Break up Google, Starbucks CEO out, Kamala's price controls, Boeing disaster, Kursk offensive

As of November 30, 2025, the litigation and appeals Chamath was talking about are still ongoing, so his statement about the probability over the full course of the case and its appeals cannot yet be definitively judged.

Key facts:

1. Search‑monopoly case (United States v. Google LLC, filed 2020). Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August 2024 that Google is an illegal monopolist in general search and search advertising. (en.wikipedia.org) On September 2, 2025, he issued a remedies decision that rejected the Department of Justice’s requests for "radical structural" remedies such as divesting Chrome or Android, instead imposing behavioral and data‑sharing remedies and banning certain exclusive distribution deals. (washingtonpost.com) This means no court‑ordered breakup has occurred in the search case so far. However, Google has indicated it will appeal both the liability and remedies rulings, and commentators expect the appeals to run into 2027–2028. (forbes.com)

2. Ad‑tech monopolization case. In a separate DOJ case over Google’s advertising technology, Judge Leonie Brinkema found in April 2025 that Google illegally monopolized key ad‑tech markets. (androidcentral.com) The DOJ is actively seeking structural relief there (forced divestiture of parts of Google’s ad‑tech stack), but as of late November 2025, the remedies phase is still pending and no breakup order has been issued. (androidcentral.com)

3. Courts’ stance on breakups. In the search case, Mehta explicitly declined structural divestiture, citing the high burden for such a remedy and courts’ traditional reluctance to order breakups under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. (washingtonpost.com) Other coverage and experts likewise describe a full breakup of Google as unlikely, though not impossible. (theguardian.com)

Putting this together:

• Chamath’s claim was not simply “Google won’t be broken up,” but that the probability of a court‑mandated breakup would remain in the single digits over the entire life of the case and appeals.
• The relevant proceedings (especially appeals, and the ad‑tech remedies phase) have not yet run their course, and a structural breakup—while clearly disfavored so far—remains legally possible in future appeals or in the ad‑tech case.

Because the time window he specified (“over the course of the current DOJ antitrust case and its appeals”) has not finished, and no final resolution foreclosing a breakup has yet been reached, we can’t say whether his low‑probability assessment ultimately proves right or wrong. At this point, the prediction is directionally consistent with current judicial outcomes (no breakup ordered and courts skeptical of structural relief), but it has not yet resolved, so the fairest scoring is “inconclusive (too early).”

As of November 30, 2025, Apple has not launched its own general‑purpose web search engine that directly competes with Google Search or is offered as a default/primary search option on Apple devices.

Evidence:

• Safari on iOS still defaults to Google Search, with users able to switch only among third‑party engines such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo Japan, and Ecosia; no Apple‑branded search engine appears in the list, even in new choice‑screen flows like those added in Japan with iOS 26.2. (macrumors.com)
• In late 2024 court filings tied to the U.S. DOJ’s antitrust case against Google, Apple executives (notably Eddy Cue) explicitly stated that Apple does not plan to build a search engine to rival Google, emphasizing the revenue and practical reasons for continuing the Google default‑search deal. (theverge.com)
• Reporting through 2024–2025 describes Apple working on search technology and AI features (Applebot, Spotlight, Siri enhancements), but notes that a full Google‑replacement web search engine remains years away and, per Apple’s own representations, is not an announced product. (macrumors.com)
• Recent rumors of an AI‑powered system called “World Knowledge Answers” indicate a planned answer engine or AI search feature integrated into Siri, potentially launching in 2026 and possibly even powered by Google’s Gemini models. This is framed as an AI assistant/answer layer, not as an independent, Apple‑branded web search engine comparable to google.com or as a new default search provider in Safari. (theverge.com)

Because Jason’s prediction was open‑ended in time ("going to launch their own search engine" / "at some point in the future") and no explicit deadline was given, it cannot yet be judged definitively wrong; Apple could still launch such a product later. At the same time, it has clearly not yet come true by the current date. Therefore, the correct status is inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than right or wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, it’s too early to definitively judge a prediction framed as happening “in the very near future” and normalized as within a few years of August 2024.

