Sacks

The prediction was: when Democrats next control the presidency, House, and Senate simultaneously (a federal trifecta), Senate Democrats will use the nuclear option to abolish the legislative filibuster.

Key facts:

• The last Democratic federal trifecta occurred during the 117th Congress (January 2021–January 2023), when Democrats held the House, controlled the Senate via the vice president’s tie‑breaking vote, and Joe Biden was president. That trifecta ended on January 3, 2023, before this November 7, 2025 podcast episode. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In the 118th Congress (2023–2025), Republicans controlled the House while Democrats (with independents who caucused with them) controlled the Senate and Biden remained president—so there was no Democratic trifecta. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In the current 119th Congress (2025–2027), Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and Donald Trump is president, so the federal government is under unified Republican, not Democratic, control. (en.wikipedia.org)
• As of late 2025, the 60‑vote legislative filibuster is still in place; recent coverage describes it as an ongoing constraint on ordinary legislation, and debates about ending it are framed as a future possibility, not something that has already happened. (politifact.com)

Because there has been no new Democratic federal trifecta after the date of the prediction, the condition that would trigger the test of Sacks’s claim has not yet occurred. We therefore cannot say whether Democrats would, in fact, abolish the filibuster under those future circumstances.

So the prediction remains untested and is too early to judge.

As of 30 November 2025, Democrats do not have unified control of the federal government. Republicans hold the presidency (Donald Trump’s second, non‑consecutive term) and majorities in both the House and the Senate, i.e., a Republican trifecta, in the 119th Congress (2025–2027). (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the prediction is explicitly conditional on whenever Democrats next regain unified control (presidency + House + Senate), and that condition has not yet occurred, there is no way yet to test whether they “will eliminate the filibuster” at that future time.

Furthermore, current reporting shows the legislative filibuster is still in place in the Republican‑controlled Senate, with Majority Leader John Thune stating he lacks the votes to abolish it, despite pressure from President Trump. (nypost.com) This confirms that the rule has not yet been removed, but that still does not say what Democrats would do if and when they next control the presidency and both chambers.

So the prediction is too early to evaluate: the triggering scenario (Democratic trifecta) has not happened, making the outcome of the prediction unknown at this time.

As of late November 2025, the 2028 U.S. election cycle has not yet occurred (the presidential election will be held in November 2028), so we cannot know whether “socialist-aligned Democrats” will win national power within the three-year window described in the prediction. Because the evaluation date precedes the end of the forecast horizon, the prediction’s outcome cannot yet be determined and remains too early to call.

As of November 30, 2025, California has not yet imposed or collected a one‑time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. What exists is a proposed ballot initiative, the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, which would levy a one‑time 5% tax on the net worth of Californians worth over $1 billion and is currently in the signature‑gathering / qualification phase for the November 2026 ballot. (forbes.com)

News coverage and the campaign’s own materials all describe this as a proposal that still needs sufficient signatures and then voter approval before it could become law; none report that it has been enacted or that any such tax has been collected. (apnews.com)

Because the conditional trigger in the prediction (“If California successfully imposes a one‑time 5% wealth tax on billionaires and collects it”) has not occurred yet, we cannot evaluate whether the state will later repeat or extend such taxes. The prediction therefore remains too early to judge and is best classified as inconclusive at this time.

By November 30, 2025, there is no evidence that state-level “algorithmic discrimination” laws like Colorado’s SB 24-205 have resulted in AI models being legally required to embed DEI-style ideological constraints or “bias layers” in the way the prediction describes.

What these laws actually do so far:

• Colorado’s AI law (SB 24-205 / Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act) creates a duty of reasonable care for developers and deployers of high‑risk AI systems to avoid “algorithmic discrimination,” and requires risk management programs, impact assessments, notices, and disclosures. It treats violations as deceptive trade practices, but it does not prescribe specific ideological content or DEI-style balancing rules inside models. (linklaters.com)
• The law’s compliance date has been delayed from February 1, 2026, to June 30, 2026, giving more time for possible amendments; its framework remains focused on discrimination risk, not mandated DEI ideology. (linkedin.com)
• The statute explicitly targets high‑risk decision systems (employment, credit, housing, etc.), and commentary notes that general-purpose conversational AI used mainly to provide information with a policy against discriminatory content can fall outside the “high‑risk” scope. (americanbar.org)
• Other emerging state efforts (e.g., California AB 2930 on automated decision tools) similarly focus on preventing discriminatory outcomes and requiring assessments and transparency, not on embedding DEI ideological layers in mainstream foundation models. (employmentlawwatch.com)

On the federal side, there have been proposals to preempt state AI laws for a decade, and separate California laws addressing catastrophic AI risk and transparency for frontier models, but again, these do not mandate DEI-style ideological constraints in models. (washingtonpost.com)

Because:

1. The key state laws are not yet in force (Colorado’s core regime starts mid‑2026),
2. No law currently requires mainstream AI systems to hard‑code DEI-style ideological constraints as a condition of legality, and
3. The prediction is explicitly about where things will ultimately lead “if it’s not stopped,” with no clear time horizon,

there is not enough elapsed time or concrete regulatory outcome to say the prediction is either right or wrong. It remains a speculative, long‑term causal claim about regulatory drift, so the proper judgment as of now is inconclusive.

