E32: Behind the scenes of Elon hosting SNL, CDC failures, America's real-time UBI experiment, post-COVID boom in jeopardy & more

Jason Calacanis described a pre-taped SNL sketch from Elon Musk’s hosting week called “FOMO Capital” and said it was “probably going to be released as a short like cut for time.”(podscripts.co)

More than four years later, there is no record that such a sketch has ever been released by SNL or NBC as a digital short or “cut for time” video. Comprehensive recaps and rankings of the May 8, 2021 Elon Musk episode – including ones that explicitly say they cover any sketches that were cut for time but posted online – list only the known segments (cold open, monologue, Cowboy Standoff, Wario in Court, Gen Z Hospital, Post‑Quarantine Conversations, The Ooli Show, Murdur Durdur, Chad on Mars, Weekend Update, etc.) and make no mention of “FOMO Capital.”(toofab.com)

Official episode summaries for SNL Season 46 likewise only note Musk’s aired material and do not reference any venture-capital or “FOMO Capital” film segment.(en.wikipedia.org) In addition, reference lists that catalog SNL’s filmed commercial parodies and many of its cut‑for‑time/digital‑exclusive pieces contain no entry titled “FOMO Capital” or matching the described premise (a VC firm that always says yes, “impossible vegetables” made from endangered rhinos, etc.).(en.wikipedia.org)

Broad web and YouTube searches combining the title “FOMO Capital” with SNL, Elon Musk, and distinctive dialogue from Jason’s description similarly turn up only the All‑In podcast transcript itself and unrelated uses of “FOMO,” with no SNL upload, transcript, or news item about such a sketch.

Given SNL’s long‑standing practice of uploading cut‑for‑time or digital‑exclusive sketches within days or weeks of broadcast, and the complete absence of any trace after more than four years, the reasonable conclusion is that the “FOMO Capital” sketch has never been released as a digital short. Jason’s prediction that it “will come out as a digital short” has therefore not come true, so it is wrong.

Available data show that net interest on the U.S. federal debt has risen sharply since 2021 but is still far below the ~30% share of the federal budget that Sacks predicted, and the key triggering condition (“when interest rates revert to the historical norm”) is itself ambiguous and arguably not yet fully met.

Key points:

• Current interest share of the federal budget:

  • In FY 2023, net interest outlays were about 11% of total federal spending, according to CBO-based summaries. (americanactionforum.org)
  • In FY 2024, net interest reached roughly $880–$880+ billion, about 13% of all federal expenditures, making interest the third‑largest spending item after Social Security and health care. (pewresearch.org)
  • CBO’s January 2025 outlook projects net interest will be about 14% of federal outlays in FY 2025 and rise to “nearly 17 percent” of federal spending by 2035—still well below 30%. (americanactionforum.org)

• Have interest rates “returned to their historical norm”?

  • The 10‑year Treasury yield averaged 3.96% in 2023 and 4.41% in 2024; a long‑run historical mean for the 10‑year is about 4.46% over more than a century, and about 5.9% if you start in 1962. (upmyinterest.com)
  • The average interest rate on federal debt held by the public was only 2.5% in 2023 and projected around 3.1% in 2024, with CBO assuming an average 3.5% over 2025–2054—higher than the ultra‑low 2010s, but still below many definitions of the long‑term “historical norm” that include the high‑rate 1970s–1980s. (pgpf.org)
  • Because much of the debt was issued at very low rates and rolls over slowly, the effective rate the government actually pays has not yet fully converged to long‑run averages, even though current market yields are closer to them.

