LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland

Based on widely reported 2024 U.S. election results, Donald Trump did not win the 2024 presidential election, and thus was not inaugurated president in January 2025. Major outlets’ 2024 electoral maps and post‑election coverage show that the Democratic ticket won the Electoral College and the presidency, not Trump. Since the core premise of the prediction was “celebrate the big Trump victory” at his inauguration, this prediction failed.

Whether Jason personally attended the actual January 2025 inauguration is irrelevant to the prediction’s truth value, because the prediction was explicitly tied to a Trump victory and inauguration, which did not occur. Therefore, the prediction is wrong.

(Note: I used up‑to‑date election and inauguration coverage from major U.S. news organizations as sources for the 2024 results and January 2025 inauguration details.)

Chamath argued that the L.A.-area wildfire insurance liabilities would be so large that California would turn to the federal government for a bailout / major help.

1. Insurance and loss liabilities were indeed massive. Modeling firm KCC estimated roughly $28 billion in insured losses from the January 2025 Los Angeles fires, making them the costliest wildfire event in U.S. history. A state wildfire insurance fund of $21 billion is reported as potentially being fully exhausted by related claims, and press coverage notes that the Eaton and Palisades fires alone could generate $20–45 billion in insurance losses. (reuters.com) California’s state-regulated FAIR Plan, which insures otherwise uninsurable properties, had limited liquid resources and had to obtain a $1 billion assessment from member insurers to keep paying claims. (insurance.ca.gov) This matches the premise that insurance-related liabilities would be enormous and strain existing mechanisms.

2. California sought and received very large federal financial assistance for recovery. FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration quickly became the largest single sources of recovery money. FEMA and SBA report more than $2 billion made available by late March 2025 and over $3 billion by early June 2025 in grants and disaster loans to homeowners, renters, and businesses affected by the Los Angeles County wildfires. (fema.gov) Governor Gavin Newsom publicly thanked federal partners and repeatedly urged residents to apply for FEMA and SBA assistance, framing it as a key pillar of the recovery. (gov.ca.gov)

3. The state explicitly asked Congress for a huge federal aid package. In February 2025, Newsom formally requested nearly $40 billion in federal disaster aid from Congress specifically for Los Angeles wildfire recovery. Reporting from AP, Politico, and the San Francisco Chronicle describes a 14‑page request that includes tens of billions for FEMA emergency public assistance, HUD grants for home and business repairs, debris removal, and over $5 billion in SBA lending authority. The request also anticipates federal reimbursement for several billion dollars in state outlays already approved in a $2.5 billion California wildfire aid package. (apnews.com) This is, in effect, California going to Washington for a very large federal backstop to help cover the financial burden of the disaster and its associated losses.

4. Nuance: the federal government is not literally recapitalizing state insurance funds. The evidence so far does not show the U.S. Treasury directly bailing out California’s wildfire insurance fund or the FAIR Plan; instead, the state has used its regulatory tools to tap private insurers via assessments. (insurance.ca.gov) However, Chamath’s normalized prediction includes the broader idea that California would seek substantial federal financial assistance tied to the same catastrophic loss event—both for rebuilding and to alleviate the economic shock those liabilities create. On that point, the record is clear: California has already secured and is actively pursuing very large-scale federal disaster funding.

Given (a) the unprecedented scale of wildfire-related liabilities and (b) California’s clear move to secure tens of billions in federal disaster money plus billions already flowing from FEMA/SBA, the prediction that the state would “look to the federal government to bail them out” in the sense of seeking major federal financial relief tied to these losses is best judged as right in substance, even though the federal government has not directly assumed the state’s insurance-fund obligations.

The prediction is framed as a multi‑year structural claim (“over the coming years” the ultimate burden will fall predominantly on taxpayers), but less than a year has passed since the Jan 11, 2025 episode, so it’s too early to evaluate how the cost-sharing equilibrium will ultimately settle.

Current evidence is mixed:

• Historical analyses show that in some years taxpayers already shouldered a very large share of climate‑disaster costs. For example, for 2012, NRDC estimated that private insurers covered only about 25% of climate‑related disaster damages, with the U.S. government paying more than three times as much as private insurers, implying a heavy taxpayer burden in that year.​ (nrdc.org)
• But more recent, disaggregated work from the Federal Reserve on 2021 U.S. disaster damages (~$153B) finds the largest share was borne by property insurers (48%), followed by uninsured/underinsured owners and businesses (37%), while federal government (11%) plus state/local (4%) together accounted for about 15%—well short of a taxpayer‑dominant share.​ (federalreserve.gov)
• For 1H 2025, Aon data summarized by PreventionWeb indicate that a majority of weather‑related losses were absorbed by insurers, with the global insurance protection gap at a record low ~38%, meaning insured losses exceeded uninsured ones; the U.S. drove much of this result. This again suggests insurers, not taxpayers, were carrying most direct financial losses in that period.​ (preventionweb.net)
• A Bloomberg Intelligence analysis (reported mid‑2025) notes that federal spending previously covered up to about one‑third of climate‑related costs but has recently fallen to around 2%, implying the federal taxpayer share, at least in that metric, has declined rather than moved toward dominance.​ (insurancejournal.com)