The prediction is explicitly long‑term: it concerns what will happen “over the coming years and decades” to employment, productivity, and living standards as AI diffuses. Only about six weeks have passed since the podcast’s release (17 Oct 2025 → 30 Nov 2025), far too short to judge decades‑scale claims.

Current evidence is mixed and still emerging:

• Multiple studies (Yale–Brookings, U.S. Census ABS, Fed and think‑tank reports) find that, so far, AI adoption has not caused large net job losses at the aggregate level; most firms report little change in worker numbers, with some retraining and localized displacement instead of mass unemployment. (theguardian.com)
• At the same time, there are meaningful pockets of disruption: higher unemployment and reduced hiring in AI‑exposed, especially entry‑level, white‑collar roles; job cuts explicitly attributed to AI; and concerns about a “jobpocalypse” for new graduates. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Research broadly agrees that AI can generate significant productivity gains at the task and firm level and may already have added a measurable boost to aggregate labor productivity, but the extent to which this will translate into widely shared higher living standards remains uncertain. (stlouisfed.org)

Because (1) the forecast horizon is many years to decades, (2) we are still in the very early stages of widespread AI deployment, and (3) the long‑run balance between displacement, new job creation, productivity gains, inequality, and living standards is not yet observable, there is not enough elapsed time or evidence to classify the prediction as right or wrong. It remains a plausible but untested long‑term scenario rather than a claim that can already be verified or falsified.

The prediction explicitly concerns “the foreseeable future (at least over the coming decade)” starting from the episode’s release on 17 October 2025, so it cannot reasonably be judged less than two months later (by 30 November 2025). A 10‑year labor‑market claim needs most or all of that horizon to play out.

Early evidence about AI and jobs is still mixed and preliminary:

• Surveys and regional data (e.g., New York Fed) find AI adoption rising but layoffs directly attributed to AI remain rare; many firms report using AI mainly as a productivity tool and plan to retrain workers, which aligns with the “AI as tool/augmentation” part of the claim, at least so far. (pymnts.com)
• Large workforce studies (e.g., SHRM 2025) show substantial task-level automation but relatively few jobs that are both highly automatable and free of non‑technical barriers to full replacement, suggesting transformation and partial automation rather than wholesale job loss for now. (shrm.org)
• Other analyses (Goldman Sachs Research, PwC, WEF and similar summaries) project that AI may eventually displace a meaningful share of jobs, but also emphasize uncertainty and the potential for offsetting job creation and productivity gains over many years, not weeks. (goldmansachs.com)
• Prominent experts like Geoffrey Hinton and Dario Amodei warn that AI could cause very large job losses by 2030, while others remain skeptical that such extreme outcomes are likely, underscoring that long‑term impacts remain unsettled. (news.com.au)

Because (1) the prediction is explicitly decadal, (2) only a tiny fraction of that period has elapsed, and (3) forward‑looking analyses still disagree about whether AI will mainly augment or substantially replace workers, there is not yet enough evidence to label the prediction as right or wrong. It is therefore too early to call.

As of November 30, 2025, it is far too early to determine whether this 2030-ish prediction is correct.

The claim is that by around 2030 (about five years after the October 2025 recording), OpenAI or its close infrastructure partners will be operating at least one data center of roughly 10 GW power capacity, with an intermediate ramp of ~2–3 GW in 2026–2027 and ~5 GW in the following couple of years.

Even with up‑to‑date news and industry reporting, there is no way in 2025 to verify what OpenAI’s or its partners’ data center fleet will look like in 2028–2030; at most we can observe current build‑outs, announced projects, and power contracts. Those do not constitute confirmation or refutation of a specific 2030‑scale outcome yet. Any judgment now would be speculative rather than factual.

Because the prediction’s evaluation window is centered on future years (2028–2030) and has not arrived, the correct status as of late 2025 is "inconclusive (too early)".

As of 30 November 2025, BRICS has not launched a unified, widely used, gold‑backed settlement currency for international trade, but the prediction’s time window ("the next few years," i.e., roughly until 2028) has not yet elapsed.

Current status:

• At the July 2025 BRICS summit in Rio, leaders explicitly did not launch a joint BRICS currency and instead prioritized local‑currency trade and development of the BRICS Pay payment platform. Analysts reviewing the summit concluded that any euro‑style BRICS currency is at least a decade away, with a possible settlement "unit of account" only around 2028–2030 and broader systems (like BRICS Pay) now targeted toward 2030.

  These same sources note that, as of October 2025, there is still no unified BRICS currency and no near‑term release date. (ebc.com)

• A detailed October 2025 analysis of Russia’s role in the project reports that the much‑touted BRICS common currency proposal was effectively shelved ahead of the 2024 summit and was not on the formal agenda at the 2025 summit, underscoring the lack of a currently functioning BRICS joint currency. (desk-russie.info)

• There is an emerging gold‑linked settlement architecture: the New Development Bank has set up a cross‑border settlement hub to facilitate BRICS trade under a gold‑influenced standard, and officials/analysts describe a proposed settlement unit (often called the “Unit”) backed 40% by gold and 60% by member currencies. However, this is described as a future or pilot‑stage mechanism, with operational targets around 2030 and pilots possibly starting in 2026—not as a presently widely used international settlement currency. (watcher.guru)

Given this, Sacks’s claim that we are unlikely to "see anything" like a BRICS gold‑backed currency in the next few years has not yet been falsified, but it also cannot yet be confirmed as correct, because there is still significant time before his implied horizon of ~2028. The appropriate rating therefore is “inconclusive (too early)”.

