12 Day War, Socialism Wins in NYC, Stocks All-Time High, AI Copyright, Science Corner

Open sources show that after the June 2025 U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, Israel did not pivot to a quiet, status‐quo de‑escalation with the Iranian regime, but instead maintained and even emphasized activities and messaging aimed at weakening it.

1. Stated goal of weakening or toppling the regime. Reporting during and after the war makes clear that Israeli leadership framed the June campaign not just as non‑proliferation, but as an effort to strike at the foundations of Ayatollah Khamenei’s rule and even pursue regime change. Reuters described Israel’s air campaign as aiming to “severely weaken or even collapse” Khamenei’s government, going beyond narrow nuclear objectives.【7news13】 A separate analysis reported Netanyahu explicitly urging Iranians to “rise” against an “evil and oppressive regime” and presenting the strikes in the context of supporting a different future for Iran, i.e., overt regime‑destabilization rhetoric rather than narrow deterrence.【7news14】 Post‑war diplomacy coverage likewise notes Netanyahu pushing for dismantling Iran’s regime and resisting U.S. moves toward renewed talks, indicating an ongoing strategic objective rather than a one‑off strike campaign.【6news14】

2. Information and psychological operations directed at Iranians. During and after the June war, Israel markedly escalated Persian‑language outreach and influence operations targeting the Iranian public. An analysis of Israel’s “digital campaign” documents how official IDF and Foreign Ministry Persian‑language accounts used monarchist symbols (the lion and sun) and messaging tailored to anti‑regime audiences, explicitly appealing to segments of the Iranian population opposed to the Islamic Republic.【7search0】 Another report describes Israel hacking Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB during the conflict to air a message urging Iranians to rise up against the regime, a direct attempt to incite internal opposition rather than simply degrade military capabilities.【7search4】 The IDF also used its Persian account to highlight Mossad’s secure contact portal and effectively invited Iranians to provide information or collaborate, an unusually overt attempt to recruit assets inside Iran.【7search2】 These are precisely the kinds of ongoing Mossad/IDF efforts to destabilize the regime that Friedberg was speculating about.

3. Continued posture and new influence initiatives after the ceasefire. The formal ceasefire of June 24, 2025 ended large‑scale open hostilities, and has broadly held in terms of direct kinetic strikes between Israel and Iran.【5search18】 But Israeli officials openly signaled that the conflict with the regime was not over. In September, Mossad chief David Barnea publicly boasted that Mossad retains “operational capabilities” even “in the heart of Tehran” and emphasized that the agency would continue to act against Iran, underscoring an ongoing covert campaign rather than a pause or reset.【2news14】 In November 2025, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs launched a new Persian‑language influence campaign explicitly aimed at exposing “disinformation mechanisms of the Ayatollah regime” and fostering dialogue about freedom, human rights, and corruption among Iranians—an Israeli civil‑society effort clearly aligned with eroding the regime’s legitimacy rather than accepting a stable status quo.【7search3】

4. Outcome in Iran: crisis, not a peaceful transition. Domestically, Iran has moved into what analysts describe as a 2025 “internal crisis,” characterized by mass arrests, accelerated executions, and heightened regime paranoia after the war.【6search17】 That trajectory—escalating repression, continued Israeli anti‑regime rhetoric and influence operations, and no normalization between Jerusalem and Tehran—matches Friedberg’s core claim that this would not be a “quiet, peaceful transition” for the Islamic Republic after the June strikes, but an environment in which Israel kept trying to weaken whatever regime remained.

We do not have open-source confirmation of new, post‑ceasefire kinetic Mossad/IDF attacks inside Iran itself; such covert actions may or may not have occurred and would often be deniable. However, the observable record—Israeli leadership’s articulated regime‑change aims, continued psychological and influence operations in Persian, and public assurances by Mossad’s chief that operations inside Iran will continue—shows that Israel did indeed persist in efforts directed at undermining the current Iranian regime, rather than settling into a quiet de‑escalation. On that basis, Friedberg’s prediction is best judged as directionally right, even if the exact form of the “next shots” has so far been more informational and political than additional large‑scale bombing inside Iran.

