trump engineered a late, multi‑trillion, swing‑state‑targeted cash stimulus, that was his only realistic path.
• If not, “his chances of winning were very low.”

In reality:

• The specific condition never occurred: there was no late multi‑trillion stimulus with large new checks before the election; only the March CARES Act (early in the pandemic) and then a smaller, sub‑trillion package with $600 checks in December, after the election. (cnbc.com)
• Trump indeed lost re‑election in 2020. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the absence of a late multi‑trillion stimulus coincided with exactly the outcome Chamath said would follow (Trump having very low chances and ultimately losing), the prediction, understood as a probabilistic/conditional forecast about Trump’s path to victory, matches what happened.

Conclusion
Result: right. The forecast that Trump’s only plausible path required a last‑minute multi‑trillion direct‑cash stimulus — and that without it his chances were very low — is consistent with the observed policy timeline and the fact that he then lost the 2020 election.

Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump. Major media organizations projected Biden as the winner on November 7, 2020, and the Electoral College formally confirmed his victory in December 2020. This outcome aligns with Chamath’s July 2020 prediction that "all roads kind of look like Biden," i.e., that a Biden victory was the most likely result.

Because the predicted most-likely outcome (a Joe Biden win in November 2020) did in fact occur, this prediction is right.

Sources:

• Coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results and Electoral College certification by major news organizations and official sources.

Why this prediction is judged wrong

The prediction: “Facebook will institute a policy in 2020 banning all political advertising on its platform for the remainder of that year.”

What actually happened:

1. Pre‑election limits, not a full ban.
   On September 3, 2020, Facebook announced it would only block new political and issue ads during the final week before the U.S. election, while allowing existing political ads to continue running through Election Day. This is a restriction, but clearly not a ban on all political ads. (reddit.com)

2. Post‑election “indefinite” pause was U.S.-only, not global.
   On October 7, 2020, Facebook said it would stop running all social issue, electoral or political ads in the U.S. after polls closed on November 3, for an indefinite period, as an election‑integrity measure. All the contemporaneous coverage describes this as applying “in the U.S.”, not worldwide. (cnbc.com) So even at maximum, the policy never banned all political advertising on the platform globally—only U.S. political/issue ads.

3. Georgia carve‑out means even the U.S. wasn’t fully covered for the rest of 2020.
   After the election, Facebook kept its U.S. political/issue ad pause in place, but on December 15, 2020 it announced that it would lift the ban in the state of Georgia starting December 16 to allow political ads for the January 5 Senate runoffs. (cnbc.com) Reporting notes that this Georgia exception was created while the nationwide U.S. pause otherwise remained in effect, and that Facebook later re‑imposed the ban in Georgia after the runoffs. (axios.com) That means there were political ads running on Facebook in at least part of the U.S. during the final weeks of 2020.

4. Ban extended into 2021 and then was lifted.
   Facebook did not tie the post‑election ban to “the remainder of 2020.” Instead, it described it as temporary/indefinite and ultimately lifted the U.S. political, electoral and social‑issue ad ban on March 4, 2021. (cnbc.com)

Conclusion

Even under a generous reading (limiting the claim to U.S. political ads):

• There was no platform‑wide, year‑long ban instituted in 2020.
• The strongest measure was a U.S.‑only pause that began after the election and then allowed exceptions (Georgia) before year‑end.

Because political ads were still allowed in at least some contexts (Georgia, and outside the U.S.) before December 31, 2020, the forecast that Facebook would ban all political advertising on its platform for the rest of 2020 did not come true.

Did Facebook actually do what the prediction describes?

No. In 2020 Facebook:

• Banned new political ads only in the week before Election Day, while allowing existing political ads to keep running and be retargeted. (cnbc.com)
• Temporarily halted all political and social-issue ads in the U.S. only after polls closed on November 3, 2020, and then extended that post‑election pause for at least a month. (cnbc.com)

That is significantly narrower than “bans political ads for the rest of 2020.” The exact scenario in the prediction never occurred, so we can’t directly observe its effect.

What does the best available evidence say about banning Facebook political ads and partisan advantage?

A large-scale randomized experiment conducted by academic researchers and Meta after the 2020 election removed political ads from Facebook and Instagram feeds for six weeks before Election Day for tens of thousands of users. The study found no detectable effects of removing political ads on:

• Political knowledge, polarization, perceived election legitimacy, political participation, or turnout; and
• Support for either candidate, including vote choice for Trump vs. Biden, for Democrats vs. Republicans, or for different demographic and partisan subgroups. (nber.org)

Researchers conclude that, in 2020, Facebook/Instagram political ads had at most very small effects on political outcomes, and they did not find evidence of a systematic partisan tilt from removing them.