It’s too early to evaluate this prediction.

• The prediction, made on 10 October 2025, concerned “the next few years,” i.e., roughly the late‑2020s. That horizon (multiple years after 2025) has not yet elapsed as of 30 November 2025, so we cannot know whether average U.S. real GDP growth will indeed run at ~4–5% annually over that future period.
• Current realized data show recent U.S. real GDP growth in the 2–3% range, not 4–5%. For example, BEA estimates real GDP grew 2.5% in 2023 and 2.8% in 2024 on an annual basis, with quarterly annualized rates like 2.3–3.1% in late 2024. (bea.gov) Early 2025 data are mixed, with an advance estimate showing a 0.3% annualized decline in Q1 2025 and later revisions showing a 3.8% annualized increase in Q2 2025, underscoring short‑term volatility rather than a clear multi‑year 4–5% trend. (apps.bea.gov)
• However, the prediction explicitly refers to average growth over the coming “few years” conditional on regulatory choices around AI. Multi‑year averages cannot be inferred from a few quarters of data, and long‑run effects of AI build‑out on productivity and growth would reasonably take more time to manifest and be measured.

Because the specified time window (the late‑2020s) has not yet occurred, and the claim is about a multi‑year future path of GDP growth under certain policy conditions, the accuracy of the prediction cannot yet be determined.

As of November 30, 2025, Colorado’s SB 24-205 (the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act) has not yet gone into effect, and its implementation has been formally delayed to June 30, 2026. Multiple legal summaries note that lawmakers pushed the effective date from February 1, 2026 to June 30, 2026 during an August 2025 special session, precisely to reconsider and possibly revise the law’s obligations before they bite. (orrick.com)

The law, in its current form, imposes a duty of reasonable care to avoid “algorithmic discrimination” on developers and deployers of high‑risk AI systems used in consequential decisions (employment, credit, housing, healthcare, etc.). Compliance is framed around risk‑management programs, impact assessments, transparency, and disclosures, with a rebuttable presumption of reasonable care if those process requirements are met. (hrlawwatch.com) It does not explicitly require building a separate DEI or fairness “layer” that censors or reshapes all model outputs.

Importantly, the statute’s stringent provisions apply mainly to high‑risk decision systems, not to general‑purpose chatbots. Commentaries underline that generative AI systems like ChatGPT are generally out of scope unless they are actually used to make consequential decisions, in which case they are regulated only in that specific use context. (wsgr.com)

Public guidance for businesses preparing for the Colorado law focuses on governance—risk assessments, documentation, bias testing, consumer notice, and AG reporting—and does not show evidence that major model developers have rolled out Colorado‑specific DEI layers or a distinct “woke AI” behavior profile to comply with SB 24‑205. (seyfarth.com) The article quoting Sacks about a looming “woke AI” patchwork is commentary on what he thinks will happen, not documentation that such changes have actually been implemented. (meritalk.com)

Because (1) the law is not yet in force, (2) its final form may still change before June 30, 2026, and (3) there is no concrete evidence that developers have already adopted the specific compliance strategy Sacks predicted (a new DEI layer that suppresses outputs causing disparate impact, leading to jurisdiction‑specific “woke AI”), it is too early to determine whether his prediction will ultimately be right or wrong. Therefore the correct status is **“inconclusive (too early).”

As of November 30, 2025, it is too early to determine whether Sacks’s multi‑year prediction is right or wrong.

1. Timeframe not yet elapsed. The prediction explicitly concerns what will happen “over the next few years.” Only about two months have passed since the October 3, 2025 podcast. Key state AI laws that could test this prediction—like Colorado’s Artificial Intelligence Act—do not begin substantive effect until 2026 and have even had their effective dates pushed back, so their real-world impact on model behavior has not yet materialized. (infographics.bclplaw.marketing)

2. Blue / Democratic‑leaning states are advancing AI rules around algorithmic discrimination. Colorado’s AI Act (enacted 2024) is the leading example: it creates a comprehensive framework for “high‑risk” AI systems and expressly aims to prevent algorithmic discrimination in consequential decisions (employment, housing, credit, etc.). (infographics.bclplaw.marketing) New York and California have also pushed AI legislation and enforcement approaches that emphasize bias, civil rights, and consumer protection in automated decision‑making and hiring tools. (aitechtrend.com) This supports the first part of the forecast—that blue states would drive regulation framed around “algorithmic discrimination.”

3. No evidence yet of state‑specific “woke AI” model variants. The crucial second part of the prediction is that such state laws would force major AI providers to deploy state‑specific, DEI‑constrained model versions (“return of woke AI at the state level”). Public reporting on how companies are planning for Colorado-, California-, and New York‑style rules shows emphasis on documentation, risk‑management programs, transparency, and impact assessments, but does not report OpenAI, Google, Meta, or others shipping separate “Colorado‑only” or “California‑only” model forks with uniquely constrained outputs. (lathropgpm.com) In practice, commentators note that large companies often respond to the strictest state rules by raising their baseline standard nationwide (as happened with privacy and emissions rules), rather than building many jurisdiction‑specific products. (govfacts.org) That cuts against the mechanism Sacks predicts, but the relevant laws aren’t yet in full force, so this might still change.

