E161: US strikes Houthis, market instability, Q1 rate cuts in doubt, Carta's major mishap, DEI

Based on public reporting through 30 November 2025, the prediction has not come true.

The prediction: that the January 2024 U.S. and allied strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen would put the U.S. and Israel on a path to a larger war in the Middle East featuring the U.S. and Israel going to war with Iran (i.e., a direct U.S.–Iran and Israel–Iran war, not just proxy or limited strikes).

What actually happened:

1. January 2024 strikes and follow-on Red Sea campaign
   – On 11–12 January 2024 the U.S. and U.K., with support from other allies, launched air and missile strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in response to attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
   – These strikes evolved into an ongoing campaign (often described as Operation Prosperity Guardian and related actions), but they remained limited strikes against Houthi targets, not Iran itself.

2. Escalation with Iran short of all‑out war
   – In April 2024, Iran launched an unprecedented drone- and missile-attack directly against Israel, and Israel carried out limited retaliatory strikes inside Iran. These were widely reported as the first direct overt exchange of fire between the two states, but were also described by officials and analysts as carefully limited to avoid a wider regional war.
   – The United States provided significant defensive support to Israel (intercepting missiles/drones, intelligence and diplomatic backing), but did not enter into a declared or de facto full-scale war with Iran; U.S. action remained defensive and deterrent.

3. No U.S.–Iran or Israel–Iran war as of late 2025
   – As of 30 November 2025, there is no declaration of war by the United States or Israel on Iran, and no sustained large-scale U.S. or Israeli bombing or ground campaign against Iran comparable to a formal interstate war.
   – The region has seen ongoing tensions, proxy clashes, sanctions, covert operations, and occasional direct limited strikes, but these are qualitatively different from the “larger war in the Middle East featuring the US and Israel going to war with Iran” that the quote describes.

Because the key condition – the U.S. and Israel actually going to war with Iran – has not occurred by the evaluation date, the prediction is wrong, not merely “inconclusive.” The prediction is about the trajectory leading to a specific outcome (a larger war involving direct US/Israel–Iran war), and that outcome has failed to materialize in the medium term after the January 2024 strikes.

Evidence shows that the 12–13 January 2024 US/UK strikes on Houthi targets did not stop or meaningfully deter Houthi attacks on shipping over the subsequent months of 2024. A January 2024 timeline notes that immediately after the strikes the Houthis publicly vowed to continue attacking ships in the Red Sea and declared US/UK interests legitimate targets, and attacks resumed within days. (ndtv.com)

Throughout 2024, independent monitoring and industry analysis report that Houthi attacks on commercial vessels persisted and even expanded in scope. A December 10, 2024 supply-chain analysis describes that, one year into the crisis, Houthis had targeted over 90 commercial vessels, damaged more than 30, sunk two ships, and that major ocean carriers were still avoiding the Red Sea, with canal volumes down sharply. (project44.com) An October 2024 overview likewise states that Houthi Red Sea attacks continued to “torment global trade,” with 130 attacks on the Red Sea recorded through September 20, 2024 and operators still hesitant to use the route. (aljazeera.com)

Security analysis from the Washington Institute shows the Houthi campaign progressing through new phases in 2024, expanding targets to US/UK-linked ships in January and then further broadening criteria in May and July 2024, indicating persistence rather than deterrence. (washingtoninstitute.org) Concrete incidents such as the July 19, 2024 missile and drone attacks on the container ship Lobivia in the Gulf of Aden further illustrate that Houthi anti-shipping operations continued months after the January strikes. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given this sustained pattern of attacks and continued large-scale rerouting of trade through 2024, Sacks’s prediction that the January 2024 strike would not deter the Houthis and that Red Sea trade disruption would continue for the ensuing months of 2024 was borne out by events.

Evidence from both futures markets in January 2024 and the subsequent Fed policy path shows Friedberg’s "higher for longer" call was directionally correct.

