Friedberg’s prediction was that by the end of 2022 the United States would enter “some sort of conflict” (military or quasi‑military) abroad, with the “economic seed” for that conflict already planted.

Key facts:

1. No new formal U.S. war or direct interstate armed conflict began in 2022.
   After Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the U.S. and NATO explicitly refused to enter direct combat with Russia. President Biden repeatedly emphasized that American forces would not fight Russia in Ukraine, warning that a NATO–Russia clash would mean World War III. (scroll.in) There was continued limited U.S. use of force (e.g., airstrikes in Syria against Iran‑linked groups), but these were extensions of longstanding operations, not a clearly new, large external conflict sparked in 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. However, U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war was extremely deep and military in character.
   From early 2022, the U.S. became Ukraine’s dominant military supporter, sending tens of billions of dollars of weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance, including artillery, HIMARS, air-defense systems, and more. (en.wikipedia.org) Many analysts and officials (on both Western and Russian sides) have described the conflict as a proxy or quasi‑military war between NATO/the U.S. and Russia, with Ukraine as the primary battlefield, arguing this can be fairly characterized as a NATO–Russia proxy war. (link.springer.com) Other expert and institutional analyses explicitly push back on calling it a U.S. proxy war, framing it instead as Ukraine’s own defensive war supported by external aid. (debunk.org) Whether this level of indirect military engagement counts as the U.S. “entering some sort of conflict” is therefore contested and depends heavily on definitions.

3. Economic drivers were at most indirect.
   In the quoted segment, Friedberg explicitly links his prediction to economic conditions—weak productivity, trade issues, and the idea that policymakers might seek political and economic unity through conflict. (podscripts.co) The main 2022 conflict involving extensive U.S. involvement (Ukraine) was precipitated by Russia’s invasion and long‑running security disputes over NATO expansion, not by U.S. domestic economic stress. While energy prices, sanctions, and broader economic considerations quickly became central to the war’s global impact, the causal chain from U.S. economic weakness to U.S. conflict engagement is indirect at best and not cleanly demonstrable.

Why this is ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong:

• If you define “entering a significant external conflict” to require U.S. troops or a formal state of war / belligerency, then the prediction did not come true: U.S. leaders worked hard to avoid exactly that in 2022. (scroll.in) And no new U.S. war clearly traceable to economic motives began that year.
• If you accept that sustained, large‑scale arming, training, and intelligence support in what many describe as a proxy war constitutes a “quasi‑military” conflict, you could argue the prediction did come true in spirit, although the economic‑causation part remains weakly supported and speculative.

Because reasonable observers can and do disagree on whether this level of indirect involvement qualifies as the U.S. “being in some sort of conflict” and on how much economics versus security politics drove it, the fulfillment of the prediction turns on contested definitions and causal interpretations. That makes the outcome ambiguous rather than clearly right or clearly wrong.