4. Regulatory and political environment is still in flux. There is an active fight over whether states can keep or expand these rules: a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general has urged Congress not to preempt state AI regulations, while the Trump administration and allied groups have attacked certain state regimes as creating “woke” AI and are pushing for federal preemption or a single national approval regime. (reuters.com) Because this preemption battle is unresolved, it remains unclear whether blue‑state rules will ultimately be strong enough to compel the kind of state‑specific model behavior Sacks describes.

Given (a) the explicitly multi‑year horizon, (b) the fact that the most relevant state laws have not yet been implemented or enforced at scale, and (c) the lack of current evidence of state‑specific “woke AI” model variants, the prediction cannot yet be judged as clearly right or clearly wrong. The appropriate classification at this time is inconclusive (too early).

Evidence from 2025 shows that the dynamic Sacks described has clearly materialized, even though Congress has not yet enacted a comprehensive AI law:

• White House support for preempting state AI laws. President Trump’s signature budget reconciliation package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1), originated from the White House and was framed as his core second‑term agenda. The House‑passed version explicitly contained a 10‑year moratorium on “state‑level enforcement of any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence (AI),” i.e., a federal preemption of state AI rules built into Trump’s megabill.(en.wikipedia.org) Separately, reporting shows Trump personally asked Congress to add a provision blocking state AI laws to the National Defense Authorization Act, with plans to sue and defund states that passed such laws.(reuters.com) A leaked draft executive order, “Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National AI Policy,” would direct DOJ to challenge state AI statutes and declares the administration’s goal of a “minimally burdensome national standard — not 50 discordant state ones,” further confirming White House backing for a single, nationally determined AI regime.(arstechnica.com)

• Growing Republican legislative backing. The 10‑year moratorium was written by House Republicans into Trump’s flagship reconciliation bill and passed the House on a near‑party‑line vote, meaning a large share of GOP representatives voted to strip states of AI‑regulatory authority.(en.wikipedia.org) Coverage of the provision describes Republicans as arguing it is needed to avoid a “patchwork” of state rules and to give Congress time to pass a comprehensive federal AI framework — precisely the “single national standard” rationale Sacks anticipated.(notus.org) In the Senate, Republican leadership initially advanced versions tying federal AI funds to states refraining from AI regulation, and only later, after major backlash from state officials of both parties, did the Senate vote 99–1 to strip the AI‑preemption language from Trump’s megabill.(reuters.com) That sequence (House passage, then partial Republican retreat in the Senate) shows that substantial numbers of GOP lawmakers did in fact get “on board” with preemptive federal AI legislation before political costs forced a climb‑down.

• National‑standard framing vs. actual law on the books. Reuters and other outlets note that tech firms like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Andreessen Horowitz have been pressing for national AI standards to replace state rules, and that Trump’s efforts to block state laws through the budget bill and NDAA align with that push — even though, as of late November 2025, Congress still has not enacted an overarching federal AI regulatory framework.(reuters.com) Instead, the White House and allied Republicans have repeatedly tried to (a) stop states from regulating AI and (b) position federal authority as the locus of future AI rules, which matches Sacks’s substance: preempting blue‑state AI regulation in favor of a single, federally controlled standard.

Because Sacks’s prediction was about who would support what kind of policy (White House + an expanding bloc of Republicans backing federal preemption and a unified national approach), not about the ultimate success of those bills, the core elements he forecast have already occurred. The specific preemption provisions have been beaten back so far, and no comprehensive national AI statute exists yet, but his political prediction about Trump’s administration and Republican legislators lining up behind federal preemption of state AI rules is borne out by the 2025 record.

As of November 30, 2025, there is no recognized civil war occurring in the United States; political institutions, elections, and law enforcement remain functioning nationwide, and major news and academic sources describe U.S. tensions in terms such as polarization, political violence, and in some cases democratic backsliding or risk of civil conflict, but not an actual civil war.

However, the prediction is:

If the current trend of politically motivated violence and intolerance of opposing speech in the United States continues, it will ultimately lead to a civil war.

Key points:

• It is explicitly conditional ("if the current trend continues"). Whether that trend continues indefinitely is itself uncertain and not fully observable yet.
• It has no explicit timeframe (no date or generation specified), so it is a long‑range, effectively open‑ended prediction.
• Since a U.S. civil war is a large, discrete event that has not happened yet, we cannot say the prediction is correct.
• Because the timeframe is unspecified and we are still well within the future in which such an event could occur, we also cannot confidently label it wrong.

Given the lack of a specified deadline and the fact that the predicted event (a U.S. civil war) has neither occurred nor been rendered impossible, the status of the prediction as of November 30, 2025 is inconclusive rather than right, wrong, or permanently ambiguous.

The prediction concerns what actual federal revenue from U.S. tariffs will total over the decade following 2025 (roughly 2026–2035) under Trump-era policy. As of the current date (November 30, 2025), only a small fraction of that 10‑year window has elapsed, so it is impossible to determine whether realized tariff revenues will end up around $4 trillion or not.

