So I don't know what to say, except that it does not seem to be escalating. And the reason it isn't escalating is that there is enough emotional impact that's causing people to understand that the stakes are high. And so when the actual actions are relatively de-escalatory, I find that the rhetoric ratchets up right. It's almost inversely proportional.View on YouTube
Chamath’s claim was that in the months after October 27, 2023, both the Israel‑Hamas and Russia‑Ukraine wars would stay “slow and simmering,” with relatively de‑escalatory actions (even if rhetoric intensified), and without rapid military escalation to a much larger regional or world war.
What actually happened:
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Israel–Hamas / Middle East theater:
- Israel’s Gaza campaign expanded from airstrikes into a full‑scale ground invasion beginning in late October 2023, with very high casualties and destruction.
- The conflict rapidly spilled over regionally: sustained cross‑border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, with thousands of rocket and missile exchanges recorded and growing concern about a much wider Israel–Hezbollah war.
- Iran‑aligned Houthis launched dozens of drone and missile attacks on commercial and naval shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, explicitly tying them to the Gaza war, prompting repeated U.S.–UK and allied air and naval strikes in Yemen. These strikes and Houthi attacks persisted and intensified into 2024. (cnbc.com)
- On 13 April 2024, Iran launched its first ever direct large‑scale missile and drone barrage on Israel from Iranian territory—hundreds of projectiles in a single night—widely described as a major escalation carrying serious risk of a region‑wide war. (aljazeera.com)
- Subsequent analysis by CSIS and others characterized the Israel–Hezbollah–Iran front as a dramatically widened and more violent regional conflict, with a sharp increase in the number and geographic spread of strikes compared with late 2023. (csis.org)
These developments contradict the idea that “actual actions are relatively de‑escalatory” and that there would be no rapid escalation toward a much larger regional war. The Middle East conflict clearly expanded beyond a “slow and simmering” bilateral fight.
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Russia–Ukraine war:
- From late 2023 through 2024–2025, the Russo‑Ukrainian war largely remained an attritional conventional conflict confined to Ukraine’s territory, with major but geographically limited offensives such as the Pokrovsk and Sumy campaigns and no direct NATO combat deployment. (en.wikipedia.org)
- NATO states repeatedly stressed they would not send combat troops to avoid a direct NATO–Russia war, and that line has held, so this part of his intuition (no rapid escalation to world war via Ukraine) has been broadly accurate. (aljazeera.com)
However, his prediction was jointly about both conflicts and specifically about actions staying relatively de‑escalatory and not jumping into a much larger regional war. Given the substantial, fast‑moving regional escalation of the Israel‑Hamas conflict into a broader Israel–Iran–Hezbollah–Red Sea theater, that core claim did not hold. Even though the Ukraine portion was roughly right, the overall prediction—as stated—is best judged wrong.