Chamath’s claim was conditional and qualitative: if a moderate/centrist agenda failed to gain traction, the U.S. would be “headed to 50 balkanized states operating independently.” Whether that has happened by late 2025 is not cleanly measurable.

Key considerations:

• No clear centrist breakthrough, continued polarization. Gallup and other data show the national electorate still splits roughly into thirds ideologically, but each major party’s base has moved away from the center: by 2025 about 77% of Republicans identify as conservative and only 18% as moderate, while 55% of Democrats identify as liberal and just 9% as conservative, with moderates a minority in both parties.(en.wikipedia.org) Centrist projects such as No Labels attempted a bipartisan “unity ticket” for 2024 but ultimately abandoned the effort for lack of a viable candidate, underscoring how little institutional space a self‑consciously centrist movement has captured at the national level.(en.wikipedia.org) This supports the antecedent (“if centrism doesn’t gain traction”).

• Marked increase in state‑level policy divergence. Since Dobbs (2022), abortion is governed almost entirely at the state level. The result is a highly fragmented map: roughly a dozen-plus states with near‑total bans, others with early‑term bans, and around half the states plus D.C. actively protecting or constitutionalizing abortion access, producing what analysts repeatedly describe as a complex, patchwork legal landscape and even “abortion deserts.”(reuters.com) Similar red–blue splits have intensified on gun laws (where advocacy groups talk about “two Americas” in terms of public safety outcomes),(americanprogress.org) and on voting rules and election administration, where work on “laboratories of autocracy” and democratic backsliding documents large, partisan‑driven differences among state regimes.(ouci.dntb.gov.ua) These trends plausibly fit the spirit of states behaving more like separate political systems on key rights.

• But the U.S. is not literally 50 semi‑independent polities. Despite this divergence, federal supremacy, national parties, and an integrated national economy remain dominant. There has been no legal fragmentation of the union, no move toward formal confederation, and on many major domains (defense, currency, most federal benefits and taxation) the system is still nationally uniform. Analysts typically describe “two Americas” (red vs. blue blocs, often along an urban–rural divide) rather than 50 quasi‑independent state entities.(en.wikipedia.org) Chamath’s language (“50 balkanized states operating independently”) is metaphorical and lacks a clear empirical threshold at which it is unambiguously satisfied.

• Vague timing and definitions. The prediction speaks of being “headed to” this condition “over the ensuing years,” without specifying how many years or what concrete indicators would mark arrival. Reasonable observers could look at the same evidence—persistent polarization, sharp state‑policy splits, but continued strong federal integration—and disagree on whether it amounts to the U.S. ‘evolving toward’ a de facto balkanized system.

Because both the antecedent (no centrist surge) and some elements of the consequent (growing, state‑driven patchwork on core rights and rules) are partly supported by evidence, yet the key concept of “50 balkanized states operating independently” is inherently subjective and not clearly realized or falsified by 2025, the forecast cannot be judged definitively right or wrong. Hence the assessment: ambiguous.