Sacks’ quote describes a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projection (i.e., a forecast) of tariff revenues, not an outcome that can already be checked against final numbers. CBO baseline projections are forward‑looking estimates and are routinely revised; whether those projections ultimately prove accurate can only be evaluated after the full period has passed and actual collections are known, which will not be until around 2036 when data for the full 10‑year span are available.

Because:

• The relevant period is ~10 years after 2025.
• We are only in late 2025.
• Final tariff revenue data for that decade do not yet exist.

The correctness of the prediction cannot yet be evaluated. Therefore the appropriate status is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Sacks predicted that by October 14, 2025 (the Federal Circuit’s stay-expiry date) the U.S. Supreme Court would not issue a ruling requiring a material rollback or cessation of Trump’s then‑current tariff policy, and that the tariffs would remain substantially in place, with the option to rely on alternative statutory authority.

What actually happened by October 14, 2025:

1. Lower courts ruled the IEEPA tariffs illegal but stayed their effect.
   The Court of International Trade and then the Federal Circuit held that Trump’s broad “Liberation Day”/IEEPA tariffs exceeded his statutory authority, but the Federal Circuit stayed its ruling until October 14, 2025 to allow an appeal. These decisions expressly left the tariffs in place pending Supreme Court review. (law.justia.com)

2. Supreme Court took the case but did not decide it by October 14.
   On September 9, 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and fast‑tracked the consolidated cases Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (No. 24‑1287) and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. (No. 25‑250), setting oral argument for November 5, 2025. As of that date and through October 14, 2025, the docket listed the opinion as TBD and showed no merits ruling. (supreme.justia.com) A Brownstein client alert after argument similarly notes that the Court heard argument on Nov. 5 and that a decision is still pending. (bhfs.com)

3. Tariffs remained in force past October 14.
   Coverage of the appeals and Supreme Court grant consistently reports that, despite the illegality findings, Trump’s IEEPA‑based tariffs remained in effect during the appeal window and into the Supreme Court phase, at least through mid‑October. (apnews.com) Subsequent analyses after certiorari emphasize that the IEEPA tariffs will remain in effect pending the Supreme Court’s decision. (bhfs.com)

4. Trump’s broader tariff regime was still substantially intact.
   The “Liberation Day” tariffs—Trump’s signature second‑term global tariff policy imposed via Executive Order 14257 under IEEPA—continued to apply broad baseline and reciprocal tariffs on imports. (en.wikipedia.org) Other Trump tariffs under different statutes (e.g., Section 232 metals and autos, and separate Venezuela‑related tariffs) were unaffected by the IEEPA litigation and remained in place as well. (en.wikipedia.org) Commentary around the case also notes that, even if the IEEPA route is ultimately struck down, the administration can and intends to pivot to other statutory authorities to preserve tariff policy. (en.wikipedia.org)

Putting this together: By October 14, 2025, the Supreme Court had issued no merits ruling at all in the tariff cases, let alone one compelling a material rollback or cessation of Trump’s tariff policy, and Trump’s key tariffs remained substantially in effect. That matches Sacks’s prediction, including the core claim about the absence of a Supreme Court‑mandated rollback by that date.

The prediction explicitly covers a period through at least January 20, 2033 and asserts that no U.S. president after Trump, over that entire span, will fully repeal Trump‑era tariffs (i.e., no broad return to pre‑Trump tariff levels across major categories like Chinese imports and EVs).

As of November 30, 2025, that end date has not occurred, so it is impossible to know whether some future administration between now and January 20, 2033 might substantially roll back or restructure these tariffs. Even if we checked the current tariff regime today, that would only tell us whether the prediction is holding so far, not whether it is ultimately right or wrong over the full time window it specifies.

Because the relevant future period has not elapsed, the correctness of the prediction cannot yet be determined, so the only appropriate classification is "inconclusive (too early)".

As of November 30, 2025, the Supreme Court has not yet decided the consolidated tariff-authority case (Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., docket 24-1287 and 25-250). The Court accepted the case on September 9, 2025 and heard oral argument on November 5, 2025, but has not issued an opinion; coverage notes that a decision is expected by the end of the Court’s term in mid‑2026, not yet reached.

• The Learning Resources / V.O.S. Selections case is still pending at the Supreme Court; the questions presented concern whether IEEPA authorizes Trump’s tariffs and, if so, whether that statute is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. No decision is listed yet in the Court’s 2025 term entry for the case. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Reporting on the November 2025 oral arguments emphasizes that the justices have not ruled and that a decision is expected by summer 2026 / July 2026. (theguardian.com)

Sacks’s prediction is explicitly conditional: if Trump wins this pending Supreme Court case on tariff authority, then his administration will during this term (through January 20, 2029) seek to have Congress codify key parts of his tariff policy into statute. As of now:

1. The condition (“Trump wins the pending Supreme Court case”) has not yet been met or falsified, because the Court has not ruled.
2. Even if Trump eventually wins, the time window for the administration to try to get Congress to codify the tariffs runs until January 20, 2029, which is still more than three years away.

Because neither the legal predicate nor the time horizon has resolved yet, there is not enough information to say whether the prediction will ultimately be right or wrong. Hence the status is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Trump’s second term began on January 20, 2025 and is scheduled to run through January 20, 2029, so “the end of his current term” is still over three years away as of November 30, 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)

Following his August 11, 2025 executive order declaring a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., Trump federalized control of D.C. policing under the Home Rule Act and deployed more than 2,000 National Guard troops and federal law‑enforcement personnel in the city.(en.wikipedia.org) These deployments immediately drew legal challenges from D.C. officials.