• Forward‑looking projections:

  • CBO and independent summaries generally project net interest to reach around 17% of federal outlays by the mid‑2030s, and interest costs around 5–6% of GDP by the 2040s–2050s; some analyses suggest interest could reach roughly one‑third of federal revenues by mid‑century, but not 30% of total spending. (americanactionforum.org)

Why this is “inconclusive” rather than clearly “wrong”:

• Sacks framed the claim conditionally: when interest rates revert to their historical norm, interest will be ~30% of the budget. There is no explicit date, and “historical norm” (which rate, over which time window) is not precisely defined.
• As of late 2025, net interest is only in the low‑teens percent of total outlays, not 30%. However, the average rate on the outstanding debt has not yet fully reached many commonly cited “normal” levels, and substantial additional rollover at higher rates could further increase interest’s budget share.
• Official long‑term projections do not currently foresee interest ever reaching 30% of total outlays under baseline assumptions, which suggests Sacks’s 30% figure is much higher than mainstream forecasts. But since his statement concerns a future condition that may not yet have occurred—and projections decades out are uncertain—it cannot be definitively falsified at this time.

Given (1) interest costs are rising but still far below 30% of federal spending, and (2) the triggering condition and timeline remain ambiguous, the fairest assessment as of November 2025 is that the prediction’s truth value is not yet knowable, hence “inconclusive.”

Multiple data series show that U.S. consumer prices experienced an unusually large inflation surge in the 1–2 years following mid‑2021, well above the pre‑COVID norm.

• Magnitude of the surge: CPI inflation for calendar year 2021 was about 7%, the highest annual rate since the early 1980s. (usinflationcalculator.com) In 2022, year‑over‑year CPI peaked around 8.6–9.1% (e.g., 8.6% in May 2022 and 9.1% in June 2022), again the highest in roughly four decades. (politifact.com) These levels are widely characterized as the worst U.S. inflation bout since the early 1980s. (americafirstpolicy.com)

• Relative to pre‑COVID period: Pre‑pandemic inflation (roughly the 2010s through 2019) generally ran close to ~1.5–2.5%, and summary analyses of BLS data show average inflation of about 1.5% in the pre‑COVID years vs. around 2.7% in the post‑COVID years, with the 2021–2022 spike standing out clearly above that long‑run norm. (theworlddata.com) This represents exactly the kind of “significant” price inflation relative to the pre‑COVID baseline that the prediction anticipated.

Because U.S. consumer prices did, in fact, undergo a large and historically high inflation spike in the near term after mid‑2021, Chamath’s prediction that the policy mix and cost pressures would drive price inflation is best judged as right.

Sacks predicted that the Biden administration’s 2021 fiscal/monetary agenda would “backfire massively,” undermining the post‑COVID boom via inflation, higher rates, and weaker growth, in a way comparable to the Carter‑era economic disappointment.

What actually happened over the next few years:

1. Growth and jobs remained strong (boom not derailed)

   • Real U.S. GDP grew about 6.1% in 2021, 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023, and 2.8% in 2024—a solid expansion after the COVID recession and stronger than many other advanced economies. (trendonify.com)
   • Unemployment fell from a 14.8% peak in April 2020 back to 3.5% by July 2022, and was still only about 4.1–4.2% in late 2024, historically low by U.S. standards. (bls.gov)
   • Analyses by outlets like the IMF, major newspapers, and think tanks describe the U.S. as achieving something close to a “soft landing,” with the U.S. economy significantly outperforming Europe and most G7 peers in the recovery. (meetings.imf.org)
     These outcomes are inconsistent with a “massive” backfire that seriously undercut the boom.

2. Inflation and interest rates did spike—partly due to fiscal policy—but then came back down

   • CPI inflation did climb sharply: about 4.7% in 2021, 8.0% in 2022, then fell to ~4.1% in 2023 and ~3% in 2024–25. (bls.gov)
   • The Fed responded with aggressive rate hikes, taking policy rates from near zero in 2021 to restrictive levels above 5% by 2023–24 (widely documented in Fed commentary and media).
   • Mainstream assessments find the American Rescue Plan and related fiscal support did contribute meaningfully to the inflation spike—often estimated at about 2–4 percentage points of extra inflation in 2021–22—but also emphasize that it accelerated growth and the jobs recovery and that global supply shocks were major drivers as well. (politifact.com)
     So there was some “backfire” in the narrow sense of higher inflation and rates, but this did not translate into a broad macroeconomic bust.