Evidence so far:

• Sweetgreen has clearly moved toward substantial in-store automation. Its “Infinite Kitchen” robotic makeline is being rolled out aggressively: 12 locations were operating by the end of 2024, with plans to dedicate roughly half of 2025 new builds to this format and expand to around 33+ automated stores, citing large labor and margin advantages.(convenience.org) A November 2025 report notes about 20 Infinite Kitchen units in operation and a plan for 10 more by year-end, reinforcing that automation is a core part of Sweetgreen’s strategy to cut labor and improve unit economics.(restauranttechnologynews.com)
• Across quick‑service and fast‑casual broadly, more chains are experimenting with robotics, kiosks, and AI-driven tools (e.g., Chipotle’s automated bowl/salad lines and avocado-prep robots), largely to address labor costs and productivity.(barrons.com) This supports the direction of the prediction at an industry level.
• Starbucks, however, has recently pulled back on its major automation push. The company is scaling down the rollout of its Siren equipment system and instead increasing staffing, with CEO Brian Niccol explicitly acknowledging that earlier assumptions about equipment replacing labor did not pan out. The Siren system is now being reserved for a relatively small set of high‑volume stores, and the company is leaning into a “staffing‑first” model to improve the customer experience.(reuters.com) This runs against the idea that Starbucks itself will heavily automate in the near term specifically to cut labor and real‑estate costs.

Why the verdict is ‘inconclusive’:

• The prediction’s horizon is “within a few years of August 2024.” As of late 2025, only about a year and a quarter has elapsed, so the full time window has not passed.
• Some core examples (Sweetgreen and several peers) are clearly moving toward more robotics and automation in line with the claim, while Starbucks—the other named example—is moving in the opposite direction, at least for now.

Given that the relevant time period is still in progress and the evidence is mixed (strong confirmation at some chains, active retrenchment at Starbucks), the fairest assessment at this point is that the prediction’s ultimate accuracy is not yet knowable, hence “inconclusive.”

As of November 30, 2025, Brian Niccol has been Starbucks CEO since September 9, 2024, so we are only a bit over one year into his tenure, within a loosely defined "first couple of years" window. (about.starbucks.com) Under Niccol, Starbucks has expanded use of AI tools like Green Dot Assist in about 35 pilot stores, plus "Smart Queue" and an AI-driven inventory-counting system, but these are software assistants layered on top of normal barista work, not robot-heavy or visibly highly automated drink-prep stores. (businessinsider.com) Starbucks’ main in-store automation platform, the Siren Craft System, was developed and rolled out broadly before Niccol arrived, and since he took over the company has publicly said it is scaling back reliance on automation, slowing or limiting Siren’s deployment and instead hiring thousands of additional baristas and reversing prior labor-cutting moves. (about.starbucks.com) Niccol and company representatives have repeatedly emphasized that Starbucks is “not near” any fully robotic staff model and that the goal is to bring more human partners back into stores, while the announced "coffeehouse of the future" prototypes scheduled to open in fiscal 2026 are described in terms of ambiance, seating, and lower build cost rather than as heavily automated or robotic cafes. (people.com) I could not find evidence that Starbucks has opened any experimental stores under Niccol that are noticeably more automated than typical locations in the sense of using robots or heavy automation for drink/food preparation; however, because the predicted time window extends roughly through the first two years of his tenure (into late 2026) and those future prototypes have not yet opened, it is still too early to say definitively that such stores will not appear. Therefore, the prediction is currently inconclusive (too early to judge).

