E112: Is Davos a grift? Plus: globalist mishaps, debt ceilings, TikTok's endgame & more

Available polling and political outcomes contradict both parts of Sacks’s prediction.

1. Public opinion on the AP African American Studies ban and related CRT-style restrictions

   • A February 2023 Data for Progress national poll found that two‑thirds of likely voters (66%) said they would support an AP African American Studies course being taught in high schools in their own community, including majorities of Democrats, independents, and even 44% of Republicans. This is the exact opposite of a 70% popular position against such a course. (dataforprogress.org)
   • In Florida, a Spectrum News/Siena College poll found that majorities of voters opposed two of DeSantis’s signature education/“anti‑woke” laws: 50% opposed the Parental Rights in Education law (“Don’t Say Gay”) vs. 44% who approved, and 51% opposed the Stop WOKE Act (which targets CRT‑style content) vs. only 34% who approved. That is nowhere near the 70% support Sacks predicted for DeSantis’s side of these issues. (floridapolitics.com)
   • A Saint Leo University poll of Floridians on critical race theory found opinion essentially split over teaching CRT in schools, with support and opposition both far from 70% on either side, again contradicting the idea of a broad super‑majority backing DeSantis’s anti‑CRT stance. (polls.saintleo.edu)

2. Did the controversy "ultimately benefit him politically" over the following months/years?

   • DeSantis’s landslide re‑election in November 2022 (54–59% range in late polling and results) occurred before the January 2023 AP African American Studies controversy, so that victory cannot be credited to this episode. (scri.siena.edu)
   • He then centered his national brand on an education and “anti‑woke” crusade, including the AP African American Studies ban and Stop WOKE framework. Analyses (e.g., FiveThirtyEight) noted that while such moves mobilize core Republicans, broader electorates are increasingly wary of bans and curricular censorship, consistent with the polling above. (fivethirtyeight.com)
   • Politically, DeSantis’s trajectory deteriorated: his 2024 presidential campaign—built heavily around these culture‑war education issues—collapsed. He announced his presidential bid in May 2023 and suspended it on January 21, 2024 after a 30‑point loss to Donald Trump in Iowa and persistent weakness in national and early‑state polling. (en.wikipedia.org) Later polling from the University of North Florida showed him trailing Trump badly even among Republican voters in Florida, indicating that his positioning, including on education, did not yield a durable political advantage even on his home turf. (theguardian.com)

Taken together:

• On measurable public opinion, opposition to state‑funded CRT‑style curricula and bans like Florida’s AP African American Studies move did not become a ~70% popular position in Florida or nationally.
• On political outcomes, DeSantis’s focus on these fights did not clearly “redound to his advantage” over the subsequent years; if anything, they coincided with a failed national bid and signs of declining relative strength even among Florida Republicans.

Because both the 70% popularity claim and the forecast of net long‑term political benefit are contradicted by polls and subsequent electoral performance, the prediction is best characterized as wrong.

Nikki Haley did not win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Major news outlets and official primary result summaries show that Donald Trump secured the GOP nomination in 2024, after dominating the primary contests, while Haley suspended her campaign in March 2024 after losing key early and Super Tuesday states (see reporting and race summaries from sources such as AP, major U.S. networks, and election result trackers around that time). Therefore, Chamath’s prediction that she would "come out of nowhere and win this thing" is clearly incorrect in light of the actual 2024 Republican primary outcome.

Nikki Haley did not win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination; Donald Trump secured the GOP nomination for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with Haley suspending her campaign after falling behind in the primaries.

Given Sacks’s prediction "She's not gonna win the Republican nomination", this outcome matches the actual result, so the prediction is right.

Available national polling of Republican voters after January 2023 never shows Glenn Youngkin as the clear third‑most popular national Republican figure behind only Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

For the 2024 GOP nomination, compiled national primary polls throughout 2023 consistently have Trump first and DeSantis second, with figures like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott typically occupying the next tier. Youngkin either does not appear or registers at 0–1% support, well behind several others. (en.wikipedia.org)

Looking beyond 2024 to early 2028 Republican primary polling, Youngkin again is nowhere near a clear third place. Aggregated polling and individual national surveys show JD Vance as the dominant frontrunner, with DeSantis, Rubio, Ramaswamy, Haley and others ahead of Youngkin, who polls only around 1–3%. (en.wikipedia.org)

Across this entire post‑January‑2023 period, there is no sustained or prominent polling in which Youngkin emerges as the clear #3 national Republican figure behind only Trump and DeSantis, so the prediction did not come true.