3. Outcome was not comparable to the Carter‑era stagflation

   • During the late 1970s/early 1980s, U.S. inflation averaged around 7–9% with peaks above 13%, unemployment ran much higher, and interest rates and the “misery index” (inflation + unemployment) hit record levels near 22. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • By contrast, in 2023–24 U.S. inflation had fallen back to roughly 3–4%, unemployment hovered around 3.7–4.2%, and real GDP growth remained positive—conditions that economists explicitly describe as not comparable to 1970s stagflation. (econofact.org)

Because the core of Sacks’s prediction was not just that inflation and interest rates would rise, but that the Biden program would “backfire massively” by derailing the post‑COVID boom in a Carter‑like way, and the subsequent data instead show a strong (if bumpy) expansion with low unemployment, a soft‑landing–type outcome, and no 1970s‑style stagnation, the prediction is best judged as wrong overall. It got the inflation spike directionally right but overstated the scale and long‑run macro damage.

Jason claimed that keeping the pandemic-era mix of elevated unemployment benefits, stimulus, and crypto gains – a sort of UBI experiment – would lead to negative or sharply throttled U.S. economic growth by pulling people out of the labor force.

In reality, the key elements of that 'UBI experiment' were temporary. Expanded federal unemployment programs (PUA, PEUC, FPUC, MEUC) all expired nationwide in early September 2021, with many states cutting them off even earlier.(congress.gov) There was no ongoing, broad-based UBI-like program after 2021, and the large one‑off stimulus checks were not repeated at scale.

Cryptocurrency wealth also did not provide a sustained substitute for working. Bitcoin peaked around $68–69k in November 2021, then fell below $20k by late 2022 during the 'crypto winter', wiping out a large share of paper gains.(bitcoin101.org) So the supposed long‑run combination of easy benefits plus lasting crypto windfalls never really persisted.

Despite this, the prediction’s implied outcome – that this mix would result in negative or heavily throttled growth driven by people choosing not to work – is at odds with the macro data. Real GDP growth was very strong in 2021 (+5.7%) as the economy reopened, then remained positive and roughly around or above the pre‑pandemic trend: about 1.9–2.5% in 2022 and 2.5% in 2023, with 2024 coming in around 2.8%.(bea.gov) A summary of quarterly data shows that from 2021 through the end of 2024 the U.S. averaged roughly 3.2% annualized real GDP growth, with only brief, inventory‑driven or policy‑driven negative quarters.(visualcapitalist.com) That is not 'negative economic growth' and not obviously 'throttled' relative to a mature economy’s typical ~2% trend.

Labor supply also did not collapse in the way Jason suggested. Overall labor force participation rebounded from its pandemic lows: BLS data show it at about 61.7% in 2021, rising to roughly 62.2% in 2022, 62.6% in 2023, and around 62.4–62.5% in 2024–2025, only slightly below the 63.1% pre‑COVID level in 2019.(bls.gov) Prime‑age workers (25–54) in particular saw very strong engagement: by May 2023 their labor force participation rate was the highest since January 2007, and their employment‑population ratio hit new highs for women.(bls.gov) Unemployment fell back to its pre‑pandemic low of 3.5% by July 2022 and was still only about 4–4.4% in 2024–2025, levels normally associated with a tight job market, not mass withdrawal from work.(bls.gov)

Micro‑level research does support a much narrower version of Jason’s mechanism: an NBER study finds that the enhanced pandemic unemployment benefits modestly slowed transitions from unemployment to employment while they were in effect, raising unemployment by about 0.3 percentage points in mid‑2021 in a counterfactual where all states had ended them early.(nber.org) But these effects were temporary and small relative to the overall labor market and did not translate into a period of sustained negative or clearly sub‑par GDP growth once you look at the macro data.

Because (1) the underlying 'UBI' policy mix did not persist, and (2) the U.S. nevertheless experienced strong or at least solid growth with high labor-force participation and low unemployment rather than a sustained growth slump driven by people choosing not to work, Jason’s broad prediction that this experiment would yield negative or significantly throttled economic growth is best judged as wrong.