Brian Niccol was named Starbucks chairman and CEO on 13 August 2024 and started in the role on 9 September 2024, so his first year runs through early September 2025. (about.starbucks.com) In October 2024, shortly after taking over, he publicly said Starbucks needed to simplify its overly complex menu as part of a turnaround. (theguardian.com) On the Q1 FY2025 earnings call in late January 2025 (about four months into his tenure), he announced a Back to Starbucks plan that included cutting roughly 30% of Starbucks food and beverage items and reducing customization complexity in order to streamline operations and focus on fewer, better offerings. (nypost.com) Subsequent coverage noted that trimming around 30% of the menu was a central plank of his strategy and was already being implemented within his first six months. (cnbc.com) By February–March 2025, Starbucks had begun removing specific items (such as 13 low-performing drinks effective 4 March 2025) under this initiative, a clear reduction in menu breadth and complexity well before September 2025. (nypost.com) Because these concrete menu simplifications occurred within Niccol’s first year as CEO, the prediction that his early tenure would feature a reduction in Starbucks menu complexity is borne out.

The prediction explicitly used a decade‑scale horizon (“over time… within the next decade or so”), made in August 2024. As of November 30, 2025, only about a year has passed, so the time window for judging it has not elapsed.

Current evidence shows increasing automation and AI assistance at chains like Starbucks and McDonald’s, but not the large‑scale elimination of in‑store roles Jason described:

• Starbucks is rolling out “Green Dot Assist,” a generative‑AI assistant meant to help baristas with recipes, troubleshooting, and workflow, with a broad rollout planned for fiscal 2026. Company messaging repeatedly frames this as making baristas’ jobs easier, not as replacing them, and CEO Brian Niccol has publicly said the goal is to assist workers, not substitute them with robots.【2search0】【2search1】【2news13】
• Starbucks has also paused a broader hardware‑automation program (the Siren Craft system) and shifted toward a “people‑first” scheduling and staffing strategy, emphasizing better use of human labor rather than removing it.【1search5】
• McDonald’s is investing heavily in AI and connected equipment (drive‑through tools, predictive maintenance, manager dashboards) to improve speed and reduce stress on staff, but these are positioned as tools that support existing crews.【1search3】【1search4】 The company even ended a specific AI drive‑thru ordering trial with IBM after mixed results, while still exploring future AI solutions.【1search0】【1search1】

Net: automation and AI are expanding, but cashiers, cooks, and baristas remain central in these chains today. Because Jason’s claim is about what will happen over roughly 10 years and we are only ~10–15% into that period, it is too early to determine whether his strong version (“cashiers will be gone, the cooks will be gone, and eventually the baristas will be gone”) will ultimately prove right or wrong.

It’s too early to definitively judge this prediction against its own time horizon.

• The claim was about “the next few years” from August 2024. In ordinary language that implies at least ~2–3 years. As of November 30, 2025, only about 15 months have passed, so the stated period has not elapsed.
• Current data, however, do not match the scenario described. For U.S. remote‑capable (knowledge‑type) jobs in early–mid 2025, about 52% are hybrid, 27–28% fully remote, and only ~20–21% fully on‑site, meaning most such employees still have at least some remote work rather than being primarily office‑based. (greatplacetowork.com)
• Surveys of employers show rising in‑office expectations, but nowhere near “80%+” of knowledge workers mandated back full‑time. One large 2025 summary finds around 22% of companies fully in‑office, with another ~5% planning to be, and about 40% of workers saying they’re required in the office five days a week—substantial, but still far from near‑universal full‑time office mandates. (forbes.com)
• Looking ahead, forecasts suggest only about 30% of companies plan to require five days in the office by 2026, while 88% of employers offer some hybrid option, and surveys still show hybrid as the dominant long‑term model for remote‑capable roles. (secondtalent.com)
• A Stanford / Atlanta Fed survey in 2025 reports that only 12% of executives with hybrid/remote staff plan new full return‑to‑office mandates in the next year, implying most employers expect to maintain hybrid or remote arrangements rather than forcing almost everyone back. (news.stanford.edu)

So as of late 2025, the prediction is not currently borne out by the data and appears to be trending wrong, but because the predictor explicitly referenced a multi‑year horizon that has not yet passed, the status is best classified as "inconclusive (too early)" rather than definitively wrong.

