E64: Antitrust standards & enforcement, tech repricing, lab leak obfuscation, E63 reactions & more

Chamath predicted in January 2022 that geopolitical and economic tension in the broader China–U.S. narrative would "continue to increase and swell" over the next decade or two (the 2020s into the 2030s). Since then, multiple indicators show tensions have in fact escalated: (1) the U.S. has repeatedly tightened export controls restricting China’s access to advanced semiconductors and chipmaking tools, and coordinated similar restrictions with Japan and the Netherlands, explicitly framing this as a strategic effort to constrain China’s military and AI capabilities, which Beijing denounces as Cold War–style "containment and suppression". (theguardian.com) (2) The chip and broader tech "war" has become a central axis of rivalry, with wider U.S. controls in 2023–2025 and Chinese counter‑measures including tighter export controls on critical minerals and rare earths, further weaponizing supply chains. (americanaffairsjournal.org) (3) Security tensions around Taiwan have intensified, with Taiwan announcing a special ~$40 billion defense budget through 2033 explicitly to respond to China’s "intensifying" threat, supported by the U.S., while Japanese statements about potential military involvement if China attacks Taiwan prompted Beijing to accuse Tokyo of crossing a "red line". (theguardian.com) These developments are directionally consistent with Chamath’s claim that tensions would swell. However, his forecast explicitly covers an entire decade or two, and we are only a few years into that window. Because the full time horizon has not elapsed, we cannot yet determine whether tensions will keep increasing for the whole period he specified. The best classification today is that the prediction is too early to fully evaluate, even though current trends align with it so far.

Chamath was referring to the bipartisan tech antitrust bill aimed at Big Tech self‑preferencing that had just cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2022: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), S.2992, with a House companion H.R.3816.(congress.gov)

In the 117th Congress (Jan 3, 2021 – Jan 3, 2023), that bill advanced out of committee but never received a final vote in either chamber. On Congress.gov, S.2992’s latest action is that it was placed on the Senate calendar on March 2, 2022, with no subsequent passage; the tracker status remains only “Introduced,” meaning it died at the end of the 117th Congress.(congress.gov) The House companion H.R.3816 was reported by the Judiciary Committee and placed on the Union Calendar on December 21, 2022, but was never brought to the House floor and likewise did not pass.(congress.gov)

Subsequent reporting confirms that AICOA “stalled and never passed into law” and had to be reintroduced in the next Congress.(theverge.com) While Congress did pass other, narrower antitrust measures in late 2022—most notably the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act to adjust merger filing fees and venue rules(klobuchar.senate.gov)—these are distinct bills focused on enforcement resources and procedure, not a “version” of the AICOA-style conduct rules that would rewrite self‑preferencing and platform behavior standards for Big Tech.

Because no version of the specific bipartisan Big Tech conduct‑regulating bill that cleared Senate Judiciary in January 2022 was passed by both houses and signed into law during that legislative session—or even by 2025—the prediction that “some version of that is going to pass” in the near term within that Congress is wrong.

Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, announced January 18, 2022 for ~$69 billion, ultimately was approved and closed rather than being blocked on antitrust grounds.

Key facts:

• The deal faced scrutiny from multiple regulators, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and the European Commission. The FTC sued in December 2022 to block the deal, but a U.S. federal judge denied the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction in July 2023, allowing the transaction to proceed in the U.S.
• The European Commission approved the deal on May 15, 2023, subject to certain behavioral remedies related to cloud gaming (e.g., licensing commitments), rather than blocking it outright.
• The UK CMA initially moved to block the deal over cloud gaming concerns in April 2023, but after Microsoft proposed a restructured deal transferring cloud streaming rights for Activision games (outside the EEA) to Ubisoft, the CMA cleared the revised transaction on October 13, 2023.
• Microsoft and Activision Blizzard then formally closed the acquisition on October 13, 2023.

Chamath’s prediction was that the Microsoft–Activision deal would “on balance [get] done” and that there was nothing fundamentally monopolistic that would lead to it being blocked. In reality, despite heavy scrutiny and some required concessions (especially in cloud gaming), regulators did not ultimately block the deal; it closed successfully after approvals and remedies.

Therefore, relative to the prediction — that the acquisition would receive regulatory approval and close, rather than being blocked on antitrust grounds — the outcome is right.

Evidence since early 2022 shows that while U.S. antitrust policy under the Biden administration increased uncertainty and frictions around deals, large U.S. tech companies did not broadly “stop doing M&A” or even pause significant activity.