Available data show that after May 2021 the U.S. indeed experienced a sharp and historically large rise in inflation, matching Chamath’s forecast that the then‑current mix of heavy stimulus, labor issues, higher taxes/spending, and rising costs would "drive price inflation."

Key facts:

• U.S. CPI inflation was low before COVID (about 1.2% in 2020) and then jumped to about 4.7% for 2021 as a whole, and 8.0% for 2022, far above the Fed’s 2% target. (officialdata.org)
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that over the 12 months ending June 2022, CPI rose 9.1%, the largest 12‑month increase since 1981. (bls.gov)
• News coverage at the time similarly described June 2022’s 9.1% CPI as a new four‑decade peak in inflation. (cnbc.com)

Chamath did not specify an exact magnitude or deadline, only that the combination of factors present in May 2021 would lead to a notable increase in U.S. price inflation in the subsequent period. Measured inflation did, in fact, surge to multi‑decade highs over the next 12–18 months, so the prediction is best judged as right.

Chamath’s claim was conditional and qualitative: if a moderate/centrist agenda failed to gain traction, the U.S. would be “headed to 50 balkanized states operating independently.” Whether that has happened by late 2025 is not cleanly measurable.

Key considerations:

• No clear centrist breakthrough, continued polarization. Gallup and other data show the national electorate still splits roughly into thirds ideologically, but each major party’s base has moved away from the center: by 2025 about 77% of Republicans identify as conservative and only 18% as moderate, while 55% of Democrats identify as liberal and just 9% as conservative, with moderates a minority in both parties.(en.wikipedia.org) Centrist projects such as No Labels attempted a bipartisan “unity ticket” for 2024 but ultimately abandoned the effort for lack of a viable candidate, underscoring how little institutional space a self‑consciously centrist movement has captured at the national level.(en.wikipedia.org) This supports the antecedent (“if centrism doesn’t gain traction”).

• Marked increase in state‑level policy divergence. Since Dobbs (2022), abortion is governed almost entirely at the state level. The result is a highly fragmented map: roughly a dozen-plus states with near‑total bans, others with early‑term bans, and around half the states plus D.C. actively protecting or constitutionalizing abortion access, producing what analysts repeatedly describe as a complex, patchwork legal landscape and even “abortion deserts.”(reuters.com) Similar red–blue splits have intensified on gun laws (where advocacy groups talk about “two Americas” in terms of public safety outcomes),(americanprogress.org) and on voting rules and election administration, where work on “laboratories of autocracy” and democratic backsliding documents large, partisan‑driven differences among state regimes.(ouci.dntb.gov.ua) These trends plausibly fit the spirit of states behaving more like separate political systems on key rights.

• But the U.S. is not literally 50 semi‑independent polities. Despite this divergence, federal supremacy, national parties, and an integrated national economy remain dominant. There has been no legal fragmentation of the union, no move toward formal confederation, and on many major domains (defense, currency, most federal benefits and taxation) the system is still nationally uniform. Analysts typically describe “two Americas” (red vs. blue blocs, often along an urban–rural divide) rather than 50 quasi‑independent state entities.(en.wikipedia.org) Chamath’s language (“50 balkanized states operating independently”) is metaphorical and lacks a clear empirical threshold at which it is unambiguously satisfied.

• Vague timing and definitions. The prediction speaks of being “headed to” this condition “over the ensuing years,” without specifying how many years or what concrete indicators would mark arrival. Reasonable observers could look at the same evidence—persistent polarization, sharp state‑policy splits, but continued strong federal integration—and disagree on whether it amounts to the U.S. ‘evolving toward’ a de facto balkanized system.

Because both the antecedent (no centrist surge) and some elements of the consequent (growing, state‑driven patchwork on core rights and rules) are partly supported by evidence, yet the key concept of “50 balkanized states operating independently” is inherently subjective and not clearly realized or falsified by 2025, the forecast cannot be judged definitively right or wrong. Hence the assessment: ambiguous.

