By late 2025, TikTok’s original, China‑controlled corporate structure has effectively been barred from operating in the U.S., and the app has only survived by undergoing a forced restructuring, which aligns closely with the normalized prediction.

Key facts:

1. Targeted ban on the China‑controlled structure: In April 2024, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA). The law explicitly names ByteDance and TikTok as “foreign adversary controlled” and requires them either to divest from Chinese control or face a nationwide ban on hosting and distributing the app in the U.S. by January 19, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) TikTok and ByteDance challenged this law in TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, but the Supreme Court ultimately left the law in force, with a federal appeals court and then the Court upholding its constitutionality as a national‑security measure. (techcrunch.com)

2. Legal “ban” on TikTok in its old form, even as enforcement was delayed: Coverage summarizing the situation notes that TikTok has technically been “banned in the U.S. since January 19” under the statute, with app stores supposed to stop distributing it, but successive presidential orders repeatedly delayed enforcement while a divestiture deal was negotiated. (macrumors.com) In other words, the original, ByteDance‑controlled structure is legally prohibited from continuing, even if the government temporarily paused actually pulling the app.

3. Forced restructuring to remove Chinese control: On September 25, 2025, the White House issued an executive order titled “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security.” It formally determined that a “qualified divestiture” would move TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new U.S.-based joint venture, majority‑owned and controlled by U.S. investors, with ByteDance and other “foreign adversary” entities capped at under 20% ownership. The order emphasizes that the new joint venture, not ByteDance, would control the algorithms, code, content‑moderation decisions, and U.S. user data, which must be stored in an American‑run cloud and subject to intensive U.S. security monitoring. (whitehouse.gov) Reporting around the same time describes ByteDance divesting about 80% of its U.S. TikTok assets to a consortium led by Oracle and Silver Lake, with the algorithm retrained and monitored under U.S. supervision. (reuters.com)

4. Outcome vs. the normalized prediction:

   • The normalized prediction states that within a few years after March 2023, TikTok will be banned from operating in the United States in its then‑current, China‑controlled corporate structure. By January 2025–September 2025, U.S. law and executive action do exactly that: the ByteDance‑controlled configuration is legally prohibited; TikTok can continue only if ownership and operational control are transferred to a U.S.-controlled entity.
   • While the app itself ultimately remains available to users, it does so only after becoming the central test case and main corporate target in U.S.–China tech and data‑security tensions, with a bespoke statute naming it and a forced divestiture regime built around it—precisely the kind of “most obvious victim” Chamath was describing. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because (a) the China‑controlled structure has indeed been effectively banned in law and practice, (b) TikTok was forced into a major, U.S.-controlled restructuring within roughly 2.5 years of the March 2023 prediction, and (c) it became the signature corporate flashpoint in U.S.–China tech tensions, the prediction—under the user’s normalized wording—is best classified as right, even though the government ultimately chose forced divestiture rather than a permanent shutdown of the app for users.