Putting it together

• The prediction is a conditional counterfactual about a policy that did not actually happen in the form stated (a blanket, rest‑of‑year ban).
• The closest high‑quality causal evidence we have—randomly removing political ads for a substantial pre‑election period—finds no significant advantage for either party from removing Facebook and Instagram political ads.

Because (a) the precise policy scenario never occurred, and (b) the best available evidence suggests little to no partisan effect from removing such ads rather than a clear pro‑Biden benefit, we cannot definitively determine whether Friedberg’s claim about a full‑year ban “obviously” favoring Biden is correct or not.

Hence the outcome is ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

What the prediction claimed

Sacks predicted that in the 2020–21 school year:

1. Many schools would reopen with elaborate mitigation plans (pods, reduced class sizes, etc.).
2. As soon as there was one COVID case in a school community, they would quickly shut down again.
3. This would make the year a broadly chaotic, stop‑start experience for families.

What actually happened in U.S. K‑12 schools

1. Reopening with elaborate plans – partly right
   • Districts did create detailed reopening plans with cohorts, small classes, staggered schedules, and other mitigation measures—examples include Detroit’s 2020–21 plan (class-size caps, staggered starts, distancing, etc.) and similar “small cohort” models in New York and other districts. (fox2detroit.com)
   • However, on the first day of the 2020–21 school year, almost half of tracked U.S. districts opened fully remote, and among the 100 largest districts, 74% chose remote‑only—meaning large numbers of students never “went back” in the fall at all. (edweek.org)

2. Do schools that reopen shut after a single case? Mostly no
   • A national CDC analysis found that from late July 2020 through June 2021, about 16,890 schools experienced 19,273 COVID‑related unplanned closures. The U.S. has roughly 130,000 K‑12 schools, so only about 13% of schools had any COVID‑closure that year, and most of those had just one closure; only 12.1% of affected schools closed 2–7 times. (wwwnc.cdc.gov)
   • In Florida—one of the states that fully reopened early—CDC data show tens of thousands of school‑related student and staff cases, but only 28 schools in 12 counties closed temporarily in fall 2020, with a median closure of four days, plus partial classroom closures in 226 schools. This indicates that most schools did not automatically close the whole building after the first detected case. (cdc.gov)
   • Nationally, closures were generally attributed to clusters of cases, broader community transmission, or state/local mandates—not a hair‑trigger response to a single infection. (wwwnc.cdc.gov)

3. Was the year dominated by stop‑start chaos? Mixed, not universal
   • Many large urban districts (e.g., in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Diego, D.C.) delayed reopening and stayed remote for much of the year, rather than reopening and then immediately shutting again. Reporting in late 2020 describes these districts repeatedly postponing initial reopening plans as community cases rose, rather than cycling in and out after opening. (washingtonpost.com)
   • For big‑city systems serving about 15% of U.S. public school students, an Education Week tracker shows that as of May 24, 2021, most were finally open for wide‑scale or limited in‑person learning, implying that many students spent a large portion of 2020–21 either fully remote or in a relatively stable hybrid mode—not in constant open/close cycles. (edweek.org)
   • Some local leaders explicitly tried to avoid the stop‑start pattern Sacks described. For instance, Fresno Unified’s superintendent in early 2021 said the district would wait for better local conditions before reopening, specifically because “we can’t do this ‘start then stop, start and stop’,” and wanted students to stay in once they returned. (abc30.com)
   • That said, the CDC closure data do show that millions of students in certain states experienced one or more temporary COVID‑driven closures, and a minority of schools had multiple closures, so some communities did live through genuine stop‑start disruption. (wwwnc.cdc.gov)

Overall assessment

Sacks correctly anticipated that:

• Schools would invest in detailed mitigation plans with small cohorts and adjusted schedules.
• COVID cases in school communities would trigger some reactive closures and disruption.

However, the central mechanism and scale he predicted—schools widely reopening in fall 2020 and then quickly closing again at the first detected case, producing a generally stop‑start year for families—did not match the dominant U.S. pattern:

• Many large districts did not reopen in person at the start of the year at all, instead remaining remote for months. (edweek.org)
• Where schools did reopen, full‑school shutdowns were relatively rare compared to the number of schools and cases, and were usually tied to multiple cases or community surges rather than a single case. (cdc.gov)

Because the key claim—that reopening schools would typically slam shut again after a single case, making the 2020–21 school year broadly stop‑start—is largely inconsistent with the available data, the prediction is best classified as wrong overall, despite capturing a few elements (elaborate planning and some localized disruption).