• What markets were pricing in January 2024:
– At the very end of 2023 and into early January 2024, futures and swaps markets were pricing six quarter‑point cuts in 2024, with the first cut expected in March, and at latest May.(business-standard.com)
– After the January 31, 2024 FOMC meeting, CME FedWatch–based analysis still implied the federal funds rate would fall to 3.75–4.0% by end‑2024, meaning roughly 150–175 bps of easing from the 5.25–5.5% range.(econbrowser.com)
– Commentaries at that time noted March cut odds had been near 90% before Powell pushed back, but markets still assumed a relatively early and aggressive cutting cycle.(rbcwealthmanagement.com)

• What actually happened:
– The Fed’s target range was raised to 5.25–5.5% in July 2023 and then held at that peak for more than a year, through mid‑September 2024.(axios.com)
– The first rate cut did not occur until September 18, 2024, when the FOMC reduced the range by 50 bps to 4.75–5.0%, explicitly described as the first cut in over four years.(axios.com)
– Subsequent 25 bp cuts in November and December 2024 brought the target range to 4.25–4.5% by year‑end, as confirmed by FOMC minutes and post‑meeting analyses.(federalreserve.gov)
– A March 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco overview explicitly notes that the funds rate was cut by a cumulative 100 bps from its peak of 5.25–5.5%, with the target range at 4.25–4.5% by the January 2025 meeting.(frbsf.org)

• Comparison to the January 2024 futures path:
– Markets in January 2024 were effectively pricing:
1. First cut by March–May 2024; and
2. End‑2024 rate around 3.75–4.0%.(business-standard.com)
– In reality, the first cut slipped to September 2024, well after both March and mid‑2024, and the end‑2024 rate (4.25–4.5%) was materially higher than the 3.75–4.0% level implied by January futures.(axios.com)

• On his mechanism (lagging components): Later Fed commentary and research in early 2025 note that inflation in services such as shelter, health care, and insurance remained elevated and was a key reason policy stayed restrictive, which is broadly consistent with Friedberg’s argument that lagging components like insurance would keep inflation sticky.(frbsf.org)

Because (1) cuts were indeed delayed well past the March 2024 start and beyond mid‑2024, and (2) policy rates ended 2024 higher than what January 2024 futures were discounting, Friedberg’s prediction that U.S. rates would stay higher for longer than markets expected at the time is best judged as right.

Evidence from both macro data and market behavior shows 2024 looked more like a classic soft (or even no) landing with an unusually smooth equity rally, rather than the “bumpy landing” with destabilizing shocks that Sacks predicted.

On the macro side, multiple retrospectives describe 2024 as a successful U.S. soft landing: U.S. GDP grew about 2.8% in 2024 while inflation fell to roughly 2.9% by December and unemployment hovered near 4.1%, with no recession and only modest labor-market cooling. A Le Monde survey of global growth explicitly characterizes the U.S. outcome in 2024 as a soft landing under these conditions. (lemonde.fr) Mid‑year and late‑year assessments from forecasters such as S&P Global and ICIS similarly emphasized continued positive growth around 2.4–2.5% with easing inflation and no recession, i.e., a soft/no‑landing scenario rather than a volatile downturn. (spglobal.com)

Equity markets also did not behave as Sacks’s “bumpy” scenario implied. The S&P 500 delivered roughly 23–25% total returns in 2024, marking a second straight year of strong double‑digit gains. Cboe data show the index finished 2024 up 23.31%, while the FT calculates about 24.5% total return for the year. (cboe.com) At the same time, realized volatility was historically low: Bloomberg reports that the VIX averaged about 15.5 in 2024—its lowest annual average since 2019—even as the S&P 500 hit 51 all‑time highs, underscoring a steady, low‑volatility advance rather than a rally “undermined” by shocks. (news.bloomberglaw.com)

Because 2024 delivered (1) continued growth without recession, widely labeled a soft landing, and (2) a strong, relatively low‑volatility continuation of the late‑2023 equity rally, Sacks’s call for a distinctly “bumpy landing” that would derail or sharply destabilize that rally did not come to pass.

Evidence from multiple sources shows that attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq/Syria did in fact continue in the months after the January 13, 2024 discussion, rather than ceasing.

