Kamala surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escalation, Ackman postpones IPO

Key elements of Sacks’s prediction did occur within the ~100‑day window from early August 2024 to Election Day (November 5, 2024):

1. Harris was forced into at least one debate and unscripted questioning.
   • Kamala Harris and Donald Trump participated in an ABC News presidential debate on 10 September 2024 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, their first head‑to‑head debate of the campaign. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Coverage and transcripts show real‑time moderator questions and exchanges on policy (abortion, immigration, Afghanistan, etc.), i.e., an unscripted, live format rather than controlled speeches. (abc7.com)
   • Harris also sat for a long‑form, nationally televised “60 Minutes” interview in October 2024; the FCC later sought unedited transcripts and video, confirming a substantive, extended Q&A format with mainstream press. (apnews.com)
   This matches the prediction that her strategy of limited exposure would “fall apart” and she would “have to do a debate” and answer questions.

2. She had a clear polling surge in August.
   • Shortly after Biden withdrew and Harris became the de facto nominee, national polling averages showed her opening a noticeable lead. FiveThirtyEight’s early‑August average had Harris around 45% vs. Trump 43.5%, already a modest edge. (newsmax.com)
   • By later in August, multiple aggregators and analyses described a Harris “surge” or “convention bounce,” with Silver’s and FiveThirtyEight‑style averages putting her national lead in the roughly 3–4 point range and many individual polls showing her up by mid‑single digits. (newsweek.com)
   That is the “bloom on the rose” phase Sacks was referring to.

3. After that period, her bounce faded and the race reverted to a near‑tie.
   • Analyses just before Election Day reported that Harris’s national lead had shrunk from a late‑August peak (about 3.5–3.7 points in FiveThirtyEight‑style averages) to roughly 1 point or less by early November. (forbes.com)
   • On the eve of the election, three separate aggregators (Silver Bulletin, FiveThirtyEight, and the New York Times) all had Harris ahead nationally by between 0.1 and 0.9 percentage points, and commentators characterized the contest as one of the closest, essentially a dead heat. (yahoo.com)
   • RealClearPolitics’ unweighted national average had Harris ahead by just 0.1 point going into Election Day, again functionally an even race. (forbes.com)

Putting this together: within roughly 40 days of Sacks’s statement, Harris did in fact participate in a major televised debate and other unscripted interviews. Over the subsequent weeks, her earlier post‑nomination/convention polling advantage eroded, and by Election Day the national polling picture had “normalized” to a roughly even Harris–Trump race, exactly as he described. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as right.

Chamath’s conditional prediction was that if Kamala Harris did not clearly define her positions on 4–5 key issues, she would win the national popular vote but lose the Electoral College in the November 2024 election.

In reality, in the 2024 U.S. presidential election Donald Trump won both the Electoral College and the national popular vote: 312–226 in the Electoral College and 49.8%–48.3% in the popular vote (about a 2.3 million vote margin over Harris). (en.wikipedia.org) This directly contradicts the popular-vote/EC split he described.

The antecedent of his conditional (“in the absence of her defining herself on those 4 or 5 issues”) is also dubious: Harris’s 2024 campaign publicly set out positions on major issues such as abortion rights, an “opportunity economy” and middle‑class tax relief, housing affordability, border security and immigration reform, and her stance on the Israel–Gaza conflict in speeches, interviews, and on her campaign site. (en.wikipedia.org) While one could debate whether this met Chamath’s personal standard of “clearly defining” her positions, the concrete electoral outcome he forecast (popular‑vote win combined with Electoral College loss) did not occur.

Because the verifiable part of the prediction—Harris winning the popular vote while losing the Electoral College—was false in the world that actually happened, this prediction is best classified as wrong.

Evidence from 2024–2025 shows the U.S. economy continued to expand rather than being broadly described as in a recessionary environment.

