Available data through late 2025 do not show the kind of spending reallocation Chamath described.

On the restaurant/discretionary side, U.S. spending on food away from home (restaurants, fast food, etc.) has risen strongly since 2022. USDA’s Economic Research Service reports record per‑capita food spending in 2023, with a 12% jump in food‑away‑from‑home spending that pushed it to the highest share of total food dollars since the series began; that share climbed further in 2024 to about 58.5% of all food expenditures. (ers.usda.gov) The National Restaurant Association notes that, in real (inflation‑adjusted) terms, spending at eating and drinking places in Q2 2025 reached an all‑time high and is roughly on or above its pre‑pandemic trend line. (restaurant.org) BLS data similarly show food‑away‑from‑home’s share of food spending rebounding after COVID and remaining robust through 2023. (bls.gov) None of this is consistent with a noticeable consumer pullback from restaurant meals.

On the privacy/protection side, markets for consumer cybersecurity and privacy tools (antivirus, VPNs, identity‑theft protection, password managers, etc.) are growing, but from a much smaller base and largely for reasons like rising cyber threats and remote work, not clearly because households are cutting other consumption to fund them. Global consumer cybersecurity software revenue was about $7.8B in 2022 and is projected to reach around $20.2B by 2032 (≈10% CAGR). (alliedmarketresearch.com) Other analyses put 2024 consumer cybersecurity or “computer security for consumer” markets in the low‑ to mid‑tens of billions of dollars worldwide—orders of magnitude smaller than U.S. restaurant spending alone, which is in the trillions. (emergenresearch.com) VPN‑specific surveys do not show a clear surge driven by privacy awareness: one 2025 report finds U.S. VPN usage declining since 2023, with many users on free options rather than paid subscriptions. (security.org)

More importantly, there is no evidence that the growth in privacy tools is funded by cutting back on restaurants or other similar discretionary spending. Macro data show restaurant spending growing strongly at the same time that consumer cybersecurity markets expand, and privacy‑economics research generally finds that although people say they care about privacy, they are often reluctant to pay significant amounts or change convenient consumption habits to protect it. (scribd.com) Given that (1) restaurant spending is at record highs rather than falling, (2) privacy‑tool spending is still relatively small in household budgets, and (3) there is no documented substitution effect from dining‑out to privacy services, the specific prediction that a “meaningful” share of consumers would reallocate money away from restaurant meals to paid privacy protections has not materialized.

Because enough time has passed (over three years) and the observable trends move in the opposite direction of the claimed pendulum shift, this prediction is best classified as wrong.