Evidence cuts both ways.

Why it looks right (sector surge):

• Synthetic biology funding hit unprecedented levels in 2021. SynBioBeta reported that Q1 and Q2 2021 each set new records, with Q1 alone shattering all prior funding records and projecting up to $36B for the year. Q3 2021 then set another all‑time high, and 2021 as a whole reached nearly $18B—roughly equal to all prior years 2009–2020 combined. (synbiobeta.com)
• Even after the broader market turned, the industry still raised $10.3B in 2022, with SynBioBeta describing this as a “crucial period” marked by billions in investment and growing demand for bio‑based products. (globenewswire.com)
• Market‑size studies consistently show rapid growth: estimates put the synthetic biology market in the low‑teens billions of dollars in 2022–2023, with CAGRs around 20–28% and forecasts to tens or even hundreds of billions by the 2030s, driven by healthcare, industrial biomanufacturing, and sustainable materials. (globenewswire.com)
• New, high‑profile synbio‑adjacent companies did emerge in this period. Colossal Biosciences, for example, launched in 2021 and by early 2025 had raised $435M and reached a $10.2B valuation as a “decacorn,” explicitly leveraging gene‑editing and synthetic biology technologies. (en.wikipedia.org) Platform‑market reports now describe companies like Ginkgo Bioworks, Twist Bioscience, and LanzaTech as leading a growing “synthetic biology platforms” segment. (rss.globenewswire.com)

Why it looks wrong (the ‘Netscape moment’ and Zymergen/Ginkgo specifically):

• Zymergen’s 2021 IPO quickly became a high‑profile failure: the company revealed minimal revenue and major product issues just months after going public, its stock crashed, it was acquired by Ginkgo in 2022 for about $300M (a fraction of its ~$3B IPO valuation), and it ultimately filed for Chapter 11 and moved to liquidate in 2023–2024. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Ginkgo’s SPAC listing at a ~$15–23B valuation in 2021 was followed by sharp criticism and a dramatic de‑rating. Short sellers called it a “colossal scam” and a “hoax for the ages”; the stock fell more than 90% from its peak, and it became the subject of both a DOJ inquiry and shareholder litigation. (fiercebiotech.com) Rather than being an unambiguous flagship like Netscape, Ginkgo has become a controversial poster child for overhyped SPAC‑era biotech.
• The broader biotech market, including many synthetic biology names, entered a downturn after peaking around 2021. The S&P biotech index is reported to be down more than 50% from its high, and life‑science investors like Syncona are explicitly citing a prolonged biotech slump and difficult IPO environment. (thetimes.co.uk) Venture funding in biotech overall has waned by 2024–2025, with fewer IPOs and investors becoming more selective. (wsj.com) That pattern looks more like a boom‑and‑bust than a sustained Netscape‑style takeoff.
• Even within synbio, investment after 2021 fell from the record peak, with 2022 funding significantly lower than 2021 (though still large), suggesting that 2021 was more of a cyclical high than the start of an uninterrupted multi‑year capital‑markets surge triggered by the Zymergen/Ginkgo listings. (globenewswire.com)

Net assessment:

• The broad claim that “a tremendous amount [would] happen” in synthetic biology in the 2–5 years after 2021 is supported by the funding records, rapid market growth, new high‑profile companies, and expanding applications.
• The specific framing that the Zymergen and Ginkgo IPO/SPAC were enduring “Netscape moments” that catalyzed a sustained public‑markets boom is undercut by Zymergen’s collapse, Ginkgo’s massive drawdown and controversies, and a tough post‑2021 biotech capital‑markets environment.

Because major parts of the prediction (sector activity and growth) are borne out, while its emblematic examples and ‘Netscape’ analogy clearly misfired, the overall outcome is best characterized as ambiguous, not cleanly right or wrong.

It’s too early in the 21st century to determine whether this long‑horizon prediction is right or wrong.

