E37: NYC rejects far-left mayoral candidates, new developments in lab leak theory, Apple's App Store breakup potential & more

Eric Adams won the 2021 New York City mayoral election held on November 2, 2021, defeating Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with about 67% of the vote, and he was sworn in as the 110th Mayor of New York City on January 1, 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)

Since the prediction was that “Eric Adams is going to be the next mayor of New York City” (i.e., win the 2021 election and become mayor), and this is exactly what happened, the prediction is right.

Survey and electoral evidence shows that crime and public safety did remain a major political theme in U.S. politics for several years after mid‑2021, even if it was not always the single top issue.

• In the 2022 midterms, Pew found about six-in-ten registered voters (60–61%) said violent crime was “very important” to their vote, putting it in the top tier of issues alongside the economy, gun policy, health care, and education.(pewresearch.org) Pew also noted that candidates nationwide released thousands of ads focused on violent crime.(pewresearch.org)
• Multiple 2022 polls (Rasmussen and others) reported that around 80% of likely voters expected crime/violent crime to be an important issue in the elections, with roughly half calling it “very important.”(sharylattkisson.com)
• Going into the 2024 presidential election, Pew found violent crime remained one of the leading issues, especially among Republicans: 76% of Trump supporters said violent crime was very important to their vote, ranking with the economy and immigration for that bloc.(pewresearch.org) A 2024 Rasmussen poll likewise found 79% of likely voters expected crime to be important in the presidential race, with 45% saying very important.(floridadaily.com)
• Crime and public safety continued to shape state and local politics, e.g., California’s 2024 Proposition 36 (reversing parts of Prop 47 and increasing penalties for certain theft and drug crimes) passed by a large margin, signaling that crime policy was still salient to voters, and mayoral races in cities like Oakland and New York prominently featured public safety plans.(en.wikipedia.org)

Countervailing data show that when people are asked for the single “most important problem,” crime usually ranked below the economy, inflation, the government, and immigration (e.g., Gallup in 2023 found only 3% named crime as the top national problem).(news.gallup.com) By 2025, concern about crime as an “extremely/very serious” national issue had started to decline, though it still remained substantial.(washingtonpost.com)

However, the prediction only claimed crime would be a huge, reverberating issue for the next few years, not that it would remain the single dominant concern indefinitely. From 2021 through at least the 2024 cycle, crime and public safety consistently registered as a high-salience voting issue and a major theme in campaigns at the national, state, and local levels. On that basis, the prediction is best judged as right.

Assessment: The prediction matches what actually happened between mid‑2021 and roughly mid‑2023.

1. "A lot more emerging variants" of SARS‑CoV‑2

   • After June 2021, the world saw the emergence of multiple new variants and subvariants. Most notably, the Omicron variant was identified in November 2021 and rapidly became globally dominant, followed by a large family of Omicron sublineages (BA.1, BA.2, BA.3, BA.4, BA.5, BQ.1/BQ.1.1, XBB.1.5, etc.). (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Through 2022–2023, additional Omicron subvariants such as XBB lineages and BA.2.86/JN.1 continued to emerge and spread, illustrating exactly the pattern of “a lot more…emerging variants” over the “next couple of years” after mid‑2021. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Even beyond that two‑year window, new subvariants (e.g., XFG in 2025) have continued to appear, reinforcing that the virus kept evolving into distinct global lineages. (indiatimes.com)
     This clearly fulfills the first part of the prediction.

2. "Increasing number of risks from potentially engineered biological agents"
   While there has not been a confirmed large‑scale engineered bioweapon attack in that specific period, the risk environment due to engineered or engineerable agents has measurably intensified, which is what the prediction referred to:

   • The Biological Weapons Convention community and expert analyses explicitly note that rapid advances in synthetic biology, gene editing, and enabling technologies are eroding the technological barriers to acquiring or genetically enhancing dangerous pathogens for hostile use. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Unclassified U.S. intelligence threat assessments (summarized in legal and media analyses) warn that rapid advances in dual‑use technologies—bioinformatics, synthetic biology, genomic editing, etc.—could enable development of novel biological threats, i.e., new or engineered agents. (americanbar.org)
   • Academic and policy work over 2022–2023 highlights that AI, large language models, and biological design tools can lower barriers to designing or optimizing dangerous biological agents, explicitly framing this as an increasing biosecurity risk from engineered biology. (arxiv.org)
     Collectively, these official and expert sources converge on the view that the risk from engineered or engineerable biological agents has been rising since around the time of the prediction, consistent with Friedberg’s claim about “increasing…risks.”