Evidence from the 2024 campaign shows that Kamala Harris did, in fact, move into exactly the pattern Sacks described: mainstream interviews plus more detailed economic policy roll‑outs well before mid‑November 2024.

Mainstream media interviews (post–"hide" phase):

• Aug. 29, 2024: Harris and Tim Walz did a 27‑minute primetime CNN joint interview, her first major national TV interview as the new nominee.(reuters.com)
• Sept. 25, 2024: She did her first solo one‑on‑one network interview as nominee with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, focused heavily on her economic agenda (“opportunity economy”), housing and tax policy.(theguardian.com)
• Oct. 7, 2024: A full "60 Minutes" election interview aired on CBS, where she discussed the economy, immigration, and contrasts with Trump.(people.com)
• Oct. 16, 2024: She sat for a contentious Fox News interview with Bret Baier, her first appearance on that network.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Late campaign: AP reported a "media blitz" including The View, Howard Stern, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in addition to earlier 60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper interviews.(apnews.com) Analyses still described her as doing fewer interviews than past nominees, but they also note she "stepped up" interviews in the final weeks.(businessinsider.com)

Substantive economic policy proposals:

• From late August onward, Harris rolled out detailed economic planks: an expanded Child Tax Credit (including a $6,000 newborn credit), a large housing plan with down‑payment support and construction incentives, and a ten‑fold expansion of the small‑business startup deduction.(abc17news.com)
• In early September she broke with Biden on capital‑gains rates, laid out specific tax changes (corporate rate to 28%, 28% top capital‑gains rate, 25% minimum tax on ultra‑wealthy), and packaged these into an "opportunity economy" agenda in a high‑profile Pittsburgh speech.(theguardian.com)

All of this occurred in September–October 2024—well within three months of the Aug. 16 podcast and well before the Nov. 5 election—matching Sacks’s forecast that Harris would not be able to "run out the clock" without doing mainstream interviews and issuing more substantive economic policy proposals.

Sacks argued that Kamala Harris’s August 2024 polling “sugar high” would end once she released substantive policy proposals—specifically including measures like grocery price controls—triggering a significant correction downward in her standing vs. Donald Trump before November.

1. Timing and nature of the policy proposals
Harris did, in fact, roll out economic proposals in August 2024, including a call for a federal ban on corporate “price gouging” on groceries and an expanded child tax credit. These were framed as tools to lower grocery prices and were widely covered as part of her August economic agenda. (amp.cnn.com) This matches the kind of grocery price‑control proposal Sacks was referring to.

2. What happened to her polls after the proposals
Available polling and averages do not show a large, sustained downturn in Harris’s relative standing vs. Trump following the August rollout:

• A compiled table of national polling for 2024 shows that in August, Harris and Trump were roughly tied nationally (both around 47–48%). In September, Harris’s position improved, with averages showing her about 1–3 points ahead of Trump (e.g., Harris 48–49% vs. Trump 46–47%), not worse. In October, the race tightened back to roughly even, but not to a clear or durable Trump lead. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Individual poll and model snapshots in mid‑September—after the economic proposals—show Harris still gaining or holding a lead. For example, a Newsmax summary of Nate Silver’s model and RealClearPolitics averages around Sept. 16–17 had Harris leading Trump nationally by about 2 points (FiveThirtyEight: ~48.5–46.3; RCP: ~49.1–47.3), and a large Morning Consult poll at that time showed Harris +6 (51–45). (newsmax.com) This is opposite of an immediate “big correction” down.