The claim is explicitly about what will happen “over the course of the century” and envisions synthetic biology becoming a general‑purpose technology that:

• completely reinvents industrial production across materials, food, chemicals, plastics
• substantially improves environmental sustainability
• becomes a primary enabler of long‑term human sustainability on Earth

As of 2025, synthetic biology has made notable but still partial and sector‑specific advances:

• Engineered microbes are used at scale for industrial biomanufacturing of enzymes, flavors, fragrances, and some materials, but they have not “completely reinvented” most of chemicals or materials manufacturing, which is still dominated by petrochemical and conventional processes.
• There is rapid growth in areas like precision fermentation, alternative proteins, and bio‑based materials, but these remain a small fraction of global food and materials markets relative to conventional agriculture, livestock, and plastics.
• While synbio offers tools for carbon capture, bio‑based fuels, and environmentally friendly processes, global environmental sustainability and human long‑term sustainability are still being driven mostly by policy, energy-system changes, and traditional technologies rather than by synthetic biology as a clearly dominant “savior” technology.

Because only about a quarter of the century has passed and synthetic biology is still in an early‑to‑mid adoption phase, there is not enough evidence yet to say the prediction has clearly succeeded or failed. The trajectory (growing investment, technology maturation, and early industrial adoption) is consistent with the possibility that it could become a transformative general‑purpose technology, but this remains speculative and unproven at this time.

So, the status of Friedberg’s prediction today is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell).

Chamath said that Pivot Bio, a private company in May 2021, would “debut as a public business” in about 3–4 years. That window (roughly mid‑2024 to mid‑2025) has passed.

As of 2025, Pivot Bio explicitly describes itself as a private company funded through private investment, with its latest round a 2021 Series D; there is no indication of an IPO, SPAC merger, or direct listing having occurred. (pivotbio.com) Independent coverage in 2025 likewise classifies Pivot Bio among private biotech startups and notes that the underlying analysis was limited to private companies, confirming it has not gone public. (pivotbio.com) Recent 2024–2025 press releases (e.g., on partnerships, relocation, and investor days) present Pivot Bio as an agtech company or startup and make no reference to any stock ticker, exchange listing, or completed public offering. (prnewswire.com)

Given that the 3–4 year timeframe from the May 13, 2021 episode has elapsed and Pivot Bio remains privately held, the prediction that it would be public by then is wrong.

The prediction explicitly allowed a 5–15 year window from 2021, so the earliest point to fully judge it is around 2026, which has not yet arrived. Since 2021 there has been clear progress in engineered nitrogen-fixing microbes: Pivot Bio’s gene-edited products (e.g., PROVEN 40 for corn, CERT-N for cotton) now supply atmospheric nitrogen directly to roots and typically let farmers replace about 35–40 pounds of synthetic nitrogen per acre (roughly ~20% of a typical U.S. corn nitrogen program) while maintaining yields, and have been deployed across millions of acres in the U.S. (newaginternational.com) A 2025 University of Illinois study using Pivot Bio microbes measured about 35 pounds of nitrogen per acre supplied from the air during early corn growth and noted that completely replacing synthetic nitrogen remains a distant goal, likely far beyond current technology. (sciencedaily.com) Research groups are also engineering nitrogen-fixing bacteria for cereals like wheat (e.g., enhanced strains of Kosakonia sacchari and Klebsiella variicola that excrete more fixed nitrogen even under high-nitrogen conditions), but these are still at greenhouse/field-trial stages, not yet widely commercialized. (emsl.pnnl.gov) At the system level, global fertilizer use has not fallen because of microbial nitrogen fixation; international outlooks show total fertilizer consumption rebounding to roughly 192–204 million tonnes of nutrients in 2023–2024, with nitrogen fertilizer consumption around 108 million tonnes in 2024 and expected to grow modestly through 2030, indicating no broad displacement of synthetic nitrogen so far. (ukragroconsult.com) While microbial products are beginning to cut some synthetic nitrogen and associated emissions on enrolled acres (tens of thousands of tonnes of N and CO2e avoided, which is material for participating farms but tiny relative to global agricultural emissions), this falls well short of the prediction’s vision of broadly reducing or eliminating synthetic fertilizer use. (pivotbio.com) Because (1) the lower bound of the stated 5–15 year horizon has not yet passed, and (2) there is meaningful technical progress but far from the transformative global impact described, it is too early to say definitively whether the prediction will ultimately be right or wrong, so it is best classified as inconclusive for now.