Conclusion:
Both components of the prediction came true in the relevant timeframe: many more SARS‑CoV‑2 variants did emerge globally, and expert and official assessments confirm a growing risk landscape around engineered biological agents. Hence the prediction is best scored as right.

Evidence shows that Chamath’s prediction substantially came true.

1. New notable variants beyond Delta emerged in fall 2021.

   • The WHO designated B.1.1.529 (Omicron) as a variant of concern on 26 November 2021, after it was first reported from South Africa earlier that month, explicitly recognizing it as a new major SARS‑CoV‑2 variant beyond Delta. (who.int)
   • The CDC likewise classified Omicron as a Variant of Concern and reported the first confirmed U.S. case on 1 December 2021. (archive.cdc.gov)
     This fits the prediction that “we’re going to hear about other variants in the fall” beyond Delta.

2. Winter 2021–2022 was indeed a difficult COVID winter.

   • A U.S. epidemiologic analysis identifies the Omicron wave from 1 December 2021 to 28 February 2022 as the most severe wave of the pandemic in the United States, with about 30 million cases and 170,000 deaths, and a daily case peak above 1.25 million in mid‑January 2022. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
   • U.S. historical overviews similarly describe Omicron’s arrival in December 2021 and note that by January 2022 it was causing a massive increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths, averaging over 1 million new cases daily. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • State‑level data (e.g., Massachusetts) show that the winter 2021–22 Omicron wave exceeded previous peaks in daily case counts, underlining the severity of that winter. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given that (a) a major new variant beyond Delta (Omicron) did emerge in late fall 2021 and (b) this variant drove an exceptionally severe COVID surge in winter 2021–22, the core factual content of Chamath’s prediction is right.

Sacks’ claim was not that we’d get a definitive proof of a lab leak, but that over time, more evidence of a cover‑up around the Wuhan lab and COVID origins would leak out, making the situation look progressively worse for those involved. That trajectory has largely matched what actually unfolded from late 2021 through 2025.

Key developments since June 2021:

1. More internal intelligence and declassification about a possible lab origin

   • The 2023 COVID‑19 Origin Act forced the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information about potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and COVID‑19, leading to a public ODNI report in June 2023. That report described an intelligence community split: several agencies favored a natural spillover, while the Department of Energy and FBI assessed a lab‑associated incident as “most likely,” though with low or moderate confidence. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • In 2025, the CIA publicly shifted to say it now considers a lab origin “more likely,” again with low confidence, aligning its position with DOE and the FBI. (time.com)
     These shifts did not settle the origin question, but they added new, more detailed disclosures and expanded the official paper trail about lab‑leak concerns.

2. Concrete evidence of record‑evasion and secrecy inside U.S. health agencies

   • Emails from Dr. David Morens, senior adviser to Anthony Fauci at NIAID, released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, show him boasting that he “learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear” after a FOIA request and that he deleted earlier emails after forwarding them to Gmail. He also urged colleagues to send sensitive material only to his private account and wrote that officials were “smart enough to know to never have smoking guns…and if we found them we’d delete them.” (congress.gov)
   • Oversight materials and press reports describe this as part of a broader pattern at NIH/NIAID to evade FOIA and shield EcoHealth Alliance (which funded coronavirus work at WIV) and Fauci from scrutiny, prompting congressional investigations into a possible NIH/NIAID records‑destruction and transparency “conspiracy.” (oversight.house.gov)
     Even if some participants later called these emails “jokes” or denied intent, the documented conduct is exactly the kind of “fingerprints” of a cover‑up Sacks was talking about, and it only became public well after mid‑2021.