In late June 2025, a U.S.- and Qatar-mediated ceasefire formally ended the 12‑day Iran–Israel war, and subsequent reporting notes that while there were initial violations in the hours after it began, the ceasefire between Iran and Israel "ultimately held" and there have been no renewed large-scale direct missile exchanges between the two states. (en.wikipedia.org)

However, after the podcast date (28 June 2025), armed conflict clearly resumed via Iran‑aligned proxies. The Houthis in Yemen are widely described by governments and analysts as Iran‑backed and part of Tehran’s regional “Axis of Resistance.” (dw.com) Israel has conducted an ongoing air campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen since May 2025; this includes major strikes on Sanaa on 24 August 2025 and a series of attacks on 28 August 2025 that killed senior Houthi leadership, including de facto prime minister Ahmed al‑Rahawi and other top officials, in operations explicitly catalogued as “Israeli attacks on Yemen (May 2025–present)” directed at the Iran‑backed Houthis. (en.wikipedia.org)

The Houthis have hit Israel directly in response: on 7 September 2025, a drone launched from Yemen struck the arrivals hall of Israel’s Ramon Airport near Eilat, injuring civilians and briefly shutting the airport, and on 24 September 2025 another Houthi drone attack on central Eilat injured 22 people; both are documented as Houthi drone strikes on Israeli civilian infrastructure within the broader Red Sea crisis. (reuters.com) Separately, Israel has also escalated against Hezbollah, Iran’s principal Lebanese proxy: on 23 November 2025 it carried out an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah’s acting chief of staff Ali Tabtabai; Reuters explicitly describes Hezbollah in this piece as “Iran‑backed,” and the strike is noted as a serious escalation despite an existing U.S.-brokered truce on the Lebanon front. (reuters.com)

Taken together, these post‑ceasefire Israeli airstrikes on Iran‑backed groups (Houthis and Hezbollah) and the retaliatory drone attacks on Israeli territory constitute clear instances of renewed military and proxy clashes between Israel and Iran’s regional network after the June 2025 12‑day war, even though the formal Iran–Israel ceasefire has largely held at the state‑to‑state level. That matches the substance of Sacks’s prediction that “this is not over” and that the conflict would “flare up again at some point” through further armed or proxy confrontations; therefore the prediction is best judged as correct.

Evidence since the June 28, 2025 podcast shows that the Abraham Accords have expanded to include at least one additional Muslim‑majority country, matching Chamath’s prediction.

• In early November 2025, U.S. and Israeli officials announced that Kazakhstan would join the Abraham Accords, with reporting describing it as the first country to enter the framework since the Gaza war.(reuters.com)
• The Associated Press likewise reported that Kazakhstan "will join the Abraham Accords" in a symbolic move to boost the initiative, noting that it has long had diplomatic relations with Israel but is now formally entering the Accords framework.(apnews.com)
• Background/summary sources on the Abraham Accords now list Kazakhstan as a country that joined on November 6, 2025, explicitly under that banner.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Kazakhstan is approximately 70% Sunni Muslim, making it clearly part of the Muslim‑majority world, even if it is geographically Central Asian rather than in the Arab core of the Middle East.(israelhayom.com)

Chamath’s normalized prediction was that “in the coming years, additional countries in the Middle East and/or Muslim‑majority world will formally join or normalize relations with Israel under the framework of the Abraham Accords or an explicit extension of them.” Once Kazakhstan, a Muslim‑majority state, formally joined the Abraham Accords framework in November 2025, that condition was satisfied. The fact that this happened within months (rather than many years) does not invalidate the prediction; it simply means the forecast materialized early within the multi‑year window.

Therefore, based on current information, the prediction is right.

Friedberg’s prediction had two key components:

1. Starting point: that the June 2025 New York City mayoral Democratic primary would mark the beginning of a wave of democratic socialist / left‑populist victories in major U.S. cities.
2. Trajectory: that over the next several election cycles there would be a growing wave of such candidates winning major municipal offices.

What has happened so far (through Nov 30, 2025):

• On June 24, 2025, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a self‑identified democratic socialist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. 【0search18】 He is explicitly described as a democratic socialist and DSA member. 【1search18】【1search0】
• On November 4, 2025, Mamdani won the general election and is now mayor‑elect of New York City, the largest U.S. city, running on a democratic socialist platform. 【3search19】
• In the 2025 Seattle mayoral election, progressive activist Katie Wilson defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell; she is widely described as a democratic socialist or self‑proclaimed socialist and ran on a left‑populist platform focused on affordability, homelessness, and taxing the wealthy. 【3search24】【2news18】【2news13】【2search0】
• A running list of elected socialist mayors in the U.S. now includes NYC and Seattle (terms beginning 2026) alongside earlier DSA‑aligned mayors in smaller or mid‑sized cities, indicating that socialist mayors exist but only some of these wins occurred after June 2025. 【1search20】

Why the prediction is not yet judgeable:

• The “beginning” part of his claim is broadly consistent with events: a DSA democratic socialist winning the NYC primary (and then the mayoralty) in June–November 2025, followed by a democratic socialist winning in another major city (Seattle) the same cycle, does look like the start of a left‑populist surge in big‑city municipal politics.
• However, he explicitly forecast a “growing wave over the next several election cycles.” As of November 30, 2025, we have seen only one main municipal election cycle (the 2025 local elections). We don’t yet have evidence from multiple future cycles to confirm whether this is a sustained, growing trend or a one‑cycle peak.

