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Key elements of Chamath’s April 2022 prediction all occurred:

• Multiple 50 bp and at least one 75 bp hike: After his comment, the Fed raised rates by 50 bps in May 2022 and again in December 2022, and delivered four consecutive 75 bps hikes in June, July, September, and November 2022.(forbes.com) This matches “a lot of 50s, maybe even a 75 point hike.”

• Quantitative tightening ramped to about $95B/month: In May 2022 the Fed formally adopted its balance-sheet reduction plan, with caps starting at $30B Treasuries and $17.5B MBS per month in June, rising after three months to $60B and $35B respectively—i.e., up to $95B/month in runoff.(federalreserve.gov) That is effectively the QT pace he described.

• Major equity “crack” / bloodletting: From their pre-2022 highs, U.S. equities fell sharply as these hikes and QT proceeded. The S&P 500 dropped about 25.4% peak‑to‑trough in 2022 (4,796 on Jan 3, 2022 to 3,583 on Oct 12, 2022), and finished the year down 19.4%.(twitter.com) The Nasdaq Composite fell roughly 33–36% from its 2021 peak to its late‑2022 low and ended 2022 down about 33%.(statmuse.com) These are widely characterized as a bear market rather than “hovering near prior highs,” consistent with his notion of a market “crack” or “bloodletting.”

Although he slightly over-emphasized 50 bp moves relative to the (ultimately larger) sequence of 75 bp hikes, the substance of his forecast—that the Fed would aggressively hike (including 75s), ramp QT to roughly $95B/month, and persist until a major equity drawdown occurred—matches what actually happened. Therefore the prediction is best scored as right.

Over the ~18‑month window from about April 2022 to October 2023, the venture market shifted sharply away from 2020–2021’s founder‑friendly environment toward investor‑driven, market‑price terms for most startups.

Key evidence:

• Sharp rise and persistence of down rounds. Carta data show that down rounds were only about 5.2% of financings in Q1 2022 but climbed to roughly 18–20% of all rounds through 2023, marking the highest quarterly down‑round rates since at least 2018 and a sustained period where nearly one in five rounds reset valuations downward. (carta.com) This is consistent with founders being unable to dictate prior (2021‑style) terms and instead accepting market‑clearing valuations.

• Power shift to investors and tougher deal terms. TechCrunch, summarizing Carta’s Q1 2023 data, reported that down rounds nearly quadrupled year‑over‑year to about 18.7% of deals and explicitly noted that power had shifted back to VCs. It also found investor‑friendly terms—such as participating preferred stock and stronger liquidation preferences—“spiked sharply” versus late 2022, indicating investors were imposing stricter structures rather than conceding to founder‑friendly terms. (techcrunch.com)

• Silicon Valley deal terms becoming more investor‑friendly. A 2023 analysis describing the venture environment as “so investor‑friendly” notes that high rates and inflation forced startups to "relent to less‑friendly deal terms," with the balance of power swinging to investors. Fenwick & West’s Silicon Valley data, cited there, show pay‑to‑play provisions in financings jumping to their highest level since at least early 2021, another sign founders had to accept harsher, market‑driven conditions. (moonfare.com)

• Private markets characterized as selective and investor‑driven. PitchBook/San Francisco Business Times data for Q2 2023 show around 14% of U.S. VC deals were down rounds, nearly double the prior quarter and the highest growth rate for down rounds in a decade, with commentary that private markets had become more selective and investor‑friendly, putting founders under pressure to extend runway and accept what capital they could get. (svproptech.com)

• Broader commentary on a prolonged funding downturn. Other analyses describe a cooling investor climate that began in late 2022 and continued through 2023, with about 20% of U.S. venture deals in Q1 2023 being down rounds and many founders resorting to bridge financing or accepting lower valuations. (duetpartners.com) The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023 further tightened conditions for startup financing and venture debt. (en.wikipedia.org)

While some exceptional companies—especially in hot areas like AI—still raised on founder‑friendly terms, the general environment for founders, particularly in tech and Silicon Valley, was an extended period in which raising capital typically meant accepting investor‑driven, market‑reset terms (lower valuations, more structure, and stricter preferences). That matches Chamath’s prediction of an ~18‑month stretch where founders "cannot raise money on [their] terms" and instead must raise on market terms, so the prediction is judged right in substance.