• In February 2024, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 15 rocket and drone attacks on coalition bases hosting U.S. forces in Syria (Al-Omar oil field and Koniko gas field), carried out by Iranian‑backed militias as part of a continued “retaliatory” campaign against U.S. forces amid the Gaza war. (syriahr.com)
• After the late‑January Tower 22 attack and large U.S. retaliatory strikes from February 2–7, 2024, some reporting noted that Iran‑backed groups halted attacks for a period, particularly in Iraq, as part of an informal truce. (en.wikipedia.org) However, this was a pause, not a permanent end.
• On April 21, 2024, militants fired five rockets from northern Iraq toward the Kharab al‑Jir base in northeast Syria, which houses U.S. and coalition troops. This was described as the first major attack since early February and was explicitly framed by Kataib Hezbollah and allied groups as a resumption of attacks on U.S. forces. (theguardian.com)
• The same "Attacks on US bases" chronology notes further incidents later in 2024, including a kamikaze drone attack on the U.S. Rumalyn Landing Zone in eastern Syria on August 9, 2024, injuring eight U.S. soldiers, and rockets targeting a U.S. airbase in Deir ez‑Zor on August 13, 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, these incidents show that while there was a temporary lull after heavy U.S. reprisals in early February, attacks on U.S. bases in Syria (and from Iraq into Syria) did indeed continue over the following months, matching Sacks’s prediction that such attacks were likely to continue rather than cease.

The prediction was explicitly conditional: only if the Middle East conflict escalated into a wider regional war that caused an oil shock would “rate cuts be kissed goodbye.”

1. Did the condition (wider regional war + oil shock) occur in 2024?

• Analyses in mid‑2024 noted that the Israel–Hamas war and associated tensions (including Red Sea attacks) had, up to that point, limited impact on the global economy, with the base case being that the conflict remained “largely confined.”

  • Bloomberg Intelligence/Bloomberg Economics described the ongoing conflict as having had limited global economic impact thus far, and treated a direct Israel–Iran war with a true oil supply disruption as a risk scenario, not the 2024 reality. (bloomberg.com)

• Their scenarios explicitly framed a genuine oil “shock” as prices surging toward $150/bbl in a major escalation; in contrast, they reported that markets were pricing in only a very small geopolitical risk premium (less than about $5 per barrel) under the actually observed, confined-war scenario. (bloomberg.com)

• Brent crude prices did not experience a sustained spike in 2024 driven by the Middle East conflict. Annual data show Brent averaging about $80.76/bbl in 2024, slightly below the 2023 level of $82.64, and quarterly data show prices in the mid‑80s in Q2 trending down into the high‑70s and low‑70s by late 2024. (ycharts.com)

Taken together, there was no large, sustained Middle‑East‑driven oil price shock in 2024 comparable to past “oil shock” episodes. The predicate of Sacks’s conditional (“if it develops into a wider regional war … if there’s an oil shock”) therefore did not materialize.

2. What happened to the Fed’s 2024 rate cuts?

• As of late 2023, markets were indeed pricing in large 2024 cuts – roughly six quarter‑point cuts (about 150 bps) was a widely cited Wall Street consensus, even more aggressive than the Fed’s own projection of three cuts. (fool.com)
• In reality, the Fed kept the federal funds rate at 5.25–5.50% through the first half of 2024, signaling growing caution as inflation progress stalled. (cbsnews.com)
• The first cut didn’t arrive until September 18, 2024, when the Fed reduced rates by 50 bps to a 4.75–5.00% range, and guidance plus market pricing pointed to at most a further 50 bps of easing by year‑end—far fewer and later than what markets had priced in at the end of 2023. (cnbc.com)
• However, Fed communications attribute the delay and smaller‑than‑expected cuts primarily to sticky inflation and still‑solid economic data, not to any oil‑price shock from the Middle East. (cnbc.com)

3. Evaluation of the prediction

• Sacks’s claim was: If there is a wider regional war that produces an oil shock, then the big 2024 rate cuts markets expected would be off the table.
• In 2024, the key trigger condition (a genuine oil shock from a wider regional war) did not occur. Without that, we cannot tell from actual history whether his causal statement about how the Fed would react under that specific scenario is correct or not.
• It is true that the large 2024 cuts markets expected in late 2023 did not materialize, but they were curtailed without the mechanism he specified (no large oil‑shock‑driven inflation surge).