1. Ongoing megadeals by Big Tech: Microsoft pursued and ultimately closed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October 2023, one of the largest tech deals ever, despite intense global antitrust scrutiny. Alphabet then agreed in 2025 to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion, the largest acquisition in Google/Alphabet’s history, again in the midst of ongoing U.S. and EU antitrust actions against it. These are exactly the sort of major strategic deals Sacks suggested would be put on hold. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Sector-level data show activity remained high: A report cited by The Register using S&P Global data found that the total number of tech/media/telecom acquisitions over $500 million was actually higher under Biden than during Trump’s first term (235 vs. 223 as of late 2024), and the median time to close such deals increased by only one day, suggesting no broad freeze in large-tech dealmaking. (theregister.com) Tech M&A value in 2023 did fall sharply—down 55% year‑over‑year—but the number of tech deals actually ticked up, with analysts emphasizing rising interest rates and post‑pandemic normalization as primary causes, not a regulatory standstill. (informationweek.com) Law‑firm and market analyses for 2022–24 still identify technology as the leading or one of the leading sectors for global M&A, including roughly $640 billion of tech deal value in 2024, indicating robust ongoing activity rather than a prolonged pause. (mofo.com)

3. There was a chill, but not a halt: Advisory and antitrust‑focused analyses do document a meaningful chilling effect: Big Tech’s share of global tech M&A volume reportedly dropped from 29% to 18% between 2021 and 2023, average antitrust‑driven delays more than doubled, and terminations of tech deals attributed to antitrust roughly doubled versus the Trump era. (winsavvy.com) A Covington & Burling review notes that the FTC and DOJ tried to “gratuitously” tax M&A and create general deterrence via burdensome procedures and rhetoric, creating real uncertainty and higher costs for transactions. (cov.com) This supports the idea that the administration raised uncertainty and reduced Big Tech’s relative appetite for some acquisitions—but it is far from the across‑the‑board cessation Sacks predicted.

Given that (a) very large strategic tech acquisitions continued, including record‑size deals by Microsoft and Alphabet; (b) overall large‑cap tech/TMT deal activity remained historically high compared with the prior administration; and (c) the documented impact of antitrust policy is a partial pullback and slower, riskier dealmaking, not a widespread halt in M&A, Sacks’s forecast that “a lot of big tech companies” would effectively stop doing M&A until clarity arrived is best characterized as wrong rather than merely imprecise or ambiguous.

The outcome Chamath was worried about did not occur in the stated timeframe.

Key points:

• The prediction window is roughly late January 2022 through late January 2024 (“the subsequent couple of years”).
• The Federal Reserve did tighten very aggressively in 2022–2023, raising the federal funds rate from near 0% in March 2022 to 5.25–5.50% by July 2023, one of the fastest hiking cycles in modern history. (congress.gov)
• Despite this, the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee shows no new recession after the COVID trough in April 2020; its chronology lists April 2020 as the most recent trough and does not identify any later peak or recession, implying the expansion continued through and beyond 2022–2024. (nber.org)
• While real GDP was negative in the first two quarters of 2022, the Dallas Fed and others noted that broader indicators (especially labor markets) remained strong and concluded the U.S. likely did not enter a recession then; the “two negative quarters” rule was treated as a rough heuristic, not evidence of an actual recession. (dallasfed.org)
• Annual real GDP grew in 2022 and 2023 (about 1.9–2.5%), and again in 2024, indicating continued expansion rather than a contraction. (bea.gov)
• The unemployment rate stayed near multi-decade lows (roughly mid‑3% to low‑4% range) through 2022–2024, with the BLS and other analyses characterizing the labor market as historically tight rather than recessionary. (bloustein.rutgers.edu)
• By late 2023–early 2024, mainstream assessments (CRS, major banks, media) increasingly described the U.S. as having achieved or being on track for a soft landing—falling inflation without a recession or spike in unemployment. (congress.gov)

Because the U.S. economy did not enter an official, broad-based recession in the two years following January 2022, and the tightening cycle is widely viewed (so far) as having produced a soft landing instead of a Fed‑induced slump, Chamath’s concern that aggressive Fed tightening would “plunge the US economy into a recession” within that period turned out to be wrong as a prediction about realized outcomes.

Chamath’s claim that the high‑growth tech drawdown was in the “eighth inning” by late January 2022 (roughly 80–90% complete, with most of the remaining downside playing out within 1–3 months) does not match what actually happened.

1. High‑growth tech proxies kept falling hard well past 1–3 months

• A common proxy for speculative/high‑growth tech is Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK). ARKK peaked around $159.70 in mid‑February 2021 and hit an intraday low of about $29.43 on Dec 28, 2022, an ~82% peak‑to‑trough decline. (reddit.com)
• At end‑January 2022, ARKK’s monthly price was about $75.43, versus its later 2022 monthly low around $31–32; only about 53% of the eventual peak‑to‑trough decline had occurred by January 2022, with roughly half of the total damage still ahead. (digrin.com)
• Even by end‑March 2022, ARKK was about $66.29, implying only ~59% of the eventual decline had taken place by then; a large additional leg down occurred between April and December 2022. (digrin.com)