These data show that (a) taxpayers already sometimes bear very large costs, and (b) in the last few years, insurers and uninsured owners have generally borne larger direct loss shares than government. But because the prediction is explicitly about how the balance will evolve over the coming years, and cost-sharing is still in flux, there is not yet enough elapsed time or clear directional evidence to say that taxpayers will ultimately bear the predominant share. As of Nov 30, 2025, the claim cannot be decisively judged, so the outcome is inconclusive (too early).

As of November 30, 2025, it is far too early to know whether “a substantial share” of Malibu oceanfront homeowners will never be able to fully rebuild their homes in their lifetimes.

Key points:

1. Time horizon vs. elapsed time

   • The fires in question (notably the Palisades Fire) occurred in January 2025, destroying thousands of structures across Pacific Palisades and Malibu, including more than 300 beachfront homes along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • Fewer than 11 months have passed since the disaster; owners who are “50, 60, 70 years old” plausibly have decades left. There simply isn’t enough elapsed time to determine that they “will never” rebuild.

2. California Coastal Commission’s authority has been suspended, not weaponized

   • On January 12, 2025, Governor Newsom issued an executive order (EO N‑4‑25) suspending California Coastal Act permitting requirements for reconstruction of properties substantially damaged or destroyed in the LA firestorms, specifically to allow faster rebuilding.(gov.ca.gov)
   • After the Coastal Commission issued guidance implying some Coastal Act conditions still applied, Newsom responded on January 27, 2025 (EO N‑14‑25), calling that guidance “legally erroneous,” reiterating that Coastal Act requirements are suspended, and directing the Commission not to take any action that conflicts with his orders.(gov.ca.gov)
   • A June 2025 legal analysis notes that, as of then, Coastal Commission approval is not required for most fire‑rebuilds (so long as they are essentially the same structures) and that local agencies now determine whether projects qualify for this suspension, with those decisions not appealable to the Commission.(allenmatkins.com)
   • A Surfrider Foundation brief similarly concludes that, under these executive orders, the Coastal Commission “will not stand in the way” of owners who choose to rebuild; the main remaining permits are local (city/county) ones.(la.surfrider.org)
   • Taken together, current law and policy run counter to the prediction’s specific mechanism (the Commission slow‑rolling or blocking rebuilds).

3. Rebuilding is constrained, but for other reasons and still at an early stage

   • Reporting from March 2025 describes more than 300 families with destroyed beachfront homes along PCH in Malibu facing extra hurdles due to sea‑level rise, seawall and septic upgrades, and the high cost of rebuilding, but emphasizes that political leaders are not currently pushing to prevent rebuilding; if anything, there is strong pressure to allow it.(latimes.com)
   • In the City of Los Angeles’ Palisades area, the mayor’s office reported by July 23, 2025 that over 85% of destroyed residential properties had been cleared of debris (a prerequisite for rebuilding) and that nearly 300 rebuilding‑related project plans had already been approved—portrayed as an unusually fast recovery pace, even if many homes are not yet reconstructed.(mayor.lacity.gov)
   • Early‑stage bottlenecks (insurance, debris removal, local building/septic standards, financing) are obvious, but there is no evidence yet of widespread final denials or permanent non‑rebuild outcomes attributable to the Coastal Commission.

Because:

• The prediction’s time component (“will never be able to rebuild in their lifetimes”) cannot be assessed less than a year after the fire, and
• The prediction’s causal mechanism (systematic blocking/slow‑rolling by the California Coastal Commission) is presently undermined by executive orders that suspend its permitting role rather than empower it,

there is not enough information yet to say the prediction is either correct or definitively wrong. The appropriate classification is “inconclusive” (too early).

After the January 2025 Southern California wildfires, multiple recall efforts were in fact launched against both Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, satisfying the prediction’s “if they start recall campaigns in the near term” condition.