Because the time horizon (“next several election cycles”) has not passed and we cannot yet see whether the trend grows, stalls, or reverses, the prediction cannot be definitively rated as right or wrong at this point. It is directionally supported so far but still too early to call, so the appropriate status is inconclusive.

The prediction is explicitly time‑bounded to occur “within the next few U.S. election cycles.” As of the current date (November 30, 2025), we are only partway between the 2024 and 2026 U.S. federal election cycles. That is at most one cycle into what is usually interpreted as “a few” (commonly 2–3 cycles), so the stated timeframe has not elapsed.

Additionally, the claim is about how figures like Kamala Harris will be perceived relative to an “increasingly socialist” youth/urban wing of the Democratic Party. This is a long‑horizon, qualitative shift in intra‑party ideology and public perception, not something that can be definitively judged just months after the prediction. Even if some commentary today frames establishment Democrats as more centrist than the party’s left flank, that dynamic pre‑dated the prediction and does not yet show a clearly new, widely accepted reclassification of Harris herself as a “conservative candidate” within Democratic politics.

Because (1) the full timeframe (“next few election cycles”) has not passed, and (2) any definitive, widely accepted perception change of the described magnitude has not been clearly documented or testable yet, this prediction cannot be fairly evaluated at this time.

David Friedberg made this comment about Zohran Mamdani’s upset win in the NYC Democratic mayoral primary on the June 28, 2025 episode of the All-In podcast, calling it “the beginning of a wave that will sweep over [America].”(speakai.co) The user’s normalized prediction frames this as a decade‑long shift toward majority support for socialist‑style policies across much of the U.S. As of today (November 30, 2025), barely five months have passed since the prediction, and the relevant time horizon—“over the next decade,” i.e., through roughly 2035—has not elapsed. Because this claim is about long‑term national political realignment rather than immediate election outcomes, there is not yet enough elapsed time or data to fairly determine whether such a broad wave has materialized or failed, so the prediction must be considered too early to judge.

As of November 30, 2025, this prediction is still framed for the "coming years", and only about five months have elapsed since it was made on June 28, 2025. That is not enough time to judge whether it ultimately comes true as a long‑run description of U.S. national politics.

Substantively, current evidence is mixed rather than clearly validating or falsifying the claim:

• Within the GOP, a large share of voters do identify as “MAGA Republicans” (around half of Republicans, depending on the poll), showing strong populist‑nationalist influence but not total dominance. Many Republicans explicitly do not identify as MAGA, indicating an ongoing split between MAGA and more traditional/establishment conservatives. (today.yougov.com)
• On the Democratic side, democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani (elected NYC mayor) are highly visible, but institutional power is still heavily held by moderates and centrists. The New Democrat Coalition, a pro‑business, Third‑Way, centrist group, is the largest ideological caucus among House Democrats, with over half of Democratic representatives as members. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Additional organizations such as Majority Democrats (a centrist PAC modeled on the old DLC) and the surviving Blue Dog Coalition of moderates show that non‑socialist, non‑populist factions remain organized and influential in the Democratic Party. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because:

1. The prediction is explicitly set over a multi‑year horizon ("coming years"), and that horizon has not yet passed.
2. Current party dynamics still show significant centrist/neoliberal and traditional conservative factions with real influence, instead of a fully crystallized binary "MAGA vs. socialism" structure.

…it is too early to say whether U.S. national politics will in fact solidify into the binary alignment described. Therefore the only defensible judgment today is inconclusive (too early) rather than right, wrong, or permanently ambiguous.

The prediction is about a 40–50 year trajectory starting from around 2025, i.e., projecting conditions for New York City circa 2065–2075. As of the current date (November 30, 2025), less than one year has elapsed since the prediction was made, so it is far too early to determine whether NYC will "look like New York of the 80s" (high crime and disorder) over that long horizon. There is simply not enough elapsed time relative to the forecast window to evaluate accuracy. Therefore, the only reasonable judgment at this point is inconclusive (too early).

Available data through late 2025 show no broad NYC real-estate “crash and burn” so far. Residential median sale prices across NYC were about 10% higher year‑over‑year in Q1 2025, indicating continued strength rather than a collapse. (qns.com) Analyses of the NYC housing market in mid‑ to late‑2025 describe prices as generally stable or modestly rising, with only slight projected easing and explicitly characterizing a major crash as unlikely. (noradarealestate.com) Some subsegments (e.g., certain single‑family homes, offices) have seen value declines, but the changes reported are on the order of a few percent, not a systemic crash across “New York real estate.” (bloomberg.com) However, Chamath framed this as happening in the “coming years”, and only about five months have elapsed between the June 28, 2025 prediction and the November 30, 2025 evaluation date. That horizon is too long relative to the time passed to definitively say the prediction has failed, so the outcome is too early to judge.