3. Growing documentary evidence and investigations around the Wuhan lab itself

   • Congressional and investigative reports have assembled detailed chronologies showing that WIV’s publicly accessible virus‑sequence database was taken offline around September 12, 2019, and stayed offline, despite later public claims that it was only removed during the pandemic for cybersecurity reasons. These reports also highlight internal Chinese concerns about biosafety at WIV in mid‑ to late‑2019 and subsequent procurement of high‑end safety equipment, all presented as circumstantial evidence of an incident followed by efforts to hide data. (washingtonexaminer.com)
   • Combined with existing evidence that Chinese authorities censored early information about the Wuhan outbreak and have refused to restore access to key WIV records, this has fueled a sustained narrative of a Chinese‑side cover‑up that became more, not less, detailed after 2021. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Re‑examination of how the “natural origin” narrative was promoted

   • The House held a hearing explicitly titled “Investigating the Proximal Origin of a Cover‑Up,” digging into whether Fauci and NIH officials influenced the highly cited “The Proximal Origin of SARS‑CoV‑2” paper that framed lab‑leak ideas as implausible, and whether early discussions among its authors were more open to a lab origin than the final publication suggested. (congress.gov)
   • These inquiries, backed by FOIA‑obtained emails, have deepened public suspicion that U.S. and international scientific messaging about origins was, at minimum, “managed” behind the scenes, even though the scientists involved insist their views changed for legitimate scientific reasons. (dailycaller.com)

5. Ongoing uncertainty about the origin itself

   • The ODNI report and subsequent annexes emphasize that both lab‑associated and natural spillover origins remain plausible; most U.S. intelligence agencies still lean toward a natural origin, though with low confidence, and the report found no direct evidence that SARS‑CoV‑2 came from WIV. (gigazine.net)
   • Meanwhile, influential scientific work (e.g., Worobey and colleagues’ geospatial analysis of early Wuhan cases and animal‑market data) continues to argue that a wildlife market spillover fits the available evidence best. (vanityfair.com)
     So we still don’t know definitively how COVID‑19 began, and many of the “cover‑up” claims remain heavily contested and politically polarized.

Putting this together:

• Sacks predicted that more information about a cover‑up around the Wuhan lab and COVID origins would continue to surface, rather than the story going static, and that these revelations would increasingly implicate those involved.
• Since mid‑2021, there has indeed been a steady stream of new documents, declassified assessments, FOIA material, and congressional findings that:
  • Expose questionable record‑keeping and FOIA‑evasion practices by NIH/NIAID staff tied to EcoHealth and origin‑related communications. (congress.gov)
  • Add detail to concerns about WIV’s database removal, biosafety problems, and post‑2019 secrecy. (washingtonexaminer.com)
  • Reveal more about how U.S. intelligence agencies internally weighed and re‑weighed the lab‑leak hypothesis. (covidindex.science)

Even though the ultimate origin remains unresolved and many scientists still favor zoonosis, the narrow prediction—that “more and more information” pointing to some form of cover‑up would emerge over time, making the controversy more damaging for key actors—has clearly borne out. On that basis, the forecast is best judged as right, with the caveat that it was about the direction and volume of revelations, not about conclusively proving any specific lab‑leak scenario.

As of November 30, 2025, the 10‑year window for this prediction (through roughly mid‑2031) has not expired, so it is too early to say definitively whether it will prove right or wrong.

Evidence on the technology trajectory:

• MIT researchers have built a tabletop "mobile vaccine printer" that produces microneedle‑patch vaccines and is explicitly framed as enabling on‑demand, decentralized vaccine production; it has been demonstrated in mice but is still a research prototype, not a widely deployed commercial product.【0search3】
• CureVac has developed "The RNA Printer," a downsized, integrated and automated GMP‑grade mRNA manufacturing system intended as a mobile, modular facility for RNA vaccines and therapeutics. CureVac created a dedicated subsidiary (CureVac RNA Printer GmbH) in 2022 to advance it and has obtained initial manufacturing licenses in Germany, but current public information describes it as an in‑house/partner platform in regulatory review and development, not yet a globally deployed fleet of printers.【2search0】【2search2】
• BioNTech’s modular "BioNTainer" units—containerized mRNA manufacturing facilities shipped to Rwanda and planned for other African countries—are another step toward decentralized mRNA production, but they are large container factories (two modules covering ~800 m²) rather than the kind of small, bioreactor "printer" Friedberg described, and they are only in a few locations so far.【1search0】【1search6】