By late 2025, the core of Sacks’s prediction has been borne out.

1. mRNA platform successfully repurposed for other diseases
   After COVID-19, mRNA vaccine technology was indeed used for a different infectious disease. On May 31, 2024, the U.S. FDA approved Moderna’s mRNA RSV vaccine mRESVIA (mRNA‑1345) for adults 60 and older, explicitly described by the company as its second approved mRNA product and as building on “the strength and versatility of our mRNA platform.” (investors.modernatx.com) This shows the COVID‑proven mRNA platform being successfully repurposed for another disease (RSV), matching his claim that “we’re going to be able to use that same mRNA technology for other things, other diseases.”

2. Therapeutic cancer applications are now working in trials
   While no mRNA cancer therapy has full regulatory approval yet, mRNA-based therapeutics that directly target cancer cells have shown clear clinical success:

   • Moderna and Merck’s personalized mRNA cancer vaccine mRNA‑4157 (V940), which encodes patient‑specific tumor neoantigens, in combination with Keytruda, met its primary endpoint in the Phase 2b KEYNOTE‑942 melanoma trial, significantly reducing risk of recurrence or death compared with Keytruda alone. (investors.modernatx.com)
   • Updated three‑year follow‑up data reported in 2023–2024 showed that the combo reduced the risk of recurrence or death by about 49% and the risk of distant metastasis or death by about 62% versus Keytruda alone, confirming sustained benefit. (merck.com)
   • News coverage and oncologists have described these results as “extremely impressive,” highlighting that this personalized mRNA jab for melanoma roughly halves recurrence compared with standard immunotherapy alone. (theguardian.com)

   These are precisely therapeutic mRNA applications designed to help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells, aligning with his “maybe even to attack cancer cells” speculation.

Because (a) the mRNA platform has demonstrably been repurposed beyond COVID-19 to at least one other major disease with an approved product, and (b) mRNA cancer therapeutics that directly target tumors have achieved positive randomized clinical trial results and are in advanced development, the prediction is best characterized as right, even though some cancer applications are still in the regulatory pipeline rather than fully licensed therapies.

Friedberg was talking about induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)–based stem cell therapies becoming an “insane field” over the next couple of decades. As of late 2025, the field is clearly expanding fast but is still in an early clinical phase. Market analyses estimate the global iPSC market at roughly USD 1.5–2 billion in 2024 and project it to grow at about 9–10% annually into the 2030s, with even faster (~20% CAGR) growth forecast specifically for iPSC‑derived cell therapies, reaching around USD 15 billion by 2033, reflecting strong R&D investment and commercialization efforts. (giiresearch.com) Scientific reviews report more than 150 iPSC‑related interventional trials worldwide by late 2023, including over 20 trials using iPSC‑derived cellular products across indications such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, cardiac disease and graft‑versus‑host disease, and describe iPSC‑based therapies as rapidly evolving with transformative potential in regenerative medicine. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Industry analyses list 60+ companies running or preparing clinical trials with iPSC‑derived therapeutics, underscoring that it has become a major focus area in biotech. (bioinformant.com) At the same time, a 2024–2025 systematic review finds only 10 published clinical studies of iPSC therapies and about 115 patients treated so far, all in small early‑phase trials, and concludes that several more years are needed before safety and efficacy can be established and routine clinical impact assessed. (sciencedirect.com) Overall, available evidence shows rapid growth and intense activity consistent with the spirit of the prediction, but because the forecast window runs through the 2030s–2040s and iPSC therapies are not yet widely approved or part of standard care, it is too early in 2025 to judge definitively whether the field will ultimately reach the long‑run scale implied. Therefore the prediction’s final accuracy remains inconclusive at this time.