Because the world never entered the scenario he was conditioning on, the prediction is neither confirmed nor falsified by what actually happened.

Conclusion: the correct grading is “ambiguous”: enough time has passed, but the conditional scenario did not occur, so the prediction’s accuracy cannot be determined from observed outcomes.

Evidence from 2024–25 lines up with Sacks’ core claim that the Yemen/Houthi and broader Middle East crises did not give Biden a durable political boost and instead became a liability by late 2024.

• Conflict was still active by November 2024. The U.S.-led Red Sea protection mission, Operation Prosperity Guardian, began in December 2023 and continued into 2025, with ongoing Houthi attacks on shipping and repeated U.S. and allied strikes through 2024, well past the November 5, 2024 election date. (en.wikipedia.org)
• No meaningful ‘rally around the flag’ for Biden. Public polling during the Israel–Hamas and related Red Sea crises showed Biden’s approval on foreign policy and the Middle East at or near record lows, not higher. An NBC/ CNBC summary in November 2023 already found his overall approval and foreign-policy approval falling amid the Gaza war. (cnbc.com) Gallup later measured his approval on the Middle East in the high 20s to low 30s—well below even his weak overall job rating—indicating that these conflicts were a drag, not a boost. (news.gallup.com) That is consistent with Sacks’ claim that “wagging the dog” would not work and that any rally would be minimal/short‑lived.
• Middle East policy clearly hurt Biden within his own coalition. Gallup, Pew, AP–NORC and others documented deep and growing disapproval of Biden’s handling of the Israel–Hamas war, especially among Democrats, younger voters, and non‑white voters. (en.wikipedia.org) A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May 2024 explicitly warned that Democratic divisions over Gaza and associated campus protests were “hurting Biden” and posed a serious threat to his re‑election prospects, particularly in swing states like Michigan with large Arab‑American populations. (reuters.com)
• By mid‑2024, Biden’s political standing had clearly weakened. Gallup reports his overall approval fell to an all‑time low of 36% by July 2024, after months of controversy over the Gaza war and Red Sea/Houthi strikes. (en.wikipedia.org) He then withdrew from the 2024 race on July 21, 2024, with analysts and contemporaneous reporting citing his age, debate performance, and sustained unpopularity—including on foreign policy—as key reasons. (en.wikipedia.org)
• The end result was a weakened Democratic position going into the election. Democrats went into November 2024 with an unpopular lame‑duck president presiding over an ongoing Middle East/Red Sea conflict, and with his vice president as a replacement nominee. Republicans ended up winning the presidency and taking unified control of the federal government. (en.wikipedia.org) While multiple factors contributed (economy, age concerns, debate performance), polling and analysis consistently show the Middle East crises were one of the issues undermining Biden’s perceived control and competence.

Because the Red Sea/Houthi conflict was still active by November 2024 and the broader Middle East situation clearly coincided with, and contributed to, a deterioration in Biden’s political standing rather than a durable rally, Sacks’ conditional prediction—that the conflict would at best yield a short‑lived bump and would ultimately weaken Biden if it dragged on into the election period—is best classified as right.

Evidence from 2024–2025 suggests Disney did not execute the kind of clear, lasting depoliticizing “course correction” away from politicized/identity-focused content that critics like Sacks were calling for, especially in the Star Wars franchise, and that any shifts were partial and tactical rather than a clean reversal.

Key points:

1. Star Wars stayed on an explicitly inclusive/"politicized" track.

   • The Acolyte (2024) was developed and marketed as a female‑centric Star Wars series with a diverse cast and an openly queer showrunner. It drew sustained criticism for being "woke" and was nicknamed "The Wokelyte" by detractors.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • In May 2024, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy publicly defended this direction amid backlash, saying her belief is that “storytelling does need to be representative of all people” and that this is an “easy decision” for her—explicitly reaffirming inclusive representation as a guiding principle, not walking it back.(latimes.com)
   • These statements and the creative choices in The Acolyte show Lucasfilm/Disney did not pivot Star Wars away from the representational politics that critics objected to; instead, they doubled down while trying to manage fan toxicity.