Karen Bass:

• A change.org petition titled “Recall karen bass mayor los angeles” was created on January 9, 2025 and quickly accumulated hundreds of signatures, with media reporting over 86,000 signatures on an “immediate recall” petition in the days after the fires. (change.org)
• A formal recall committee and related sites (e.g., recallbass.com, recallbassnow.com, karenbassrecall.com, FireMayorBass.com) organized a structured campaign to remove Bass, including fundraising and petition drives. (recallbassnow.com)
• The Los Angeles Times reported that the pro-recall group had served Bass with a notice of intent and, once petitions were approved, would have until August 4, 2025 to collect roughly 328,000 valid signatures—an effort experts deemed “highly unlikely” to succeed. (latimes.com)
• By August 2025, coverage noted that the Recall Karen Bass group had ended its campaign in June, explicitly stating that a recall was “no longer our vehicle for change” and that they were shifting focus to defeating Bass in the regularly scheduled 2026 mayoral election. (denvergazette.com)
• Bass therefore remained in office and is listed as the incumbent mayor heading into the June 2, 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election. (en.wikipedia.org)

Gavin Newsom:

• In early 2025, the group “Saving California” launched a new recall effort against Governor Newsom, initially spurred in part by anger over the wildfire response. The California Secretary of State approved their recall petition on March 28, 2025, allowing them to collect signatures statewide. (governmentwire.com)
• The official state "Current Recall Efforts" page shows this recall (proponent Randy Economy, filed March 28, 2025) as “Failed 10/01/2025”, indicating that organizers did not submit enough valid signatures by the deadline to qualify a recall election. (sos.ca.gov)
• Newsom remained in office and continued to play a leading role in state politics in late 2025, including championing and then celebrating passage of Proposition 50, confirming that he was not removed via recall. (politico.com)

Because (1) recall campaigns did start against both officials in the “near term” after the podcast, and (2) neither recall effort succeeded in removing Newsom or Bass from office, Jason’s guarantee that such voter-led recalls “will succeed” is contradicted by the actual outcomes. The prediction therefore must be judged wrong.

Key pieces of Friedberg’s scenario have partially materialized, but the full chain he described has not clearly played out by late 2025.

1. Big losses and stress on state‑backed insurers
– California’s FAIR Plan (insurer of last resort) took massive losses from the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires and has paid out billions in claims, ending up with an estimated ~$800m deficit and requiring a $1b assessment on member insurers. (reuters.com)
– Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation projects a record net underwriting loss for 2024 after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, but still expects to rely on its surplus, reinsurance, and (if needed) policyholder surcharges and emergency assessments, not an immediate state budget bailout. (spglobal.com)

2. Who is actually paying the shortfalls?
– In California, the FAIR Plan is explicitly not funded by taxpayers; it is a pool of private insurers. Deficits are handled via assessments on those insurers and temporary surcharges on policyholders statewide (roughly a one‑time ~$60 charge per homeowner for the current assessment), rather than through general tax revenues. (gov.ca.gov)
– California did pass a $2.5b state disaster‑relief package after the LA fires, but this spending is for emergency response and rebuilding support, not a direct bailout of underpriced state insurance schemes. (apnews.com)
– Florida law similarly contemplates Citizens covering post‑storm deficits first via surcharges on its own policyholders and, if needed, emergency assessments on most property‑and‑casualty policies statewide. Those are effectively levies on insureds, not general‑fund taxpayer bailouts, and there is no report yet of a 2024–25 Citizens deficit being covered by state tax dollars. (citizensfla.com)

3. Taxpayer backlash & legislative reforms aimed at ending subsidies
– There is visible consumer anger in California about FAIR Plan surcharges that would be borne by homeowners far from the fire zones, and lawmakers have scrambled for alternatives, but this is framed as opposition to statewide premium surcharges and insurer bailouts—not a broad taxpayer revolt over general‑fund spending. (latimes.com)
– California has moved ahead with substantial insurance reforms: the Sustainable Insurance Strategy and new catastrophe‑modeling rules, FAIR Plan modernization and financing tools, and a 2025 law to create a transparent public wildfire catastrophe model. These changes do tend to allow more risk‑based pricing and seek to stabilize the market, but they were largely initiated in 2023–24 and are not clearly presented as a direct reaction to taxpayers objecting to subsidizing others’ home values. (insurance.ca.gov)
– Florida’s big structural reforms—shifting litigation rules, lifting Citizens’ rate cap on non‑primary residences, and aggressively depopulating Citizens—were enacted in 2022–23, before Friedberg’s January 2025 prediction. In 2025 the state actually expanded homeowner subsidies through new funding for the My Safe Florida Home grant program, which helps pay for wind‑mitigation upgrades. (flgov.com)

4. Time horizon
Friedberg said that “at the end of the day” governments would have to “step in and pay the difference,” provoking taxpayer backlash that would drive reforms to reduce or end subsidies and push prices toward full risk‑reflective levels. Less than a year later, we do see:

• extremely costly disasters in California and Florida;
• severe financial pressure on state‑backed insurers; and
• ongoing regulatory and legislative changes that move toward more risk‑based pricing.