• Macroeconomic data: Real U.S. GDP grew in every quarter of 2024, with full‑year real growth of about 2.8%, and Q3–Q4 2024 both positive. (bea.gov) The NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee has not declared any new recession after the brief COVID downturn that ended in April 2020, meaning it still classifies the period since May 2020 as an expansion. (nber.org) This undercuts the idea that conditions were widely seen as recessionary starting in or after September 2024.
• Media narrative: In early September 2024, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen publicly said the U.S. economy remained solid and was on track for a soft landing, explicitly rejecting the view that the U.S. was in recession. (cnbc.com) The National Retail Federation’s chief economist similarly stated on September 6, 2024 that the U.S. economy was “clearly not in a recession” and likely to avoid one in late 2024. (nrf.com) Coverage from CNBC and other outlets through late 2024 framed the debate as recession fears vs. a probable soft landing, not as the country already being in recession. (cnbc.com)
• Corporate earnings commentary: FactSet‑based analysis of S&P 500 earnings calls for late 2023 and early 2024 found that far fewer large companies were even mentioning the word “recession” on their calls than in prior years, while use of the phrase “soft landing” hit multi‑year highs. (jamesinvestment.com) That is the opposite of Chamath’s expectation of “a lot of ink” around multiple major companies “basically in a recession.”
• Minority recession claims: A few opinion pieces and niche analyses argued that parts of the U.S. economy or certain income groups might already be in recession, but they acknowledge that aggregate data still show positive GDP growth and characterize this as a partial or hidden recession affecting specific segments, not the mainstream view of the overall U.S. economy. (forbes.com) These do not amount to major media widely describing the U.S. as in a recessionary environment in the sense implied by the prediction.

Given (1) continued broad economic growth with no officially dated recession, (2) a dominant soft‑landing narrative in major outlets, and (3) no widespread wave of coverage portraying multiple large companies as being “basically in recession,” Chamath’s predicted media and corporate‑commentary pattern did not materialize. Therefore, the prediction is wrong.

The September 17–18, 2024 FOMC meeting did, in fact, deliver a rate cut, and larger than the minimum threshold in the normalized prediction. The target range for the federal funds rate was reduced from 5.25–5.50% to 4.75–5.00%, a 50 basis point cut.(federalreserve.gov) This satisfies the normalized claim that there would be at least a 25 bp cut, even though Chamath’s exact off‑the-cuff wording (“probably going to cut 25”) understated the eventual size of the move.

The minutes show that a “substantial majority” of FOMC participants supported the 50 bp cut, while a minority would have preferred only 25 bp, and Powell voted with the majority.(federalreserve.gov) That pattern is consistent with the idea that, given sufficient committee support, Powell was willing to go to 50 bp rather than being anchored to 25 bp, which matches the conditional part of the prediction about his inclination, even though his exact internal preferences cannot be directly observed.

The final part of the prediction—that this rate cut would not materially resolve the underlying weakness in consumers’ purchasing power and economic stress—is also borne out by subsequent data. By late 2024, U.S. credit‑card defaults had risen to their highest level since 2010, with tens of billions of dollars in write‑offs, underscoring mounting financial strain, especially for lower‑income households.(ft.com) Analyses of household finances through 2024–25 highlight that, despite some improvement in aggregate real incomes, cumulative inflation and high living costs continued to erode resilience, with elevated consumer debt and rising delinquencies particularly among vulnerable groups.(compete.org) Real consumer spending growth showed periods of softness and small declines once adjusted for inflation, indicating that purchasing power pressures persisted rather than being “solved” by a single rate cut.(theglobalstatistics.com)

Taken together, the core normalized elements came true: the Fed cut the policy rate by at least 25 bp at the September 2024 meeting; conditions were such that a larger (50 bp) cut was chosen with broad committee backing; and that easing did not eliminate the underlying consumer‑side weakness or cost‑of‑living pressures. The prediction is therefore best classified as right, with the caveat that Chamath verbally low‑balled the eventual cut size when he said “probably 25.”

The prediction ties Democrats’ chances of winning the White House to having a “bad economy” going into November 2024, which makes it inherently conditional and somewhat vague.

What actually happened:

• Democrats did lose the White House: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris on November 5, 2024, winning 312–226 in the Electoral College and by about 1.5 points in the popular vote. (en.wikipedia.org) That outcome is consistent with Chamath’s claim that it would be “very difficult” for Democrats to win under unfavorable economic conditions.