3. Position just before Election Day
By late October and the final week before the election, national polls and aggregators still showed an extremely close race with Harris generally a hair ahead, not in a clearly corrected slump:

• A Guardian analysis of national polling averages found that throughout October 2024, Harris polled about 1–2 points above Trump, with the gap narrowing to about 1 point by Oct. 31. (theguardian.com)
• On the day before the election, a Yahoo News summary of three major aggregators (Silver Bulletin, FiveThirtyEight, New York Times) showed Harris leading Trump nationally by about 0.5–1 point in each average—still a small Harris edge, not a Trump lead. (yahoo.com)
• The Wikipedia compilation of late‑October polls lists many high‑quality national surveys with Harris at roughly 49–51% and Trump at roughly 46–49%, again indicating a neck‑and‑neck race with Harris often marginally ahead, not a large correction against her. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Final outcome vs. pre‑election “correction” story
In the actual result, Trump won the popular vote by about 49.8% to 48.3% (roughly Trump +1.5), while final national polls generally had Harris at about 48–49% and Trump around 47–48%. (en.wikipedia.org) Post‑election analyses emphasized that polls underestimated Trump’s support, as in prior cycles, rather than documenting a major pre‑election plunge in Harris’s standing triggered by her August policy rollout. (politico.com)

Putting this together:

• Harris did enjoy an August surge.
• She did release grocery price‑gouging/price‑control‑style proposals in August.
• But after those proposals, her polling relative to Trump mostly held or improved through September, and by late October she still had a tiny lead in most national aggregates. There is no evidence of the large, proposal‑driven “big correction” in polling that Sacks forecast; instead, the race gradually tightened and then the polls slightly missed in Trump’s favor.

Because the central claim—that the rollout of those policy proposals would mark the start of a significant pre‑election decline in Harris’s relative polling vs. Trump—did not materialize in the polling data, this prediction is best classified as wrong.

Sacks predicted that within about three months of Aug. 16, 2024, Kamala Harris would not be able to keep running a “vibes only,” low‑interview, low‑substance campaign as a seeming moderate, because her more progressive policy views would become clear to voters.

There is evidence supporting his view that her progressive policy orientation became more visible:

• In mid‑August and September 2024, the Harris campaign rolled out an “Agenda to Lower Costs for American Families” and a broader economic plan (“A New Way Forward for the Middle Class”) featuring a federal ban on grocery price gouging, large expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, substantial new housing subsidies, and other redistributive measures—policies widely covered in mainstream and specialist outlets and generally characterized as aggressive, interventionist economics. (democracyinaction.us)
• Fact‑checking and analysis pieces treated the price‑gouging ban as a central plank of her campaign, noting that her ads referencing it ran at scale, and economic commentators across the spectrum debated whether it amounted to de facto price controls. (factcheck.org)
• The Dispatch, which closely tracked her platform, described these domestic proposals as “very progressive” while noting that she projected a surface image of moderation and normalcy. (thedispatch.com)
• Polling in early September 2024 (NYT/Siena, Marist and others) found a plurality of voters saying Harris was “too liberal or progressive”, with roughly 44–48% labeling her too liberal and around 41–43% saying she was “about right.” (newsmax.com) This suggests that many voters did see her as left‑of‑center ideologically, not as a centrist.

But there is also strong evidence against his claim that she would be forced to abandon a vibes‑heavy, low‑interview, low‑detail strategy:

• Through September and into October 2024, reporters and analysts repeatedly noted that Harris had done very few sit‑down interviews, no press conferences, and tightly choreographed appearances. An ECFR “Letter from Washington” described her as “almost allergic to policy specifics,” running a “vibes” campaign with only one network interview and no pressers, and speeches “heavy on mood and light on policy.” (ecfr.eu)
• Media reports and commentary during the campaign (e.g., Daily Caller, Free Beacon, and others summarizing Politico/CNN reporting) criticized the Harris–Walz operation for a “basement” or low‑exposure strategy, saying both candidates were kept on a very limited interview diet and that this backfired at the debate. (dailycaller.com)
• Post‑election insider accounts and donor grumbling in early 2025 likewise faulted her for being extremely risk‑averse and doing too few interviews, saying “there was nothing to peel the onion back for people.” (pagesix.com) Even Donald Trump’s later “advice” to her—that she needed to start giving interviews—explicitly framed her 2024 campaign as unusually guarded with the press. (nypost.com)
• Broader campaign analyses (e.g., the Boston Globe and ECFR) described the overall 2024 race as driven by emotions and “vibes,” with neither Trump nor Harris offering a fully fleshed‑out policy program, reinforcing that her public image never moved far from a vibes‑heavy approach. (bostonglobe.com)