Nine months after April 2022 is roughly January 2023. By that time, international agencies were warning of and measuring a global food crisis and rising acute food insecurity, not the onset of a clearly defined, world‑wide famine.

• The technical standard for famine (IPC Phase 5) requires extreme food deprivation, very high child malnutrition and elevated mortality, and is declared for specific areas, not the whole planet. (en.wikipedia.org) In 2022–23 there were countries at risk of or experiencing localized famine, but no body declared a global famine or something equivalent.
• The Global Report on Food Crises found 258 million people in 58 countries facing acute food insecurity (IPC 3–5) in 2022, a very serious level that WFP and the UN described as a global hunger crisis and a “year of unprecedented hunger,” but still framed in terms of severe food insecurity, not a new, time‑stamped global famine event beginning in early 2023. (reddit.com)
• FAO analysts in mid‑2022 explicitly said there was no global food shortage, but rather a price and access crisis aggravated by the Ukraine war and energy costs—again distinguishing between supply‑adequate crisis conditions and outright global famine. (aljazeera.com)
• UN "State of Food Security" data show that global undernourishment hovered around 9–10% of the world population in 2022–2023 (roughly 730–760 million people), continuing a worrying upward trend since 2020 but without a sharp break beginning in January 2023. (lemonde.fr)
• The Ukraine war and fertilizer/energy shocks did drive food prices sharply higher in 2022, but the Black Sea Grain Initiative and other measures partially stabilized markets and brought global food prices down from their March 2022 peak by mid‑2023, even though prices stayed above pre‑pandemic levels. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Actual famine declarations after 2022 were localized: for example, Haiti (famine declared September 2024), parts of Sudan (famine confirmed or projected 2024–25), and Gaza (famine confirmed 2025). These crises are attributed primarily to local conflict, blockades, governance collapse and climate shocks, with the Ukraine war and fertilizer markets appearing only as background factors, not the dominant cause of a single synchronized global famine beginning in early 2023. (en.wikipedia.org)

So while the spirit of the concern—escalating global hunger and severe food crises worsened by the Ukraine war—was directionally valid, the specific prediction that a distinct, Ukraine‑driven global famine would begin around January 2023 does not match how events and official assessments unfolded. On that basis, it is best judged wrong.

Scope of the prediction
Friedberg predicted that over the 1–2 years after April 2022:

• The U.S., Western Europe, and China would avoid major food crises (i.e., no systemic, humanitarian-level food emergency), while
• Sri Lanka and Northern/Eastern Africa would experience severe food-supply distress or crisis conditions.

1. U.S., Western Europe, China: higher prices, but no major food crisis

• FAO’s 2023 Statistical Yearbook reports that the prevalence of undernourishment in Northern America and Europe remained below 2.5% in 2020–2022, far lower than other regions, and that dietary energy supply in these regions was among the highest in the world. This indicates no broad-based food shortage or humanitarian food crisis, despite inflation. (fao-test.atmire.com)
• FAO’s 2023 Regional Overview for Europe and Central Asia notes that, although costs rose, the number of moderately or severely food-insecure people actually declined between 2021 and 2022, and regional undernourishment stayed below 2.5%, again inconsistent with a major food crisis. (fao.org)
• A summary of the 2022–2023 global food crises lists regions most affected by shortages and unrest—Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Iraq—and does not include the U.S. or Western Europe as crisis epicenters; there, the impact was primarily high prices and cost-of-living pressure, not systemic inability to access staple food. (en.wikipedia.org)
• For China, the same global-crises overview notes that China entered 2022 with historically high grain stockpiles (over half of global wheat and rice reserves), aimed precisely at insulating itself from global shocks. (en.wikipedia.org) Reuters subsequently reports record grain harvests in 2023 and 2024—around 695–700+ million tons—underscoring that China maintained ample domestic grain supply through the period. (reuters.com)

Taken together, these data support the claim that the U.S., Western Europe, and China experienced significant food-price inflation and policy concern, but not a large-scale humanitarian food crisis in the 1–2 years after April 2022.