The prediction was that Glenn Youngkin would launch a campaign for the 2024 U.S. presidential election because Virginia’s one-term limit supposedly left him "no choice but to make a play in 2024."

In reality, Youngkin never entered the 2024 presidential race. Throughout 2023 he repeatedly tamped down or deflected speculation, saying he was focused on Virginia’s legislative elections and his role as governor, and explicitly answered "no" when asked if he would be launching a 2024 presidential campaign. (cbsnews.com)

The 2024 GOP primary field solidified without Youngkin ever filing, appearing on primary ballots, or announcing a presidential committee; post‑election coverage in 2023 and 2024 described him as a potential future (e.g., 2028) candidate, not as a 2024 contender who had run. (fox5dc.com)

Because the prediction specifically concerned a 2024 presidential bid that did not occur, it is wrong.

Interpreting Sacks’s claim as a directional prediction—that the mid‑2010s shift away from “Davos‑style” globalist elites toward more nationalist / anti‑globalist leaders would keep strengthening after 2023—the available evidence up to late 2025 shows that pattern has generally continued, though unevenly and with important counter‑examples.

Evidence that the nationalist / anti‑globalist trend continued after Jan 2023

• European far‑right and nationalist breakthroughs:

  • Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), a hard‑right nationalist party, won the 2024 legislative election, the first time a far‑right party topped a national vote there since WWII.【0search14】
  • Germany’s AfD moved from pariah status toward the mainstream: it won a plurality in Thuringia’s 2024 state election and then took 20.8% nationally and second place in the February 2025 federal election, the strongest far‑right showing in modern German history.【3search22】【0news15】
  • Portugal’s far‑right Chega surged in the 2025 snap election, becoming the main opposition party in parliament and displacing the long‑dominant Socialists.【0news12】
  • North Macedonia’s 2024 election produced a landslide for the national‑conservative VMRO‑DPMNE‑led bloc, explicitly framed around national interests and EU‑accession fatigue.【0search17】
  • Romania’s ultranationalist AUR and allied far‑right forces jumped from single‑digits in 2020 to roughly 18% and second place in the 2024 parliamentary vote, with around a third of voters backing anti‑EU or pro‑Russian parties.【2news14】【3news13】

• Europe‑wide assessments of a continuing far‑right / nationalist surge:

  • Academic work on European party systems concludes that support for far‑right parties has been rising across most European states over the past 15 years, turning previously marginal actors into significant political players.【3search5】
  • Analyses of the 2024 European Parliament elections describe “big gains” and a “wave” of right‑wing support, with far‑right and hard‑right parties increasing their seat share and topping the polls in several EU countries, even though they did not win control of the Parliament.【3search0】【3search3】

• United States: clear return to an explicitly nationalist presidency:

  • In 2024, Donald Trump—whose brand is explicitly “America First” and anti‑globalist—regained the U.S. presidency, defeating Kamala Harris and bringing back a leader who openly attacks multilateral institutions and globalist elites.【1search14】【3search20】 This is a major data point in favor of Sacks’s forecast that electorates would keep favoring nationalist over Davos‑style leaders.

• Latin America and other regions:

  • Argentina elected Javier Milei in 2023, widely described as a far‑right populist / radical libertarian who rails against globalist institutions and proposes severing or downgrading ties with China and Brazil while aligning more tightly with the U.S.【6search0】【6search20】 His win was seen by regional observers as part of a broader right‑populist wave.【6search1】【6search2】
  • In South Africa’s 2024 election, the long‑dominant ANC lost its majority for the first time; one of the main new forces, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), campaigned on nationalist and anti‑establishment themes, contributing to a more fractured, sovereignty‑centric politics.【2search17】

• Media and expert framing of a broader populist / nationalist wave:

  • Analyses of Poland’s 2025 presidential election explicitly cast Karol Nawrocki’s MAGA‑aligned victory as evidence of the “strength of MAGA‑style populism across Europe,” citing concurrent far‑right advances in Austria, Portugal, and Germany.【3news15】
  • Other commentary describes a “far‑right surge” strengthening across Europe and notes that anger at globalization and elites is a key fuel for these movements.【3news14】【3search3】

Taken together, these developments are consistent with Sacks’s directional claim that the anti‑globalist / nationalist trend would not fade after 2023 but would keep expressing itself in major elections and leadership choices.