On November 20, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that Trump’s National Guard deployment in D.C. is unlawful, granting a preliminary injunction ordering the administration to end the deployment and barring similar deployments without the mayor’s consent. The order is stayed for 21 days to allow appeal, and the administration has announced it will appeal.(oag.dc.gov) As of late November, Guard troops remain in D.C. and additional forces have even been requested after a fatal attack, while the injunction has not yet taken effect and higher courts have not ruled.(time.com)

Because (1) Trump’s term has only just begun and runs until 2029, and (2) the key D.C. case is at the preliminary-injunction stage with appeals pending, it is too early to know whether federal court challenges will ultimately invalidate the D.C. interventions or whether they will remain legally permitted “through at least the end of his current term.” Early signs from the district court cut against Sacks’s view, but the final legal outcome and long‑run permissibility are not yet determined. Therefore the prediction is best scored as inconclusive (too early to tell).

The prediction explicitly places most of the effects of the ~$8T in announced U.S. investment in the period “late 2026” and “2027” (per the quote: “We should see that in 2027. Maybe late 2026.”). As of the current date, November 30, 2025, that time window has not yet begun, so it is too early to evaluate whether the investment has “significantly” impacted the real economy in the way described. Therefore, the accuracy of this prediction cannot yet be assessed.

Evidence from multiple outlets and Fed-related summaries shows that at the September 16–17, 2025 FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve cut the federal funds target range by 25 basis points, from 4.25%–4.50% to 4.00%–4.25%, marking its first cut since December 2024—i.e., not a 50 bp move. (cbsnews.com)

At the subsequent meeting on October 28–29, 2025, the FOMC again lowered the target range by 25 basis points, to 3.75%–4.00%. Both the Fed’s own minutes and independent market commentary describe this as the second consecutive 0.25% rate cut, following the September move. (federalreserve.gov)

The next FOMC meeting is scheduled for December 9–10, 2025 and has not yet occurred as of November 30, 2025, but Sacks’ prediction only required that the Fed cut 25 bps in September and then deliver at least one additional 25 bp cut afterward—which has already happened with the October cut. (federalreserve.gov)

The prediction is primarily about conditions in 2026:

• A rate‑cut cycle starting in late 2025.
• Those lower rates stimulating US economic growth in 2026.
• An improved US fiscal position and a generally bullish US economy in 2026.

As of November 30, 2025, 2026 has not yet occurred, so we cannot assess:

1. Whether 2026 GDP growth, labor markets, markets, and broader conditions will in fact be “bullish.”
2. Whether the US fiscal position (deficit, debt trajectory, interest costs as % of GDP) will have improved during 2026 as a result of the rate‑cut cycle.

Even if we fully knew the Fed’s actions by late 2025 (e.g., whether they have begun cutting rates), the core of the prediction is about outcomes in 2026, which are still in the future relative to the current date. Because those outcomes cannot yet be observed or measured, the prediction cannot be judged as right or wrong at this time.

Therefore, the correct classification is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Available data show that U.S. retail gasoline prices in the months after summer 2025 stayed well below the 2022–2023 highs and did not spike back to those prior levels.

• In 2022, the national average price for regular gasoline hit an all‑time high of about $5.01/gal in June, with several months averaging close to or above $4/gal. (newsroom.acg.aaa.com) In 2023, the national average also remained elevated, with multiple months around $3.80–$3.90/gal and an annual average of about $3.52/gal. (lendingtree.com)
• By contrast, in 2025, national average retail regular gasoline prices have been around $3.10–$3.17/gal through the year, with the highest months (April and September) still far below 2022–2023 peaks. (ycharts.com)
• Specifically after summer 2025 (September onward), federal and private data show monthly averages of about $3.17/gal in September and $3.06/gal in October, and weekly averages in November around $3.06/gal, with Thanksgiving 2025 national averages reported near $3.05/gal—essentially flat to slightly lower than late‑2024 levels. (bts.gov) There is no evidence of any run‑up toward the $3.8–$5.0/gal levels seen in 2022–2023.
• The Energy Information Administration and other analyses further characterize 2025 gasoline prices as lower than in recent years, with projected 2025 average around $3.10/gal, below both 2023 and 2024, and trending down into 2026. (ajot.com)

Given that, in the months following summer 2025, gas prices remained relatively low compared with the 2022–2023 period and did not spike back to prior highs, Sacks’s prediction that “low gas prices don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon” has been borne out over the observable near term.

As of November 30, 2025, it is too early to definitively judge this prediction.