State of the economy going into November 2024 (hard data):

• Real GDP was still expanding at a solid pace: 3.1% annualized in Q3 2024 and about 2.3–2.4% in Q4, with full‑year 2024 growth around 2.8%. That’s moderate, positive growth, not a technical or NBER‑defined recession. (forbes.com)
• The unemployment rate in October 2024 was 4.1% (up from 3.8% a year earlier but still historically low). Job creation in October, however, was anemic—only about 12,000 jobs added, the weakest since 2020, largely due to hurricanes and a Boeing strike—producing very negative pre‑election headlines. (bls.gov)
• Inflation, while still above the Fed’s 2% target, had fallen sharply from its 2022 peak; October 2024 CPI was up about 2.6% year‑over‑year with core at 3.3%, roughly in line with expectations and compatible with a “soft landing” narrative. (cnbc.com)
• Some indicators of sentiment were improving: the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index jumped to 108.7 in October 2024, with the Expectations Index rising above the 80 level that typically signals recession risk, suggesting statistical confidence was not recession‑like. (prnewswire.com)

Public perception and political framing:

• Despite solid macro data, most voters felt the economy was bad. Exit and pre‑election polling showed the economy/inflation as the top concern, with majorities rating conditions as “not so good” or “poor” and many saying they were falling behind financially. (foxbusiness.com) Analysts widely argued that lingering affordability and inflation pain were central to Harris’s loss.

Why the forecast is hard to score cleanly:

• The antecedent (“a bad economy like what it looks like going into November”) is ambiguous. On objective macro metrics (growth, unemployment, inflation), the U.S. was not in a recession and was performing reasonably well; on voter sentiment and headlines (weak October jobs report, high perceived prices, majority saying the economy is poor), conditions looked bad to many voters.
• The consequent is probabilistic and qualitative (“very difficult” to win), not a crisp claim like “Democrats will lose.” Democrats did in fact lose, which is consistent with his statement, but doesn’t prove it was because economic conditions were bad or that the causal relationship was as strong as implied.

Because (1) the “bad economy” condition is only partly satisfied depending on whether you emphasize macro data versus public perception, and (2) the claim is framed in loose, probabilistic language rather than a clear yes/no outcome, the prediction cannot be judged definitively as right or wrong even though we now know the election result.

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

The prediction specifies a 15–20 year horizon from 2024 (i.e., roughly 2039–2044) for at least one leading AI‑enabled company to achieve EBITDA margins in the 70–80% range. As of the current date (2025‑11‑30), that time window has not yet arrived, so it is too early to determine whether this will ultimately be correct or incorrect. Therefore, the outcome of the prediction cannot yet be evaluated.

The prediction’s time horizon is “within roughly the next 15–20 years (by ~2044).” From a 2024 podcast date, 15–20 years out extends to 2039–2044. As of November 30, 2025, we are only about one year past the prediction date—far short of the specified window. Because the claim is about structural changes in business models and margins over a long period, it cannot yet be evaluated. There is no requirement in the quote that this transformation happen immediately; it explicitly allows up to ~2044 for the outcome. Therefore, it is too early to determine whether this prediction will be right or wrong, so the correct classification is inconclusive.

Chamath predicted that, over the coming years, there would be a significant downward reset or slowdown in AI‑related capex by large tech firms as current spending proves unsustainably high. As of late 2025, the observable data point the other way: forecasts and guidance still show rapidly rising AI and data‑center capex rather than a reset. Morgan Stanley in August 2025 projected global cloud capex to jump 56 percent year‑on‑year in 2025 to about $445 billion and then rise another 31 percent in 2026, driven largely by AI infrastructure. (deepnewz.com) Dell’Oro Group in 2025 raised its forecast for global data‑center capex to grow at a 21 percent CAGR to $1.2 trillion by 2029, explicitly citing AI GPUs and custom accelerators as the main growth driver. (datacenterdynamics.com) Citigroup now expects AI capex across hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet to reach about $490 billion by 2026 and total roughly $2.8 trillion by 2029, noting that firms are even borrowing to sustain this build‑out. (theoutpost.ai) Bank of America similarly sees AI capex at $414 billion in 2025 (up 44 percent year‑on‑year) and still increasing in 2026, with Google, Microsoft and Meta maintaining or raising their capex guidance rather than cutting it. (fastbull.com) Other analyses suggest AI capex could exceed half a trillion dollars in 2026 and remark that AI infrastructure spending shows no sign of cooling, as hyperscalers continue to expand data‑center capacity into the late 2020s. (fastbull.com) At the same time, some commentators already argue that 2025 might be a near‑term peak and that capex intensity is unlikely to remain far above historical norms indefinitely, implying a possible future pullback but not yet demonstrating one. (forbes.com) Because Chamath’s claim was framed over the coming years and the current evidence shows continued acceleration rather than a clear downward reset, it is too early to determine whether his prediction about an eventual capex reset will ultimately be right or wrong; it has not come true yet, but the time horizon has not fully played out.