Countervailing evidence and why the trend is not absolute

• Centrist and pro‑EU wins in key countries:

  • Spain’s July 2023 election ultimately resulted in the re‑election of Pedro Sánchez and another left‑of‑centre, pro‑EU coalition government, after right‑of‑centre PP and far‑right Vox failed to assemble a majority.【4search0】【4search3】
  • The 2024 European Parliament elections left the mainstream pro‑integration parties (EPP, Socialists, liberals) still firmly in control; far‑right parties grew from about 20% to roughly 24% of seats—an increase, but explicitly “not an electoral revolution,” according to post‑election analysis.【3search2】【0search19】
  • In the 2024 UK general election, voters ousted the Conservative Party (which had embraced a nationalist, Brexit‑driven agenda) and handed a landslide to Keir Starmer’s Labour, a more technocratic, broadly pro‑alliance government.【5search12】【5search0】
  • In the 2025 Dutch election, early results and exit polling showed the liberal‑centrist D66 overtaking Geert Wilders’ far‑right PVV, with commentary casting this as a pushback against divisive populism and a preference for pro‑European stability.【0news13】

• Mass mobilization against far‑right extremism:
  Germany, for example, saw huge anti‑AfD, pro‑democracy protests in 2024–25, explicitly opposing far‑right “remigration” schemes and calling for investigation or even banning of AfD.【0search22】 This doesn’t negate AfD’s electoral gains, but it does show robust public resistance rather than a simple, linear march toward nationalism.

• Conceptual fuzziness of “Davos‑style globalists” vs. “nationalists”:
  Some leaders who are hostile to neoliberal globalization in rhetoric (e.g., parts of the Latin American left) still participate in multilateral institutions, attend elite forums, and support aspects of global cooperation, making classification subjective. Likewise, several conservative or centrist governments that displaced previous elites mix nationalist rhetoric with broadly globalist economic policy.

Why the prediction is classified as ‘right’ rather than ‘ambiguous’

Even allowing for those counter‑trends and definitional fuzziness, the net post‑2023 trajectory in many large and symbolically important democracies has been:

• continued or intensified electoral strength for nationalist / anti‑globalist or far‑right parties (Europe, parts of Latin America),
• the return of a strongly nationalist U.S. president,【1search14】 and
• widespread expert and media characterization of this as a sustained wave of populist, anti‑globalist politics rather than a spent force.【3search3】【3search5】

Sacks did not claim that nationalist leaders would entirely replace globalist ones everywhere, only that the political current favoring such leaders would keep building beyond 2023. On the balance of observable outcomes by late 2025, that directional forecast has broadly held, so the most reasonable evaluation is “right,” with the caveat that the trend is contested rather than universal.

The prediction’s explicit time horizon is “these next few decades” after 2023. Only about two years have elapsed between the podcast date (January 20, 2023) and now (late 2025), so we are far from the end of the forecast window.

There is some evidence that supports the direction of Chamath’s thesis—namely, that the world may be moving away from peak globalization toward more regional or local production:

• Analysts and institutions like the IMF and World Bank have discussed a slowdown or partial reversal of globalization (sometimes called "slowbalisation" or de‑globalization), driven by US‑China strategic rivalry, supply‑chain reshoring, and industrial policies in the US and EU that favor domestic production (e.g., CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act). These trends suggest a move away from the hyper‑globalization of the 1990s–2010s.
• At the same time, global trade volumes remain high in absolute terms, and many global supply chains are adapting rather than collapsing. Digital services trade and cross‑border data flows continue to grow. This makes it unclear how far overall globalization will truly retreat versus simply reconfigure geographically.

However, Chamath’s core claim is not about a short‑term cyclical fluctuation; it is a structural, multi‑decade forecast about (1) moving away from a past peak of globalization, and (2) eventually converging to a lower, more locally oriented equilibrium with broadly shared prosperity. Whether the world ultimately settles into that new equilibrium—and whether prosperity is indeed higher and more broadly shared—cannot reasonably be evaluated after only a couple of years.