2. Sri Lanka: clear food crisis and severe distress

• A joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment (Sept 2022) found 6.3 million Sri Lankans (about 30% of the population) facing moderate to severe acute food insecurity, warning that the situation was expected to deteriorate without urgent assistance. (wfp.org)
• DW reported in Sept 2022 that Sri Lanka was “on brink of food crisis”, with food-price inflation around 90%, about 30% of the population food-insecure, and one in four people regularly skipping meals. (dw.com)
• Subsequent analyses of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis describe 2022 as its worst financial crisis since independence, with default on foreign debt, inflation near 70%, and widespread shortages of essentials, leaving many households cutting food intake and suffering malnutrition into 2023. (en.wikipedia.org)

These are precisely the “mess”/crisis conditions Friedberg anticipated.

3. Northern & Eastern Africa: severe, large-scale food crises

• WHO and WFP describe the greater Horn of Africa (covering much of Eastern/Northeastern Africa) as facing one of the worst droughts in decades, compounded by conflict, COVID-19, and rising food prices partly driven by the war in Ukraine, leaving millions acutely hungry. (who.int)
• WHO situation reports for 2023 classify the Greater Horn of Africa as a Grade 3 emergency, with around 49–61 million people in IPC Phase 3+ (crisis or worse), including millions in IPC Phase 4 (emergency) and tens of thousands in IPC Phase 5 (catastrophe/famine) across countries like Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan. (who.int)
• Additional UN and FAO materials confirm that Africa had by far the highest regional hunger rates, with undernourishment near 20% and food crises particularly intense in conflict- and climate-affected states in East and North(-East) Africa. (en.wikipedia.org)

These conditions match the prediction that Northern and Eastern Africa would be “a mess”, i.e., suffer severe food-supply distress and crisis-level insecurity, especially as Ukraine-related fertilizer and grain shocks propagated.

Overall assessment

• In the Global North regions he named (U.S., Western Europe, China), the data show serious price inflation but no systemic, humanitarian food crisis during the 1–2 years after April 2022.
• In Sri Lanka and Northern/Eastern Africa, the same period saw exactly the kind of acute, widespread food insecurity and crisis conditions he described.

Given that his prediction was qualitative and regional (who would be in crisis vs. who would largely avoid it), the observed outcomes align closely with his claims. Hence the prediction is best judged as right.

Open-source timelines show that the large‑scale Russo‑Ukrainian war that began with Russia’s full invasion on 24 February 2022 has continued without a formal settlement or stable ceasefire and is explicitly described as ongoing through at least late 2025, well past 2022.(en.wikipedia.org) The dedicated article on the eastern front notes continuous operations in eastern Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv regions) from 24 February 2022 to the present, again with status listed as ongoing and specifying that Russia controls a large share of the Donbas as of October 2025.(en.wikipedia.org) This confirms that active or simmering conflict in and around the Donbas and disputed eastern territories persisted for years rather than ending quickly in 2022.

Separately, Joe Biden’s presidency is documented as running from January 20, 2021, to January 20, 2025.(en.wikipedia.org) Since the war remained ongoing throughout this period and continued to dominate foreign‑policy and security discussions, it did in fact become a long‑running, background feature of Biden’s entire term, matching Sacks’s characterization that it would “go on for a long time” and effectively define the backdrop of his presidency rather than being resolved quickly.

Given that: (1) the war did not end in 2022, and (2) it continued in active/simmering form throughout Biden’s presidency and beyond, the prediction that the Russia‑Ukraine war centered on the Donbas and eastern territories would remain a long‑term feature of Biden’s presidency is accurately borne out by subsequent events.

Evidence shows Donald Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated far earlier than three years after his January 2021 ban.

• Trump was permanently banned from Twitter in January 2021 after the January 6 Capitol attack.
• After Elon Musk acquired Twitter in late October 2022, he ran a public poll on November 18–19, 2022 asking whether to reinstate Trump.
• Following that poll, Musk announced on November 19, 2022 that “Trump will be reinstated,” and Trump’s account was restored that day, roughly 22 months after the ban—not “after three years,” i.e., early 2024. (cnbc.com)

While Chamath was directionally correct that Twitter would eventually decide it was acceptable for Trump to return, the normalized prediction explicitly ties that decision to the three‑year mark (“roughly three years after” / “after three years”). In reality, the platform (under new ownership) reached that conclusion and reinstated him in late 2022, well before the predicted timeframe. Therefore, judged against the stated timing, the prediction is wrong.