Evidence on deployment scale vs. the claim:

• None of the above efforts are yet described in 2025 sources as small vaccine printers that are broadly "deployed around the world" in routine use. Instead, they are in R&D, pilot, or early facility‑buildout stages.【0search3】【2search1】【1search1】
• However, multiple companies (CureVac, BioNTech, academic/industry collaborations at MIT and others) are clearly pursuing exactly the kind of digitally programmable, small‑footprint or modular vaccine manufacturing systems Friedberg envisioned.【0search3】【2search3】

Because (1) the forecast horizon still runs for nearly six more years, and (2) the key condition—widespread global deployment of such vaccine printers—is not yet met but also not ruled out, the correct status for this prediction as of late 2025 is **"inconclusive (too early)."

Available evidence from 2021–2025 points to continued and in some domains intensified culture‑war conflict and “cancel culture” dynamics, rather than a clear subsiding and broadening of the Overton window as Jason predicted.

Key points:

1. Ongoing & high‑salience cancellation controversies

   • High‑profile cases over speech, social media posts, and old statements continued after mid‑2021 across media, academia, and entertainment. Examples include Dave Chappelle’s Netflix specials and backlash (2021–2023), J.K. Rowling’s continuing ostracization and boycotts, and numerous de‑platforming and firing controversies tied to views on race, gender, and trans issues. News and commentary sources in 2022–2024 describe “cancel culture” as ongoing and a major flashpoint, not something that has clearly ended or markedly diminished.

2. Polarization and culture‑war salience remain high

   • U.S. political polarization on cultural issues (race, gender, education, COVID measures, etc.) remained high through the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. Surveys and analyses during this period continued to identify culture‑war topics and speech controversies as central partisan battlegrounds, including fights over school curricula, corporate DEI policies, and online speech moderation. This is inconsistent with a broad, cross‑partisan cooling of “hysteria.”

3. No clear evidence of significantly fewer social/professional penalties for speech

   • While there has been backlash to and criticism of cancel culture (e.g., the Harper’s Letter in 2020, ongoing op‑eds and books criticizing cancellation), there is no robust evidence that instances of people facing social or professional consequences for controversial or past statements have significantly declined relative to the late‑2010s/early‑2020s baseline. High‑profile firings, social‑media pile‑ons, and boycotts remained common topics in press and public debate through at least 2024–2025.

4. Overton window has not clearly ‘blossomed’ in the predicted way

   • In some online spaces, certain taboo topics have become more openly discussed, but simultaneously other viewpoints (especially on race, gender identity, and the 2020 election) have become more fraught, with strong social and sometimes professional penalties. On the right, there has been increased formal censorship pressure (book bans, restrictions on teaching certain concepts) while on parts of the left, social/organizational pressures regarding speech remain strong. Overall, the set of ideas that can be expressed without serious social risk has not obviously expanded in a broad, society‑wide sense.

Given that several years have passed since mid‑2021 and the observable trajectory shows: (a) culture‑war salience remaining high, (b) continued prominent cancellation disputes, and (c) no clear, systemic broadening of tolerated speech, the specific prediction that "this great nightmare of hysteria is going to end" and the Overton window would "blossom" with fewer cancellations is best evaluated as wrong, rather than merely inconclusive or ambiguous.

I couldn’t find any reliable public information (interviews, social media posts, news, or transcripts) from David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, or third-party sources that report or compare their body weights around late summer 2021.

Because their exact weights at that time are private and apparently never disclosed in a verifiable way, there is no factual basis to determine whether David Sacks actually weighed less than Jason Calacanis by the end of summer 2021. The prediction therefore cannot be evaluated from public data and remains ambiguous.