Because:

1. The prediction explicitly spans several decades, and
2. Current evidence can neither confirm nor definitively falsify the eventual equilibrium it describes,

the correct verdict as of late 2025 is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Republicans did ultimately vote to suspend the federal debt ceiling in 2023 via the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed with substantial GOP support in both the House and Senate and suspended the limit until January 1, 2025, thereby averting default. (en.wikipedia.org)

The agreement capped certain categories of future discretionary spending, clawed back unspent COVID funds, and trimmed some IRS funding, but it did not repeal or fundamentally roll back major industrial-policy statutes such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. Reporting and analysis indicate that these laws continued to drive large-scale manufacturing and clean‑energy investments—many in Republican-leaning states and districts—after the debt ceiling deal, meaning deficit‑financed industrial policy and re‑shoring efforts remained largely intact. (en.wikipedia.org)

However, the public case Republican leaders made for the Fiscal Responsibility Act focused on avoiding a catastrophic default and achieving spending restraint: they emphasized deficit reduction, cuts or caps on discretionary spending, rescission of unspent COVID funds, and partial rollback of IRS expansion, not the preservation or expansion of deglobalization-focused industrial spending in red states. (budget.house.gov)

Whether many Republicans privately accepted the deal because industrial-policy and re‑shoring investments were benefiting their own states and districts is plausible but ultimately speculative; legislators’ internal motivations and which specific arguments ‘got them over the line’ cannot be independently verified from available evidence. Since the observable outcome portion of the prediction (Republicans agreeing to raise/suspend the ceiling) was correct, but the claimed decisive argument and motivation cannot be confirmed or disproved, the overall prediction is best judged as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Chamath was directionally right that U.S. political and regulatory pressure on TikTok/ByteDance would escalate, but the core economic parts of his prediction have not materialized by late 2025.

1. Regulatory and political pressure did escalate (this part was right).
– In April 2024, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), a law explicitly targeting ByteDance and TikTok and requiring divestiture of TikTok’s U.S. operations or a nationwide ban by January 19, 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
– TikTok and ByteDance challenged the law (TikTok, Inc. v. Garland), but in January 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the statute and the divest‑or‑ban framework.(en.wikipedia.org)
– TikTok briefly went dark for ~170 million U.S. users around January 18–19, 2025, after app stores and hosting partners pulled support under the law.(reuters.com)
– The new Trump administration then issued a series of executive orders delaying enforcement of the ban while negotiations over a U.S. sale/divestiture proceeded, pushing the effective deadline out multiple times into late 2025.(whitehouse.gov)
So the political/regulatory pressure piece is clearly fulfilled, arguably more dramatically than typical forecasts.

2. TikTok’s U.S. business and ad demand have grown, not suffered a sustained, politically‑driven collapse.
– User metrics: TikTok’s U.S. audience kept expanding after early 2023. TikTok itself reported 150M U.S. users in February 2023 and 170M by January 2024; estimates for 2025 still place U.S. users in roughly the 120–170M range, with ~82M daily active users in January 2025.(backlinko.com) There is no evidence of a structural loss of U.S. users driven by politics; usage remains extremely high. – Advertising: Rather than a “significant pullback in advertising demand” caused by political pressure, mainstream forecasts and reporting show continued strong ad spend on TikTok:

• Reuters (Dec 2024) reported that after an appeals court upheld the TikTok law, advertisers “showed little urgency to shift their budgets away” from TikTok, with projected $12.3B in 2024 U.S. ad revenue.(reuters.com)
• WARC/WARC Media estimates cited in 2025 project TikTok to earn $11.8B in U.S. ad revenue in 2025, up ~21% and outpacing overall U.S. social media ad growth, assuming a ban is avoided.(advanced-television.com)
• ByteDance’s overall and TikTok-specific numbers show rapid growth: analyses estimate TikTok’s global ad revenue rising from a few billion dollars in 2022 to around $5B in 2024 and a forecast $33B+ by 2025, with roughly three‑quarters of TikTok revenue from advertising.(resourcera.com)
  – There was a short‑term hit during the January 2025 shutdown, when U.S. advertisers paused campaigns while the app was offline, but reporting frames this as a temporary reaction to service being unavailable and legal uncertainty, not a voluntary long‑term retreat under political pressure.(ft.com)
  Overall, the evidence points to continued or rising advertiser demand, not the sustained, politically-driven pullback that was central to Chamath’s prediction.