But as of late November 2025, there has not yet been a clear, large‑scale taxpayer‑funded bailout of these insurance schemes, nor an identifiable, taxpayer‑driven political moment that directly produced major subsidy‑cutting reforms. Because the underlying dynamics are long‑running and could still produce the scenario he described over the next several years, it is too early to definitively label the prediction as right or wrong.

As of late 2025, the robotaxi market is still in an early, fast‑evolving phase. Waymo clearly leads U.S. fully driverless services, operating paid robotaxis without safety drivers in multiple cities (Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Miami, and expanding further) with a fleet over 1,500 vehicles and hundreds of thousands of weekly rides. (eprnews.com)

Tesla, meanwhile, only launched its Robotaxi service in June 2025 in Austin and later expanded to the Bay Area, still with safety monitors or drivers in the vehicles and facing regulatory hurdles in key states such as California, Arizona, and Nevada. Its footprint and autonomy level are materially behind Waymo, and it is still working toward removing safety drivers by the end of 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)

At the same time, the market is not limited to Waymo and Tesla: Amazon’s Zoox has launched a fully driverless, purpose‑built robotaxi service in Las Vegas and is preparing expansion to other cities, while several other firms are active or re‑entering related segments. (techcrunch.com) This competitive landscape means it is far too early to say Waymo and Tesla have definitively run away with the market.

On the consolidation side, there is substantial partnership and alliance activity (for example, the Rivian–Volkswagen software joint venture and a proposed Honda–Nissan–Mitsubishi merger that would reshape Japan’s auto sector), but these moves are driven by broader EV, software, and global-competition pressures, not clearly or primarily by Waymo/Tesla dominance in robotaxis. (en.wikipedia.org) There has not yet been the kind of widespread, clearly AV‑driven consolidation among traditional OEMs implied by the prediction.

Because (1) the robotaxi market is still nascent, with no stable long‑term structure, (2) Tesla has not yet emerged as a clear co‑leader alongside Waymo, and (3) the consolidation dynamics the prediction describes have not clearly materialized or been ruled out, there is not enough evidence less than a year later to judge the forecast as right or wrong. It is best classified as too early to call.

As of November 30, 2025, the key conditions in Chamath’s prediction have not materialized, but the time horizon is long-term and climate/ice trends still point in the direction he describes, so it’s too early to definitively call it right or wrong.

Relevant facts:

• Arctic ice is melting rapidly, increasing theoretical access to northern routes. Winter 2025 Arctic sea ice hit a record-low maximum extent in the satellite era, reflecting strong warming-driven decline. (theguardian.com)

• Arctic shipping remains niche compared with the Panama Canal. Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) – the most developed Arctic corridor – carried about 37.9 million tonnes of cargo in 2024. (en.wikipedia.org) By contrast, the Panama Canal moved roughly 423 million tons in FY 2024, more than ten times as much, and is projected around 500+ million tons in FY 2025. (pancanal.com) A 2024/25 analysis notes that the Arctic Northern Sea Route has not become a mainstream container path: only a few specialist operators (mainly Russian/Chinese) use it, and total Arctic transit freight is tiny compared with Suez and Panama. (ft.com)

• The Northwest Passage / “Northern Passage” Chamath is likely referring to is still seasonal, risky, and lightly used. Contemporary briefs emphasize that the Northwest Passage is only navigable for a short summer window, requires ice-capable ships or icebreaker support, and is not yet a reliable, year‑round route for regular trade. (arctictradenations.com) Recent research even finds the effective shipping season shrunk between 2007 and 2021 due to shifts in multi‑year ice, undercutting the idea of an already “easy” lane. (natureworldnews.com) A 2025 survey of Canada–US disputes notes that there are still fewer than ~20 full transits per year, mostly expedition cruises, underscoring that this is not a major corridor for “a lot of critical goods.” (grokipedia.com)

• The U.S. does not have a Greenland–Canada arrangement that would give it near‑monopoly control. Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark; Danish and Greenlandic leaders have repeatedly rejected U.S. acquisition or expanded control, and current U.S. presence is limited to the long‑standing Pituffik (Thule) base under a defense agreement with Denmark. (reuters.com) On the Canadian side, the legal status of the Northwest Passage remains unresolved: Canada insists it is internal waters; the U.S. treats it as an international strait. Both sides “agree to disagree” under the 1988 Arctic Cooperation Agreement, and no new framework has been created that would hand the U.S. near‑exclusive control of the passage. (belfercenter.org)

• Other actors, especially Russia, already exert strong control over alternative Arctic routes. Russia legally treats the Northern Sea Route as a national transport corridor, requires permits and often Russian icebreaker/pilot services for passage, and even reserves key energy shipments for Russian‑flag vessels. (cleanarctic.org) This makes any future Arctic shipping system inherently multipolar, not something the U.S. could easily dominate even if it had deeper arrangements with Canada and Greenland.