2. Broader tech indices also saw most of their decline after January 2022

• The Nasdaq Composite closed at an all‑time high of 16,057.44 on Nov 19, 2021 and reached a 2022 closing low of 10,213.29 on Dec 28, 2022, a drop of ~36%. (statmuse.com)
• On January 21, 2022, around when Chamath spoke, the Nasdaq closed at 13,768.92, only about 14% below the November 2021 peak. That means less than 40% of the eventual peak‑to‑trough decline had occurred by that date; roughly 60% was still to come. (statmuse.com)
• The index did not make its low within 1–3 months of January 2022; instead it continued falling and did not reach its closing low until late October–December 2022, about 9–11 months later. (statmuse.com)
• For 2022 as a whole, the Nasdaq Composite finished down 33%, underscoring that much of the damage happened after January 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)

3. Implication for the prediction

• If “eighth inning” means ~80–90% of the drawdown was already done, then remaining losses should have been relatively small. In reality, both high‑growth vehicles like ARKK and the broader tech‑heavy Nasdaq suffered substantial additional declines—often comparable to or larger than the drawdown already seen by January 2022.
• The timing was also off: new lows and the ultimate bottom arrived much later than the 1–3 month window implied by an “eighth inning” call.

Given the size and timing of the subsequent declines, Chamath’s statement that the tech drawdown was in the “eighth inning” in late January 2022 is best classified as wrong.

Chamath’s claim was that once the large‑cap U.S. “big tech generals” traded down another ~10–15% from their January 2022 levels, that move would mark or closely coincide with the bottom of the broader equity selloff and “most of the pain” would be over.

In reality, both the indices and the big tech names fell far more than that after January 2022, and the bear market bottom came many months later:

• Broader market: The S&P 500 peaked on January 3, 2022 and didn’t bottom until October 12–13, 2022, with a peak‑to‑trough decline of about 25%, a classic bear market.(campaignforamillion.com) The tech‑heavy Nasdaq Composite suffered an even worse bear market from its November 2021 high through December 2022, with a drop of roughly 33% and a 2022 total return of ‑33.5%.(nasdaq.com) That means a large share of the eventual damage occurred well after an extra 10–15% pullback from January levels.

• Big tech “generals” from Jan 21, 2022 closes to their 2022 lows:

  • Apple (AAPL): $159.07 → $124.17 low (Dec 28, 2022), about ‑22%.(statmuse.com)
  • Microsoft (MSFT): $287.44 → ~$209 low (Nov 3, 2022), about ‑27%.(statmuse.com)
  • Amazon (AMZN): $142.64 → $81.82 low (Dec 28, 2022), about ‑43%.(statmuse.com)
  • Alphabet (GOOGL): $129.46 → $83.34 low in 2022, about ‑36%.(statmuse.com)
  • Meta (META): $301.31 → $88.37 low (Nov 3, 2022), about ‑71%.(statmuse.com)

In other words, after these stocks had fallen the extra 10–15% from their January 2022 levels, they continued to drop dramatically further, and the broader market did not bottom until October 2022, after much deeper losses. Since we now know that the October 2022 lows marked the end of that bear market cycle and the start of the current bull run, Chamath’s threshold for when “most of the pain” would be over was substantially too shallow and too early.(blog.commonwealth.com)

The prediction is about long‑term ("following decades") negative consequences of COVID‑driven school closures, as seen in places like Flint, Michigan. Only about three years have passed since the podcast release on 22 January 2022, far short of the multi‑decade horizon needed to evaluate whether those long‑term effects "will be evident".

Early research does show measurable short‑term and medium‑term harms from pandemic‑era school closures—such as significant learning loss and widening achievement gaps in U.S. K–12 students, especially in disadvantaged districts—but these findings cover only the first few years after closures, not outcomes over decades. For example:

• Multiple studies using standardized test data (e.g., NAEP and state assessments) report substantial declines in math and reading performance after COVID disruptions, with larger losses in high‑poverty schools.
• Researchers and policy reports warn that these losses may have long‑run consequences for earnings and socioeconomic mobility, but those are projections and modeling exercises, not observed decades‑later outcomes.

Because the prediction specifically concerned effects that would be evident when outcomes are evaluated over the following decades, and we are still in the early 2020s, there is not yet direct empirical evidence to confirm or refute the long‑term outcome part of the claim. Therefore, it is too early to judge whether this prediction is ultimately right or wrong.

The prediction is explicitly about how people will evaluate the pandemic 20 years after it ("we look back in 20 years"). As of now (2025), we are only a few years past the peak COVID-19 period (2020–2021), so the 20-year horizon has clearly not elapsed. Because the claim concerns what future historians and policymakers will regard as the “single biggest” cost—something inherently about long-run retrospective consensus—it simply cannot be verified or falsified yet. Therefore, it is too early to determine whether this prediction is right or wrong.