3. ByteDance’s enterprise value is higher now than at the time of the prediction.
– ByteDance did see valuation compression from its 2021 peak of about $400B down to roughly $220–270B in 2022–2023, with observers explicitly linking some of that discount to U.S. political risk.(pymnts.com) This backdrop is what Chamath was reacting to in early 2023. – However, since then valuations have recovered strongly:

• Research aggregators and company buyback programs show internal valuations of about $315B in March 2025 and $330B+ in August 2025.(sacra.com)
• Reuters and other outlets report Q1–Q2 2025 revenue growth of ~25% YoY and note “strong advertising demand,” even as U.S. regulatory risk persists.(reuters.com)
• A November 2025 secondary share sale reported in the Spanish financial press implied an even higher valuation, around $480B, surpassing the earlier 2021 peak and reflecting intense investor demand for ByteDance equity.(cincodias.elpais.com)
  – ByteDance does trade at a lower revenue multiple than Meta, and coverage explicitly attributes part of that discount to U.S. regulatory and geopolitical risk.(sacra.com) But that is a relative multiple discount, not the absolute destruction of enterprise value Chamath implied when he said the EV was “quite challenged” and that insiders should try to “sell and get out.” In absolute terms, ByteDance is larger and more valuable than when he spoke.

4. Net assessment versus Chamath’s full prediction.
Chamath’s normalized prediction (per your wording) contained three linked claims:

1. Escalating U.S. political/regulatory pressure on TikTok/ByteDance – Correct; this clearly occurred (new law, Supreme Court case, divest‑or‑ban framework, temporary shutdown).(en.wikipedia.org)
2. That pressure would "materially harm" TikTok’s U.S. business and ByteDance’s enterprise value – Not borne out in the medium term: user growth and ad revenue in the U.S. have remained strong and ByteDance’s overall revenues and implied valuations are at or above prior peaks.(backlinko.com)
3. A "significant pullback in advertising demand" as advertisers come under political pressure to cut TikTok spend – Directly contradicted by industry data and reporting that advertisers largely stayed on TikTok and continued increasing spend, with only brief pauses around the January 2025 outage.(reuters.com)

Because the mechanism and outcome Chamath emphasized—advertisers fleeing under political pressure, leading to a structurally damaged U.S. business and a persistently impaired ByteDance valuation—has not happened, the prediction as a whole is best characterized as wrong, even though he was right about the direction of regulatory pressure.

Chamath’s prediction matches what actually happened.

1. Hostility increased through late 2023

• In spring 2023, Montana passed SB 419, the first statewide law attempting to ban TikTok for all users (not just on government devices), barring app stores from offering it and threatening large fines. This was a clear escalation beyond the federal and state device bans already in place.(euronews.com)
• By April 2023, at least 34 U.S. states had announced or enacted bans on TikTok on state government devices, and in August 2023 New York City banned TikTok from city-owned devices. Many public universities also blocked TikTok on campus Wi‑Fi and university hardware.(en.wikipedia.org) That’s a substantial broadening of government restrictions compared with early January 2023.
• On March 23, 2023, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced an unusually hostile, bipartisan House Energy & Commerce hearing explicitly focused on TikTok as a national‑security threat, with members openly discussing bans and forced divestiture.(cnbc.com) This hearing crystallized congressional opposition and kept TikTok in the political crosshairs throughout 2023.

2. Hostility intensified further heading into the 2024 election year, materially worsening TikTok’s U.S. operating environment

• On March 5, 2024, House leaders introduced the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA) specifically targeting TikTok and other ByteDance‑controlled apps, creating a process to prohibit app‑store and web‑hosting support unless they sever ties with foreign‑adversary owners through divestiture.(selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov)
• On March 13, 2024, the House passed this TikTok divest‑or‑ban bill in a lopsided 352–65 vote, with supporters explicitly framing it as moving TikTok closer to a nationwide ban unless ByteDance sold the app.(nypost.com)
• Congress then enacted this framework as law (Pub. L. 118‑50). A congressional legal summary explains that PAFACAA makes it unlawful, after a set deadline (270 days plus a possible 90‑day extension), for app stores or internet‑hosting services in the U.S. to distribute, maintain, or update TikTok or other ByteDance apps unless a “qualified divestiture” occurs—i.e., ByteDance relinquishes control.(congress.gov) Contemporary reporting notes that the 2024 law requires ByteDance to divest TikTok within about a year or face a national ban.(theguardian.com)
• A January 2025 White House order implementing this statute confirms that TikTok and other ByteDance apps are expressly defined as “foreign adversary controlled applications,” and that the law’s prohibitions on distributing and hosting them in the U.S. took legal effect (with enforcement only delayed temporarily by subsequent executive orders).(whitehouse.gov)

Relative to January 2023—when U.S. actions were mostly limited to government‑device bans and ongoing CFIUS negotiations—TikTok was, by late 2023, facing broader state and local restrictions and intense bipartisan scrutiny, and by 2024 it was subject to a federal national‑security law that threatens an actual nationwide ban absent forced divestiture. That is a substantial, sustained increase in political and regulatory hostility and clearly a “significantly worse” U.S. operating environment, so the prediction is best classified as right.