2. Bob Iger’s ‘quiet the noise’ line did not translate into a clear substantive retreat from politicized content.

   • In 2023, Iger told investors Disney would “quiet the noise” in culture wars and insisted Disney’s mission should “not be agenda‑driven.”(investing.com) These remarks predate the podcast and were widely read as a promise of course correction.
   • However, follow‑up coverage emphasized that while Iger wanted to lower the political temperature, he also reaffirmed that Disney would keep telling stories that “reflect the world around us” and “foster…acceptance of all people”—i.e., continuing inclusion even as rhetoric softened.(cinemablend.com)
   • Conservative and anti‑woke commentators through 2024–2025 repeatedly argued that Disney remained "woke" despite Iger’s language, indicating that, in practice, they did not view his moves as the needed course correction but as cosmetic.(westernjournal.com)

3. Some partial pullbacks exist, but they are limited and mixed.

   • Disney/Pixar cut a transgender‑identity storyline from the kids’ series Win or Lose, keeping the character but stripping dialogue about gender identity; the studio framed this as leaving such topics to parents.(people.com)
   • Pixar’s Elio reportedly had LGBTQ and Latinx content reduced, and insiders blamed those cuts for weakening the film’s identity and contributing to its failure.(sfchronicle.com)
   • At the corporate level, Disney scaled back or re‑branded some DEI initiatives (dropping the high‑profile "Reimagine Tomorrow" targets from filings and sharply reducing explicit “DEI” language in its 2025 annual report), while still talking about an “inclusive” workplace.(nypost.com)
   • Yet in March 2025 shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal from an anti‑woke group to cut ties with the Human Rights Campaign, and Disney retained a perfect score on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index—clear signs it has not abandoned LGBTQ‑friendly policies.(reuters.com)
   • Net effect: Disney is trimming and re‑packaging some edge cases (especially around young children’s animation) but not broadly repudiating the inclusive/identity‑conscious approach that critics see as politicized.

4. The overall trajectory by late 2025 lines up with Sacks’s thesis.

   • Sacks’ prediction was that Disney would not enact the *“course correction they need” away from politicized content and that this failure would persist rather than be quickly reversed.
   • Between early 2024 and late 2025, Star Wars remains heavily aligned with inclusive/representational politics (The Acolyte being the flagship example), senior leadership publicly endorses that philosophy, and Disney maintains strong formal commitments to LGBTQ equality even while making selective concessions and softening DEI branding.(en.wikipedia.org)

Given that (a) there was no decisive, sustained pivot away from the very content choices being criticized, and (b) the partial adjustments did not satisfy anti‑woke critics or change the fundamental creative direction of franchises like Star Wars, the prediction that Disney would fail to make a sufficient, durable depoliticizing course correction in the near term is best characterized as right.

Available evidence shows partial movement in the direction Chamath described but not the end‑state he predicted, and his timeline was explicitly open‑ended ("eventually"), so it’s too early to say if he’ll ultimately be right or wrong.

1. High‑stakes professions (pilots, safety‑critical aviation)
• American Airlines agreed in late 2024 to drop diversity‑focused hiring and promotion practices after a civil‑rights complaint, with both regulators and advocates explicitly framing the change as ending race/sex‑based preferences so pilot selection is based on flight hours, credentials, and training rather than DEI benchmarks. (westernstandard.news)
• In 2025, the Trump administration ordered the FAA to end DEI‑based hiring and restore strictly merit‑based standards for safety‑critical roles (air traffic controllers, safety inspectors, aviation engineers). (hstoday.us)
• More broadly, Executive Order 14173 rescinded long‑standing affirmative‑action obligations on federal contractors and explicitly reoriented federal hiring toward “merit‑based” criteria, while a suite of DEI‑rollback orders purged DEI programs across the federal government, which includes many high‑stakes professions (military, federal health systems, regulators). (en.wikipedia.org)
These moves match part of his mechanism: campaigns against DEI framed around safety, competence and “irrefutable” skill requirements.