The prediction is framed on a 10‑year horizon starting around mid‑2021 (i.e., through ~2031). As of the current date in late 2025, only about four years of that window have elapsed, so it’s too early to make a definitive call.

Current evidence:

Amazon’s position in commerce

• Amazon still has a dominant share of U.S. e‑commerce: roughly 37.6% of U.S. online retail in 2024, nearly 6× the next‑largest retailer (Walmart at 6.4%, Apple at 3.6%). (demandsage.com)
• Shopify has grown into a strong #2, with about 12% of all U.S. retail e‑commerce GMV in 2024 and ~30% share of U.S. e‑commerce platforms by website usage, but that still leaves Amazon with a much larger slice of actual spending. (salesso.com)
• There is no evidence yet that Amazon is “losing to” Shopify, Square/Block, or Stripe in a way that materially erodes its overall dominance in retail e‑commerce.

Apple’s position in payments/financial services

• Apple Pay remains the leading mobile wallet in the U.S., with estimates of ~92% share of U.S. mobile wallet transactions and around 14% of global online consumer payments as of 2024–2025. (capitaloneshopping.com)
• Apple Pay is estimated to process on the order of $10 trillion annually in 2025. (clearlypayments.com)
• Stripe is large and growing fast—processing $1.4 trillion in payments in 2024 and valued around $91.5B in 2025—but that is still a fraction of card volumes and of Apple Pay’s estimated throughput, and Stripe’s online‑payments share (~8% vs Apple Pay’s ~14% in 2025) does not yet show Apple clearly “losing” to Stripe. (capitaloneshopping.com)

Shopify, Block (Square), Stripe as challengers

• Shopify, Block, and Stripe have all grown into major players (e.g., Shopify’s 12% GMV share in U.S. retail e‑commerce; Stripe’s $1.4T payment volume in 2024; Square’s quarterly GPV in the ~$60–70B range and continuing growth). (salesso.com)
• However, the data so far show coexistence and growth of challengers alongside continued dominance by Amazon and Apple, rather than a clear, already‑realized loss of dominance by Amazon/Apple in commerce or payments.

Why the result is ‘inconclusive’:

• The core claim is about what will happen “over the next decade”—i.e., by around 2031. We are only partway through that period.
• Interim data show that Shopify, Stripe, and Block are indeed formidable and growing, but they have not yet “caused Amazon and Apple to lose” or materially eroded Amazon’s or Apple’s dominance in their respective arenas as of 2024–2025.
• It remains plausible that relative shares could shift much more between now and 2031, so the prediction cannot be definitively scored as right or wrong yet.

Given the incomplete time horizon and mixed but not decisively contrary evidence, the correct status for this prediction as of 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than right or wrong.

The prediction explicitly covers a 10–15 year horizon starting in 2021, i.e., roughly 2021–2031/2036. As of today (2025-11-30), only about four years have passed, so we cannot yet determine whether over that entire period all four firms will “continue to win” without any of them being displaced or substantially diminished. That makes the forecast too early to score definitively.

Partial check so far (as of late 2025):

• Amazon remains the world’s largest retailer by market cap and one of the top five public companies globally, with a market cap around $2.4–2.5T. (companiesmarketcap.com)
• Apple is one of the two most valuable public companies, with a market cap around $4.1T, and is projected to overtake or has just overtaken Samsung as the top global smartphone seller. (companiesmarketcap.com)
• Shopify is still a major e‑commerce platform provider, with a market cap around $200B, ranking in the top ~100 public companies worldwide. (companiesmarketcap.com)
• Stripe remains one of the most valuable private fintechs, with a 2025 secondary sale valuing it at about $91.5B, close to its 2021 peak of $95B. (cnbc.com)

So far, reality is consistent with Chamath’s view that all four are still major winners and none has been clearly displaced by the others. However, because the forecast is about their status over the full 10–15 year span, and we are not yet close to the end of that window, the appropriate score at this time is **“inconclusive (too early)” rather than definitively right or wrong.