Putting this together:

• Harris did not really abandon the low‑interview, carefully stage‑managed, rhetoric‑heavy style Sacks was criticizing; contemporaneous coverage and later postmortems agree that she stuck with a vibes‑forward, low‑risk media strategy through Election Day.
• At the same time, she did put forward a set of clearly progressive economic proposals (price‑gouging ban, large child‑benefit expansions, housing subsidies, etc.) that were widely reported and debated, and polling shows many voters saw her as “too liberal or progressive.”

Because the prediction mixes several subjective elements—how “vibes‑only” the campaign remained, how “moderate” she looked, and how “clear” her progressive positions became to the public—and the empirical record cuts both ways, reasonable observers could plausibly argue that Sacks was either vindicated (on ideological visibility) or refuted (on the sustainability of a vibes‑heavy, low‑interview strategy). For that reason, the outcome is best categorized as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Donald Trump won the November 5, 2024 U.S. presidential election over Kamala Harris, 312–226 in the Electoral College and by about 1.5 points in the popular vote, so the actual outcome was a Trump, not Harris, victory.(en.wikipedia.org)(cfr.org)

However, Jason’s prediction was conditional and uses vague criteria:

1. Trump clause: He said Trump "has a chance of winning if he" adopts a more presidential, non‑bullying, issues‑focused "Trump 2.0" style. In reality, multiple analyses find that Trump’s 2024 rhetoric became more combative and violent over time, with heightened use of dehumanizing and fear‑based language on immigration and culture‑war themes, and voters widely saw him as personally too critical of his opponent.(calonews.com)(en.wikipedia.org)(washingtonpost.com)(pewresearch.org) Since the condition (a notably more restrained, non‑bullying style) did not clearly occur, his conditional statement about that scenario can’t really be tested—yet it’s also extremely weak (“has a chance”), which would be hard to falsify even if it had occurred.

2. Harris clause: He added, “If Kamala goes moderate, I think she’s going to win.” Here both the condition and the outcome are problematic to evaluate. Some coverage described Harris as making an intentional “shift to the center” or running a fairly centrist, reassurance‑oriented campaign, especially on economics and immigration, and highlighted her outreach to figures like Liz Cheney.(thedispatch.com)(axios.com)(indiatoday.in) Other reporting and academic analysis emphasized that she never made “obvious moves to the center,” continued to foreground progressive themes (democracy, social justice, systemic reform), and that Republicans successfully portrayed her as more liberal than she claimed, leaving many voters unsure she was truly moderate.(washingtonpost.com)(frontiersin.org)(liberalpatriot.com) Because reasonable analysts disagree about whether she genuinely “went moderate” in the sense Jason appears to mean, it’s unclear whether his condition was ever met; we only know that the predicted outcome (her winning) did not happen.

Since:

• the Trump clause hinges on a style shift that clearly did not occur and only claimed he would then “have a chance” (a nearly unfalsifiable statement), and
• the Harris clause depends on a contested, degree‑based notion of whether she “went moderate” at all,

we cannot cleanly map any realized scenario to the specific if‑then branches Jason described. The election result is known, but the conditions in his prediction are too vague and disputed to say the prediction as stated was definitively right or wrong.

Conclusion: The prediction’s truth value is ambiguous rather than clearly correct or incorrect.

As of 30 November 2025, Ukraine has not experienced the kind of overall military or state collapse that Sacks predicted for “probably next year” (i.e., 2025). The Ukrainian state and armed forces remain intact and are still conducting defensive and limited offensive operations along an ~800‑mile front, including around Kupiansk and Pokrovsk, despite heavy pressure and serious manpower shortages.