2. Hollywood / entertainment
• Paramount Global has scaled back DEI: dropping numerical diversity goals, halting collection of demographic data on applicants except where legally required, and replacing its DEI framework with a vaguer “Workforce Culture and Development” initiative, while scrubbing explicit DEI language from public materials. (them.us)
• As part of its proposed merger with Paramount, Skydance told the FCC it would eliminate DEI programs at CBS News, shut its global inclusion office, and change hiring/promotion rules; the company also emphasized that Skydance itself does not operate DEI programs. (nypost.com)
• The broader entertainment sector is under regulatory and political pressure: Disney has been investigated by the FCC over DEI‑linked casting and compensation, and industry reporting notes a wider corporate trend of rolling back or rebranding DEI in response to the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative‑action ruling and Trump‑era enforcement. (marketwatch.com)
So we do see notable DEI retrenchment in parts of Hollywood, but it’s patchy and contested, not a wholesale “cleansing” of DEI‑based hiring/promotion across the industry.

3. Symphony orchestras and classical music
Here the prediction clearly has not come true so far: • Major U.S. orchestras (e.g., Charlotte Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Anderson Symphony) continue to maintain or expand explicit DEI commitments in hiring, programming, and governance through 2024–25, publishing updated DEI statements, reports, and strategic plans. (charlottesymphony.org)
• The League of American Orchestras still promotes an active DEI strategy for the field, and sector press in 2025 continues to highlight new equity‑oriented initiatives for underrepresented communities rather than their dismantling. (symphony.org)
• When the San Francisco Conservatory and San Francisco Symphony briefly paused the Emerging Black Composers Project after a federal memo threatening funding for DEI‑linked programs, the Symphony subsequently chose to continue the initiative under its own administration, explicitly in defiance of political pressure. (sfchronicle.com)
• Youth and regional programs likewise advertise DEI as a core value into late 2024–2025. (hiyouthsymphony.org)
Overall, orchestras are leaning into, not abandoning, explicit DEI commitments, even as they navigate new federal constraints.

4. Sequencing & overall judgment
Chamath’s claim had two key parts:

1. Mechanism/sequence – DEI would first be dismantled in “irrefutable” high‑stakes jobs (e.g., pilots, certain doctors/surgeons) where only skill can be allowed, and
2. End‑state – that this logic would then “cleanse” DEI from Hollywood and symphony orchestras.

As of November 30, 2025:

• There is clear evidence of DEI rollbacks justified on safety/merit grounds in aviation and other high‑stakes federal domains, and some evidence of politically driven DEI retreat or rebranding in Hollywood. (westernstandard.news)
• There is little to no evidence that symphony orchestras have been “cleansed” of DEI; on the contrary, the field remains openly DEI‑oriented, even when funding pressure increases. (charlottesymphony.org)
• The trend in Hollywood is partial and uneven, not an industry‑wide eradication of DEI‑based hiring and promotion.

Because his forecast was explicitly framed as something that would happen “eventually,” the current state (less than two years later) doesn’t yet let us say that he was definitively right or wrong about a full rollback in Hollywood and orchestras. There are signs in the direction he anticipated in some high‑stakes professions and parts of Hollywood, but the predicted comprehensive “cleansing” across Hollywood and especially symphony orchestras has clearly not occurred. That makes the outcome inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than clearly right or wrong at this point.

As of November 30, 2025, there has been at least one major U.S. commercial aviation disaster and multiple lawsuits and political controversies around it, but none match the specific pattern Chamath predicted.

After the January 29, 2025 Potomac River mid‑air collision near Washington, D.C., in which American Eagle/PSA Flight 5342 collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and killed all 67 people aboard, victim families filed large wrongful‑death claims and then a consolidated federal lawsuit against American Airlines/PSA, the FAA, and the U.S. Army. These suits allege negligence in airspace design, controller staffing, helicopter altitude, and generic shortcomings in training and oversight, but they do not claim that DEI‑oriented pilot hiring overrode merit, and they do not center on demands to compare the pilots’ qualifications to alternative candidates as a DEI issue. (en.wikipedia.org)

In parallel, there are high‑profile DEI‑related lawsuits in aviation, but they concern air‑traffic controller hiring, not commercial pilots:

• The long‑running class action Brigida v. U.S. Department of Transportation / FAA alleges that the FAA replaced a test‑ and CTI‑based, aptitude‑driven hiring system with a 2013 “biographical questionnaire” designed to favor certain minority applicants, thereby rejecting about 1,000 non‑African‑American CTI graduates who had passed the old AT‑SAT exam. This suit explicitly frames the change as abandoning merit in favor of race‑conscious hiring and is now in active discovery with class certification and expert schedules set through 2025. (mslegal.org)
• Media and advocacy pieces connect that FAA DEI‑linked hiring regime and resulting controller shortages to rising safety risks, and the 2025 Potomac collision has been used rhetorically as proof that such policies “made an accident inevitable.” (unherd.com) However, these are pre‑existing discrimination suits by rejected controller applicants, not new crash‑triggered cases filed by victims’ families.

Political figures, especially President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, have publicly blamed FAA diversity policies for the Potomac crash, arguing that DEI undermined controller quality and staffing. Their comments sparked intense media controversy and rebuttals from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and others, who say certification standards remain uniform regardless of race or disability. (en.wikipedia.org) This is public controversy about DEI and safety, but not the kind of lawsuit‑driven discovery over pilot qualifications Chamath described.

On the pilot side specifically:

• United Airlines’ Aviate Academy, which was publicly marketed in part as a way to increase diversity among pilots and became a flashpoint in the Musk–Cuban DEI debate, is now facing multiple lawsuits from former student pilots. Those suits allege consumer fraud, misrepresentation of program length and quality, inadequate aircraft and instructors, long delays, and accreditation problems. They do not allege that United hired or graduated less‑qualified pilots due to DEI quotas, nor are they tied to any crash or near‑incident. (businessinsider.com)
• A separate suit by three NYPD helicopter pilots claims their former aviation‑unit boss discriminated against them in favor of less experienced Black pilots, allegedly compromising safety. But this is an internal employment‑discrimination case in a police aviation unit, not a commercial passenger incident and not tied to a specific crash. (nypost.com)

In other words:

• We have a deadly commercial accident (Potomac) and many near‑misses.
• We have lawsuits and class actions in aviation that attack DEI‑style hiring (mostly for air‑traffic controllers) and that involve detailed discovery on selection processes and test scores.
• We do not yet have the post‑incident commercial‑pilot lawsuits Chamath sketched—cases where crash victims or passengers allege that DEI‑driven pilot hiring overrode pure skill ranking and specifically demand pilot training records and comparisons to passed‑over candidates as the core legal theory.

Because the triggering condition (a serious incident) has clearly occurred but the specific form of litigation he predicted has not emerged by late 2025, the prediction—as normalized to commercial pilots and DEI‑based pilot selection—is wrong so far, even though related DEI‑and‑safety disputes around FAA controller hiring show that a weaker, controller‑focused version of his concern has partially materialized.

Evidence after the podcast shows that Harvard’s presidential selection process was publicly challenged on the grounds that diversity/identity considerations improperly influenced the choice of Claudine Gay.

• Prominent donor and alumnus Bill Ackman repeatedly alleged that Harvard’s presidential search was constrained by DEI requirements. He claimed the search committee "would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria" and criticized Gay as a "diversity hire," explicitly framing the process as driven by DEI rather than merit.(dailycampus.com)
• Ackman further argued that Harvard’s board had run a presidential search with “a predetermined objective of only hiring a DEI‑approved candidate,” directly attacking the legitimacy of the selection process rather than just Gay’s performance in office.(harvardindependent.com)
• Conservative activists and commentators mounted a broader campaign describing Gay as an “unqualified diversity hire” and tying her appointment to DEI ideology, which major outlets covered as a central part of the controversy surrounding her resignation and the wider political attack on higher education.(theguardian.com)

There does not appear to be a specific lawsuit solely challenging Harvard’s presidential selection process, but Jason’s prediction allowed for legal or public challenges. The intense, sustained public scrutiny and criticism focused directly on whether DEI/identity considerations distorted Harvard’s presidential search matches the scenario he described, in a way analogous to DEI‑related legal battles in other domains. Hence the prediction is best categorized as right.