• No official recession call yet: The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), whose dating is the reference standard for U.S. business cycles, still lists the most recent peak as February 2020 and trough as April 2020, with no later recession yet identified.(nber.org) NBER typically announces peaks/troughs with an 8–22 month lag, so if a new recession began sometime in 2025, that would almost certainly not be announced yet.
• Mixed real‑time indicators: BEA data show real GDP fell slightly in Q1 2025 (about –0.6% annualized after revision) but then rebounded strongly, with Q2 2025 revised up to +3.8% annualized.(bea.gov) Forecasts going into late 2025 still point to positive growth (e.g., ~4% annualized Q3 nowcasts), and weekly jobless claims remain relatively low, arguing against an obvious, already-recognized recession.(reuters.com) However, the Sahm rule recession indicator was already triggered in 2024, and unemployment has drifted up into the mid‑4% range, signaling elevated recession risk.(congress.gov) New research (e.g., Michaillat’s classifier) even puts the probability that the U.S. was already in recession by May 2025 at about 70%, but that is an estimate, not a consensus declaration.(arxiv.org)
• Forecasters and markets see high risk, but no consensus that a recession has begun: Through 2025, mainstream forecasters (IMF, NABE surveys, Mark Zandi’s baseline, etc.) generally describe the U.S. as not yet in recession but at high risk, often highlighting that only parts of the economy or some states appear to be in recession.(reuters.com) Real‑money prediction markets (Kalshi, Polymarket) put 2025‑recession odds as high as ~60–70% in April 2025 but later reduced them to roughly 20–40% as trade tensions partially eased; they have not resolved any contract as a 2025 recession because that depends on a future NBER call.(wsj.com)
• Calendar year 2025 is not over and ex‑post dating is unknown: A recession could still begin in December 2025, and even if the turning point has already occurred earlier in the year, we won’t know how NBER (and thus most forecasters and betting markets) will ultimately date it until well into 2026 or later.

Because (1) the year has not fully elapsed, (2) NBER has not yet dated any new recession, and (3) there is genuine disagreement in high‑quality academic and market‑based indicators about whether a recession is already underway, we cannot presently say with confidence whether the U.S. did or did not "enter a recession" during 2025 under the definitions commonly used by forecasters and betting markets. Hence the prediction is best scored as inconclusive (too early) rather than clearly right or wrong.

The conditional part of the prediction has already been satisfied: Donald Trump began his second term as U.S. president on January 20, 2025, and Jerome Powell remains Federal Reserve Chair with a term running through May 2026. (en.wikipedia.org)

Under that Trump–Powell overlap, the Fed has cut rates. In September 2025, the FOMC lowered the federal funds target range from 4.25–4.50% to 4.00–4.25%, its first cut of the year. (pcbb.com) On October 29–30, 2025, the FOMC again reduced the target range by 25 bps to 3.75–4.00%, as confirmed by the Fed’s own minutes and statement. (federalreserve.gov) Both decisions occurred while Trump was president and Powell was chair.

Because the prediction was absolute (“He will not cut for Trump”) and a single counterexample is enough to falsify it, the existence of these rate cuts under Trump means the prediction is wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, the prediction covers a multi‑year horizon (“over the next several years,” normalized here as through at least 2028), so it is too early to determine whether the AI boom will persist without a sustained bust.

Evidence so far (late 2025) is broadly consistent with Sacks’s current view that we are in an AI investment boom/supercycle:

• Major analysts and banks still describe AI as driving a structural "supercycle" in markets and earnings, not a completed bubble and crash. (reuters.com)
• The Wikipedia “AI bubble” overview notes enormous and growing AI spending—US mega‑cap AI investment expected to exceed $1.1 trillion between 2026 and 2029 and total AI spending to surpass $1.6 trillion—alongside record valuations like Nvidia briefly reaching a $4 trillion market cap in 2025. This describes an ongoing boom, not a post‑bubble bust. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Forecasts from Dell’Oro and others project global data‑center capex—now heavily driven by AI accelerators—to grow at ~21% CAGR to around $1.2 trillion by 2029, with hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta) responsible for roughly half of that spending. They explicitly expect strong AI‑related investment through the second half of the decade, even if there may be a short‑term slowdown around 2026. (datacenterdynamics.com)
• Recent reporting shows big tech continuing to raise AI and data‑center capex guidance for 2025–2026—individual firms planning tens to over a hundred billion dollars each, with aggregate AI infrastructure spending well into the hundreds of billions and characterized as an ongoing “AI capex frenzy.” (investorplace.com)
• Coverage in outlets like the Washington Post frames AI data‑center and software spending as a key force “propping up” the U.S. economy in late 2025, with Google, Meta, and Microsoft all signaling further increases in AI‑related capex into 2026. (washingtonpost.com)

At the same time, many analysts and commentators argue that parts of the AI market are in a bubble and predict a correction or “burst” in late 2025 or 2026, though this remains forward‑looking opinion rather than an observed, sustained bust at this point. (forbes.com)

Since:

• The boom is clearly still ongoing in late 2025 (so the short‑term component of his view hasn’t been falsified), but
• The core of the prediction is explicitly multi‑year (through at least 2028), and future investment cycles, valuations, and commercial outcomes between 2026–2028 are unknown,

there is not yet enough elapsed time to judge whether AI will "broadly remain in a boom phase rather than entering a sustained bust" over the full period Sacks described. Therefore, the correct classification today is inconclusive (too early).

Sacks’ claim is about the “next several years” of AI development following a sustained supercycle of investment and progress rather than a short hype spike followed by collapse. As of November 30, 2025, only a bit over three months have passed since the August 22, 2025 episode—far short of “several years,” so the prediction’s full time horizon hasn’t elapsed.