For example, late‑November reporting notes that Ukrainian forces continue to defend Kupiansk and conduct operations against Russian troops there, contradicting Russian claims of full control. Ukrainian units are also still contesting Russian advances around Pokrovsk and reinforcing other sectors such as Zaporizhzhia, indicating a strained but functioning defense rather than systemic collapse. (reuters.com)

Major analyses of the 2025 campaign likewise describe Russia achieving incremental territorial gains at high cost, not a decisive breakdown of Ukrainian lines. A late‑November Washington Post assessment explicitly states that Russia’s leadership had bet on a collapse of Ukrainian defenses along the front, but that this collapse had not occurred as of late 2025. (washingtonpost.com) Other reporting similarly portrays Russia fighting for limited blocks of small towns over many months, rather than exploiting any large‑scale Ukrainian rout. (businessinsider.com)

Regarding the Kursk offensive, subsequent analysis does support part of Sacks’s concern: the cross‑border incursion is widely judged to have been strategically costly for Ukraine, tying down elite units in Kursk while Ukraine faced acute manpower shortages on other fronts, and contributing to Russian gains and increased risk of local front collapse in eastern Ukraine. (en.wikipedia.org) However, even critical analysts frame this as worsening Ukraine’s position and raising the risk of collapse, not as having already produced the nationwide military collapse Sacks forecast.

Because Sacks’s prediction was time‑bounded to “probably next year” and 2025 is not yet over on the evaluation date (30 November 2025), it is too early to say with certainty that a collapse will not occur by the end of the year. At the same time, existing evidence up to late November shows no Ukrainian military collapse despite severe strain. Given that the deadline he named (the end of 2025) has not fully elapsed, the fairest classification under your schema is “inconclusive (too early)”: the prediction has clearly not come true so far, but the full time window he specified has not yet closed.

Public reporting shows that Russia did not fully “mop up” or expel the Ukrainian incursion force from Russia’s Kursk region within roughly a year, and that Ukraine still maintains a (small) foothold there even now.

Key points:

• Ukraine launched its Kursk offensive on 6 August 2024, seizing over 1,000–1,300 km² of Russian territory and dozens of settlements, including the town of Sudzha. (en.wikipedia.org)
• By November 2024, Ukraine had lost more than 40% of the territory it had initially seized, and by 12 March 2025 Russia had retaken Sudzha and much of the Ukrainian-held area, significantly shrinking the bridgehead. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Reuters in March 2025 reported Russia was nearing complete expulsion of Ukrainian troops and that Ukraine’s foothold had dwindled to <81 km², but even then it was not entirely eliminated. (reuters.com)
• On 22 June 2025 (about ten months after the incursion started and within the “roughly a year” window), Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told the BBC that Ukrainian forces were still holding about 90 km² of territory in the Kursk region despite about 10,000 Russian troops trying to dislodge them. (feeds.bbci.co.uk)
• On 6 August 2025, at the one‑year anniversary of the operation, Ukrainian command again stated that their forces continued to hold positions in the Glushkivskyi district of Russia’s Kursk region. (mezha.net)
• Subsequent reporting and analysis (ISW‑summarized in the Kursk campaign article, and Ukrainian/Ukrinform statements) confirms that as of late 2025 Ukraine still maintains some positions on Russian territory in the Kursk sector. (en.wikipedia.org)

It is true that Ukraine has suffered heavy losses and has been pushed back from most of the territory it initially seized; several analysts describe the Kursk operation as costly and, in strategic terms, at least a partial failure. (en.wikipedia.org) But Sacks’s specific prediction was that Russia would essentially wipe out the Kursk bridgehead over time—“mop them up”—rather than allow a durable foothold.

Given that Ukrainian forces still hold a small but persistent pocket of territory inside Russia more than a year after the offensive began, the core of that prediction (complete defeat/forced withdrawal within roughly a year, no lasting foothold in Russia) has not come true.

Therefore, the prediction is best judged as wrong.