By the cutoff date in the prediction—January 20, 2025, when the next U.S. president was sworn in—there was no widely recognized regional war directly pitting Israel and Iran against each other in a sustained, large‑scale campaign.

What did exist before that date was:

• The Gaza war and parallel fronts with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran‑aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, described collectively as a broader Middle Eastern crisis (2023–present), with multiple Iran‑backed groups attacking Israel and U.S. interests.(en.wikipedia.org)
• A series of direct but limited exchanges between Israel and Iran in 2024 (Iran’s April 13–14 drone/missile barrage and Israel’s limited April 19 strike; Iran’s large missile salvo on October 1; Israel’s October 26 strikes on Iranian targets). These are grouped in sources as the “2024 Iran–Israel conflict” and explicitly characterized as a prelude to a later Iran–Israel war, not that war itself.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Diplomatic statements in mid‑ to late‑2024 warning about the risk of a full‑scale regional war in the Middle East, which by implication had not yet occurred.(theguardian.com)
• On January 19, 2025, just before inauguration, a ceasefire and hostage‑prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas went into effect in Gaza, marking a pause rather than an expansion into a new, broader war.(en.wikipedia.org)

The kind of large, overt regional war involving both Israel and Iran directly, with multi‑country spillover—what most observers would call a true regional war—began later, with the Iran–Israel war of 2025, which started on June 13, 2025 after a massive surprise Israeli attack on Iranian territory, followed by extensive Iranian missile strikes and wider regional involvement.(en.wikipedia.org) This is several months after the January 20, 2025 deadline in the prediction.

Because the predicted regional war did not materialize by the specified date (even though something very similar did happen later in 2025), the prediction must be scored as wrong on timing, and thus wrong overall under a strict “by this date” standard.

Evidence shows a major escalation, but not clearly the kind of regional war Sacks seemed to be talking about, and his claim was probabilistic (≥50%), not categorical.

Key facts:

• Since October 2023, the Middle East has been in a multi‑theater “Middle Eastern crisis” involving Gaza, Lebanon/Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen/Houthis, Iraq‑based militias, and Iran–Israel tensions, with U.S. and U.K. military involvement and attacks across several countries.(en.wikipedia.org)
• In June 2025 there was a direct Iran–Israel war (“Twelve‑Day War”) with large Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, massive Iranian missile and drone barrages on Israel, and U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, plus an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Qatar.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Analyses of that conflict emphasize that, despite its intensity and the wider regional crisis, it “did not escalate into a broader regional war but remained geographically and operationally limited,” with Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others acting in constrained ways rather than triggering a full multi‑state regional war.(diplomatmagazine.eu)

Interpretation issues:

• Whether this amounts to the “regional war” Sacks feared is partly definitional: some might argue that simultaneous fighting involving Israel, Iran, U.S. forces, and Iran‑aligned groups across multiple countries is already de facto regional; others, including the cited analysts, explicitly say it stopped short of a broader regional war.
• His prediction was that the odds were “at least 50–50” that tensions would escalate to such a regional war in the “foreseeable future.” Because this is a probability estimate with a vague time horizon and an imprecise event definition, observing one world in which the conflict escalated heavily but was still widely described as not a full regional war does not let us cleanly judge the forecast as simply right or wrong.

Given the mixture of (1) substantial escalation including an Iran–Israel war, (2) credible expert characterizations that it did not become a true broader regional war, and (3) the inherently probabilistic, time‑fuzzy nature of the prediction, the outcome is best classified as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.