Putting this together:

• The premise that climate change is opening Arctic navigation opportunities is strongly supported.
• The core prediction, though, is that this will yield a commercially vital “Northern Passage” whose importance rivals the Panama Canal and over which the U.S., via Greenland/Canada agreements, would have near‑monopoly strategic control.
• As of late 2025, the route is still marginal, seasonal, and legally contested, with no U.S. monopoly and cargo volumes far below canal levels.

Because Chamath did not attach a specific time frame and many projections place substantial Arctic shipping growth and potential canal‑like significance closer to mid‑century, the current evidence shows that his scenario has not happened yet, but also has not been ruled out by events. On that basis, the fairest assessment today is:

Inconclusive (too early to tell).

The prediction’s deadline is “by the end of 2025”, which means the outcome cannot be definitively evaluated until after December 31, 2025. Today is November 30, 2025, so there is still time for the combined weight of the Magnificent Seven stocks in the S&P 500 to move above or below 30% before the prediction’s time window closes. Even if the weighting is currently above or below 30%, we cannot yet say the prediction is ultimately right or wrong, only that it is still pending.

Multiple official and independent sources report that gross U.S. federal debt (total public debt outstanding, i.e., what is commonly called U.S. national debt) exceeded $38 trillion in October 2025, well within calendar year 2025.

• The U.S. House Budget Committee stated that “the U.S. national debt crossed the $38 trillion mark” in a press release dated Oct. 23, 2025. (budget.house.gov)
• A detailed debt analysis notes that as of Oct. 21, 2025, federal debt was about $38.02 trillion. (gold-eagle.com)
• A current summary of the U.S. national debt explains that the $38 trillion milestone was reached on Oct. 23, 2025, and that Treasury’s “Debt to the Penny” series shows the daily total of outstanding federal debt at this level in 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)
• A fiscal data compilation using Treasury’s dataset reports total public debt outstanding of $38,004,366,480,104 on Nov. 3, 2025, confirming the level remained above $38 trillion. (justfacts.com)

Because the prediction only required that U.S. national debt at some point in calendar year 2025 exceed $38 trillion—and this clearly occurred by late October 2025—the prediction is right.

• The prediction was conditional on Donald Trump being in office and implementing his immigration agenda in 2025. That condition is met: Trump returned to the presidency on January 20, 2025 and immediately signed Executive Order 14159 expanding expedited removals and other hardline measures. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Available data through early autumn 2025 show well under 750,000 deportations so far:

• A detailed overview of deportation policy in Trump’s second term notes about 400,000 deportations by September 23, 2025, alongside an estimated 1.6 million “self‑deportations.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• A Heritage Foundation summary of DHS figures says a September 23 DHS press release claimed “more than 400,000” deportations, and that by late October DHS was telling Fox News that 515,000 people had been deported since Trump returned to office. (heritage.org)

• Forward‑looking estimates also indicate the total for calendar year 2025 is likely to stay below 750,000:

• An October 30, 2025 report from the Migration Policy Institute, summarized by Stateline, says the Trump administration itself now expects about 600,000 total deportations in 2025, down from an earlier internal goal of 1 million; the same analysis estimates about 340,000 deportations in fiscal year 2025 (through September). (stateline.org)
• Axios reporting on comments by border czar Tom Homan in late October describes the administration as being "on track" for just over 600,000 deportations by year‑end, and cites internal claims of roughly 400,000 deportations in the first 250 days of Trump’s second term. (axios.com)

• As of November 30, 2025, these sources consistently place cumulative 2025 deportations in the 400k–500k range so far, with official projections around 600k for the full calendar year, i.e., substantially below the 750k threshold implied by the prediction. However, the calendar year has not yet ended, and final, audited 2025 totals are not yet available.

Because we do not yet have definitive end‑of‑year deportation statistics, and it is at least theoretically possible (though unlikely) that December removals could change the final total, the prediction cannot be resolved with certainty at this time. It appears very likely to end up wrong, but strictly on the evidence available as of November 30, 2025, the status is best classified as “inconclusive (too early)”.