As of November 30, 2025, the prediction has not clearly come true yet, but events are moving in its general direction and the final structure is still being negotiated.

Key facts:

1. Congress forced a divest-or-ban decision. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), signed in April 2024, requires ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban, with divestment deadlines falling in January 2025 and then extended by the incoming Trump administration. This is the main driver for a restructuring of TikTok’s U.S. business. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Current TikTok U.S. corporate structure is still ByteDance‑controlled. Court filings in TikTok Inc. v. Garland describe TikTok’s U.S. arm (TikTok, Inc. in California and TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. in Delaware) as wholly owned within the ByteDance corporate family and technically integrated with the global TikTok platform. These entities were set up mainly to mitigate data‑security concerns (e.g., TTUSDS partnering with Oracle), not to spin U.S. operations into an independently owned U.S. company with ByteDance as a mere passive investor. (caselaw.findlaw.com)

3. A new U.S.-based TikTok entity with majority U.S. ownership is being negotiated but not yet fully implemented. In September 2025, reports and official statements outlined a framework where a new American company would take over TikTok’s U.S. operations, with a consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and other U.S. investors holding roughly 65–80% and ByteDance’s Chinese shareholders under 20%. This entity is to be U.S.-based, with a predominantly American board and Oracle managing operations, U.S. user data, and a licensed version of the recommendation algorithm. However, these reports consistently describe the deal as proposed, being finalized, or subject to completion within a future 90–120 day window, i.e., into late 2025 or early 2026. (reuters.com)

4. Data and algorithm control are shifting toward the U.S., but via a licensing/oversight model rather than a clean transfer. Under the emerging deal structure, Oracle will host and secure U.S. user data on U.S. infrastructure and oversee a licensed copy of TikTok’s algorithm that is retrained on U.S. data. The algorithm is to be leased from ByteDance rather than sold outright, and TikTok’s U.S. app will run on a separate algorithm and data stack. This is closer to Friedberg’s vision of U.S.-controlled data and algorithms, but not yet a fully completed, long‑term operating reality. (apnews.com)

5. ByteDance’s stake may not be purely passive and non‑voting. Current descriptions of the proposed deal say ByteDance will retain <20% equity and at most one seat on a seven‑member board, with exclusion from the security committee and limited influence—but not necessarily zero voting rights. Details could still change before closing, so we cannot definitively say that ByteDance will end up with only a passive, non‑voting economic stake as Friedberg specified. (theguardian.com)

Putting this together:

• Pursuit: U.S. policymakers and ByteDance are actively pursuing a restructuring that broadly matches the outline (a U.S.-based entity, majority U.S. ownership, Oracle-controlled data and algorithm environment).
• Implementation: As of November 30, 2025, the divestiture and corporate spin‑out have not yet fully closed; deadlines have been extended, and major outlets and officials still describe the structure as in process or pending completion in late 2025/early 2026. The fully separated, steady‑state structure Friedberg envisioned is therefore not yet a settled reality.
• Details: Key details (especially whether ByteDance’s remaining stake will be strictly passive and non‑voting) remain unsettled or at least not publicly finalized.

Because the core restructuring is still underway and the mandated completion dates lie in the near future, it is too early to say definitively whether Friedberg’s prediction will be realized exactly as stated. Hence the result is **"inconclusive" rather than clearly right or wrong at this time.

By November 30, 2025, the core of Chamath’s prediction has effectively come true, even though some details (exact price, ownership mix) differ:

1. Forced divestiture driven by U.S. law and politics
   In 2024 Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which explicitly targeted TikTok and required ByteDance to execute a “qualified divestiture” of TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban. The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld this sale‑or‑ban framework, confirming that continued Chinese control would make the app illegal to distribute in the U.S.(en.wikipedia.org) On September 25, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order approving a specific divestiture plan and temporarily pausing enforcement of the ban to allow the transaction to close.(whitehouse.gov) This is consistent with Chamath’s claim that ByteDance would be forced by U.S. regulatory and political pressure into a sale.