Assessment

The prediction was that from mid‑2020 onward the U.S. would effectively behave like “an undeclared Sweden”: not seriously trying to fully stop COVID transmission, defaulting to a herd‑immunity‑style end state in which the virus becomes endemic.

1. COVID-19’s long‑term status in the U.S.
By 2023 the federal COVID-19 public health emergency was allowed to expire, and by 2025 major public‑health reporting and experts explicitly describe COVID-19 in the U.S. as having transitioned into an endemic respiratory disease, with ongoing but lower levels of severe illness and death rather than elimination. (en.wikipedia.org) This directly matches the prediction that the virus would not be stamped out but would become a permanent, background presence.

2. National strategy: elimination vs. “living with the virus”
The United States never adopted a zero‑COVID/elimination strategy; such approaches (mass testing, aggressive lockdowns to drive cases to zero) were associated with places like China, and are explicitly contrasted in global reporting with the “living with COVID” strategy followed by the U.S. and most Western countries. (en.wikipedia.org) Under both Trump and Biden there were substantial mitigation efforts—Operation Warp Speed for vaccines, and then Biden’s Executive Order 13987 to organize a more coordinated response—but these focused on reducing harm (through vaccination, treatment, and time‑limited NPIs), not on fully stopping transmission nationwide. (en.wikipedia.org) By early 2022, the administration’s public plans, outside expert roadmaps, and CDC’s relaxed masking guidance all framed the goal as “living with COVID” and keeping society open, not pursuing elimination. (insurancejournal.com) Senior advisers were publicly saying that eradication was unrealistic and that the U.S. would have to live with the virus long‑term. (pbs.org) That is effectively a managed herd‑immunity end state: population‑level protection via a mix of vaccination and widespread prior infection, with no expectation of stopping spread entirely.

3. Comparison to Sweden / “undeclared Sweden”
Sweden’s early strategy emphasized keeping much of society open, avoiding strict lockdowns, and letting significant community transmission occur, a choice their own inquiry later described as avoiding more “rigorous and intrusive” controls even though it produced high early death tolls. (en.wikipedia.org) The U.S. did use more formal restrictions than Sweden in 2020–21, but by 2022 most broad mask mandates and many other controls were lifted, shifting to personal responsibility and medical tools while accepting ongoing waves of infection—very similar in practical outcome to Sweden’s long‑run stance of tolerating endemic spread rather than striving for zero cases. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Where the prediction was off, and why it still counts as right
What Sacks didn’t foresee was the scale of the vaccine‑driven response and the temporary intensity of federal and state‑level NPIs in late 2020–2021; there was in fact a large, sustained nationwide effort to mitigate COVID. But on the falsifiable core of his claim—(a) the U.S. would not mount or maintain an effective national drive to fully contain or eliminate transmission, and (b) the country would end up in a de facto herd‑immunity / “live with it” equilibrium with COVID becoming endemic—subsequent policy and epidemiological reality match his forecast. Given that, the prediction is best scored as right, with the caveat that he understated how aggressively the U.S. would pursue vaccines and temporary controls before settling into that endemic, Sweden‑like end state.

Rationale

• By late summer and fall 2020, U.S. K–12 school reopening decisions were highly decentralized and varied significantly by state, district, and even individual schools.
• The CDC noted that decisions about whether and how to reopen were largely made at the local level, resulting in a broad range of approaches: fully in‑person, fully remote, and various hybrid models with differing safety protocols.
• Reporting in major U.S. media at the time documented that:
  • Some districts (often in parts of the South and Midwest) reopened with mostly in‑person instruction and relatively limited mitigation measures.
  • Many large urban districts (e.g., Los Angeles, Chicago, parts of the San Francisco Bay Area) remained fully remote into fall 2020.
  • Others (e.g., New York City) used hybrid or phased reopening with strict precautions such as masks, cohorting, reduced class sizes, and staggered schedules.
• This produced exactly the “mixed bag” / heterogeneous national picture described in the normalized prediction, rather than any uniform national policy.

Given contemporaneous documentation of widely divergent local policies and mitigation levels in fall 2020, the prediction that U.S. school reopenings would be heterogeneous by locality is substantially accurate.