As of 30 November 2025, the FOXO3-based age‑reversal work that Friedberg was referring to is still at the primate/preclinical stage. The key 2025 Cell paper by Lei et al. reports systemic age‑reversal effects in aged macaques using FOXO3‑enhanced, senescence‑resistant mesenchymal progenitor cells (SRCs) and attributes much of the effect to exosome‑mediated mechanisms, but it is entirely in non‑human primates and in vitro models, not humans. (sciencedirect.com) Follow‑on commentaries in Cell Regeneration and related outlets explicitly frame this work as a proof‑of‑concept that positions FOXO3‑enhanced MPCs/SRC‑exosomes as promising candidates for future clinical anti‑aging interventions, again without mentioning any ongoing human trials. (cellregeneration.springeropen.com) Popular and expert summaries likewise describe the therapy as early‑stage and “years away from real‑world use,” underscoring that translation to human trials has not yet happened. (biohackingnews.org) A targeted search of trial registries and the scientific literature through late 2025 finds FOXO3 in basic/translational contexts but no registered human clinical trials testing FOXO3‑engineered stem cells or their exosomes as systemic age‑reversal therapies analogous to the macaque study. Instead, all detailed reports match the same preclinical FOXO3‑SRC primate work. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

However, Friedberg’s prediction is about the situation “over the next couple of years”—i.e., roughly by 2027. Since 2027 has not yet arrived, we cannot know whether such human trials will in fact be underway by that time, even though they are not underway yet in 2025. Therefore the prediction cannot be definitively graded now and is best classified as inconclusive (too early) rather than right or wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, no injectable or infusion-based age-reversal therapy based on stem cells or Yamanaka-style partial reprogramming is approved or commercially available to average consumers; such approaches remain preclinical or at best in very early, disease-specific human trials (e.g., Life Biosciences’ planned 2025 optic-nerve trial and YouthBio’s preparatory steps toward an Alzheimer’s trial). (p05.org) Major reviews note that partial reprogramming with Yamanaka factors has extended lifespan in mice but has not yet entered human trials for aging itself, and aging is not recognized by regulators such as the FDA as a disease indication that can be directly targeted, further slowing development of any broad age-reversal therapy. (longevity.technology) Medical/science overviews likewise emphasize that, as of mid‑2025, there are no approved Yamanaka- or MPTR-based anti-aging treatments available to the public; any offerings are experimental or speculative. (mededgemea.com) However, Friedberg’s prediction is about whether such a therapy will exist by roughly 2035, so with nearly a decade remaining on that timeline, there is not yet enough information to say whether it will ultimately be right or wrong.

As of November 28, 2025, the S&P 500 is at 6,849.09 and has only briefly traded above 6,900; it has not yet reached 7,000. (apnews.com) The Federal Reserve, under Jerome Powell, has not begun what would commonly be described as an “aggressive cutting program” in 2025: following a single 25 bp cut in December 2024, the Fed held rates steady through mid‑2025 and then delivered just one additional 25 bp cut in September 2025 to a 4.0–4.25% range, while explicitly signaling caution and only penciling in a couple more small cuts. (forbes.com) Since Chamath’s prediction is conditional—if Powell starts an aggressive cutting program, then the S&P could quickly rerate to ~7,000—and the precondition (an aggressive, multi‑step cutting cycle starting in 2025) has not clearly occurred yet, the scenario he described has not actually been tested. Moreover, because markets are still below 7,000 and future Fed actions and market moves beyond November 2025 remain unknown, it is too early to determine whether his conditional call will ultimately prove right or wrong.

According to the Federal Reserve’s official implementation note for the September 17, 2025 FOMC meeting, the Committee directed the Desk to maintain the federal funds rate in a new target range of 4.00% to 4.25%, down from the prior 4.25% to 4.50%, i.e., a 25‑basis‑point cut to the federal funds rate. (federalreserve.gov)

Independent coverage from economic and financial news outlets confirms that on September 17, 2025, the Jerome Powell–led FOMC cut the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 4.00%–4.25%, and that this was the first rate cut since December 2024. (realtor.com)

The prediction was that in September 2025, Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve would implement a 25‑basis‑point cut to the federal funds rate. The actual outcome matches this exactly in both timing (September 2025) and magnitude (25 bps), with Powell still serving as Fed Chair at that meeting. (livemint.com)