2. Sale to a U.S.-led investment consortium with private equity at the center
   The approved deal transfers control of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a new U.S.-based joint venture that will be majority-owned and controlled by U.S. investors; ByteDance is expected to retain <20%.(whitehouse.gov) Reporting describes the buyer as a consortium led by Oracle and the private‑equity firm Silver Lake, alongside other investors (Andreessen Horowitz, existing U.S. ByteDance investors, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX).(reuters.com) While not exclusively “a U.S-owned private equity consortium” (there is a large strategic buyer and some non‑U.S. money), it is in substance a U.S.-led investment consortium with major private‑equity participation, which is directionally what he described.

3. Valuation: heavily discounted and in the same rough magnitude he forecast
   Multiple reports put the agreed valuation for TikTok’s U.S. entity at about $14 billion.(ft.com) That is “on the order of” (same one‑digit‑tens‑of‑billions range as) the ~$10B number Chamath threw out, even if not exact.

   By contrast, ByteDance has recently been valued in private markets in the $300–400+ billion range, with TikTok’s U.S. business generating about $27B of revenue in 2024 (around 17% of total).(sacra.com) A mature, high‑growth social media business doing tens of billions of revenue being valued at only ~$14B for its U.S. arm is a very steep discount relative to normal tech multiples and to earlier expectations for TikTok, matching his claim that the equity value would be “so impaired.”

4. ByteDance’s lack of practical choice
   Under the statute and the Supreme Court’s reading, TikTok faces a ban in the U.S. if ByteDance does not complete a qualified divestiture; the executive order explicitly treats the divestiture plan as the path to avoid that ban.(en.wikipedia.org) Given the ban‑or‑sell structure and TikTok’s reliance on the U.S. market, ByteDance has little realistic option other than accepting a U.S.-controlled deal on the terms regulators and buyers will tolerate, which aligns with Chamath’s argument that they would “have to take it.”

Why this is graded as “right” overall:

• The mechanism (regulatory/political pressure forcing a sale of TikTok’s U.S. business) happened almost exactly as he envisioned.
• The counterparty structure (U.S.-led consortium with major private‑equity involvement) is directionally correct, even if not purely PE and not 100% U.S.-owned.
• The economics (deeply impaired valuation in the low‑tens‑of‑billions, versus much higher prior expectations) are substantially in line with his “roughly $10B” call.

Because the central thesis—“TikTok US will be forced into a fire‑sale style divestiture to a U.S. investment consortium under political pressure”—has materialized, and the numerical/structural deviations are moderate rather than fundamental, the prediction is best classified as right.

As of late 2025, the U.S. has in fact forced a major structural change in TikTok’s U.S. operations that matches what Friedberg anticipated.

Key points:

• In April 2024, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which explicitly targets TikTok/ByteDance and requires divestiture from foreign‑adversary control for the app to remain in the U.S. market. This law conditions TikTok’s continued U.S. operation on a structural ownership change rather than allowing the status quo indefinitely. (en.wikipedia.org)

• After legal challenges, the law’s core requirement that ByteDance divest TikTok’s U.S. operations was upheld, and major app‑store and hosting restrictions started to bite in January 2025, making continued operation under the old ByteDance‑controlled structure untenable. (investopedia.com)

• On September 25, 2025, the White House issued an executive order approving a “qualified divestiture” plan under that act. The plan creates a new U.S.-based joint venture to operate TikTok’s U.S. app, majority‑owned and controlled by U.S. persons, with ByteDance and affiliates holding less than 20%. The order states that the new joint venture will control the algorithms, content‑moderation decisions, and U.S. user data, which must be stored in a U.S. cloud environment and subject to intensive monitoring by U.S. security partners. (whitehouse.gov)
  This is exactly the sort of spinout/sale/oversight restructuring to U.S.-controlled entities that the prediction described.

• Reporting in November 2025 further details that ByteDance is in the process of divesting about 80% of its U.S. assets, with a consortium led by Oracle and Silver Lake expected to hold a majority stake, and that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm for U.S. users will be retrained and monitored under U.S. supervision. (reuters.com)

While the transaction is still being implemented, the decisive policy path and framework agreement mean that TikTok’s U.S. operations are clearly moving away from the original ByteDance‑controlled structure toward a U.S.-controlled entity. That outcome aligns with Friedberg’s claim that “something like this is going to happen,” so the prediction is best classified as right.