Available data so far show:

• AI and especially generative AI funding hit record highs in 2024 and continued rising into 2025, with generative AI companies raising about $56B in 2024 and even larger totals projected for 2025. (techcrunch.com)
• In early and mid‑2025, AI captured a majority of global VC funding (over 50–60% of all venture capital), with large late‑stage “mega‑rounds” and massive capex by big tech firms (Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon) on AI infrastructure. (faf.ae)
• Reports throughout 2025 describe an ongoing AI investment boom or “gold rush,” alongside warnings of possible bubble dynamics and future corrections, but no clear evidence of a broad collapse by late 2025. (fortune.com)

These facts are consistent with the early phase of a supercycle rather than a popped bubble, but they do not settle the multi‑year claim Sacks made. A sharp correction or collapse could still occur after November 2025. Since the prediction specifically concerns the trajectory over the next several years, and that period has not yet played out, it is too early to say whether he was right or wrong.

Therefore the correct classification as of November 30, 2025 is: inconclusive (too early to tell).

The prediction is about a negative event over a multi‑year window: that “over the next few years (through at least 2028)” we won’t see large AI models enter a rapid, recursively self‑improving loop that yields a single runaway superintelligent AGI far ahead of all others, and that instead progress will remain incremental and competitive across multiple providers.

As of November 30, 2025:

• There is no credible public evidence of any AI system undergoing hard‑takeoff‑style recursive self‑improvement to become a runaway superintelligent AGI. Major labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, xAI, etc.) continue to report improvements via larger models, better training data, new architectures, and tools, but not via autonomous self‑modification that rapidly explodes capabilities beyond all others.
• The AI landscape remains competitive and multi‑polar: several labs provide cutting‑edge frontier models (e.g., GPT‑4‑class and successors, Claude‑class models, Gemini‑class models, etc.), and none is acknowledged as a qualitatively “runaway superintelligence” far beyond the rest. This matches the spirit of the prediction so far.

However, the prediction explicitly extends through at least 2028, and we are only at 2025‑11‑30. It could still be falsified by events in 2026–2028. Because the claim is “this won’t happen in the coming years,” you can’t call it definitively right before the end of the specified window.

So:

• So far (2025), observable reality is consistent with Sacks’s prediction.
• But it’s too early to say whether it holds for the entire period through 2028.

Therefore the correct classification today is "inconclusive" (too early to fully judge), even though current evidence aligns with the prediction.

The prediction is explicitly about conditions through at least the late 2020s (i.e., out to around 2028–2029). As of today, November 30, 2025, fewer than three years of that period have elapsed, so we cannot yet evaluate whether AI startup funding, corporate capex, and strategic M&A will remain elevated throughout the stated horizon.

We can already say that:

• AI investment and capex remained very high in 2024–2025 (e.g., continued multi‑billion‑dollar data center and GPU spend by hyperscalers, strong AI funding rounds, and active AI-related M&A), which is consistent with the near‑term part of the claim.
• However, the core of the prediction is that this elevated activity will not collapse like a burst bubble through the late 2020s, which cannot be confirmed or falsified until that time has actually passed.

Because the main time window of the forecast is still in the future, the only defensible evaluation today is that it is too early to tell whether the prediction ultimately proves correct.

The prediction is framed on a multi‑year timeline (“over the coming years” and then trial lawyers will end access), but we are only about three and a half months past the August 15, 2025 episode date—far too early to judge its long‑run accuracy.

1. AI as a global educational leveler (especially outside the U.S.)
There is clear early evidence of AI tutors and personalized learning being deployed worldwide:

• China uses AI tutors such as Squirrel AI to provide personalized instruction and help close urban‑rural education gaps. (weforum.org)
• South Korea and China are rolling out AI‑powered textbooks and national AI curricula aimed at personalized learning for all students. (sarrauteducacion.com)
• Adoption of AI education tools is growing rapidly in many regions, and India now leads global use of Google’s Gemini AI tutoring features. (sezarroverseas.com)
  However, major reports simultaneously warn of an “AI education divide”: adoption closely tracks income levels, with very low uptake in many low‑income countries, so global educational opportunities have not yet been “significantly leveled” in a decisive way. (sezarroverseas.com) Given the explicitly future‑oriented wording (“over the coming years”), this part of the prediction cannot yet be declared right or wrong.

2. U.S. trial lawyers / regulation restricting access to AI tools via “AI psychosis” claims
The phrase “AI psychosis” (or chatbot psychosis) has indeed entered public and scientific discourse, describing delusion‑like harms tied to chatbot use. (en.wikipedia.org) There are:

• High‑profile lawsuits such as Raine v. OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT contributed to a teenager’s suicide; media and expert commentary around this and similar cases frequently discuss “AI psychosis” and delusional reinforcement by chatbots. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Growing litigation and regulatory scrutiny of AI companions and mental‑health chatbots, including multiple U.S. state laws (e.g., Illinois’ Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act, and earlier laws in Utah and Nevada) that restrict AI from acting as a therapist, motivated partly by concerns about AI‑induced psychosis and unsafe crisis responses. (en.wikipedia.org)

However, these actions are narrowly focused on therapy / emotional‑support use cases and minors, not on educational tutoring more broadly. At the same time, U.S. educational institutions are actively expanding access to AI tools: for example, Indiana University’s 2025 rollout of ChatGPT Edu to all 120,000 students, faculty, and staff, and strong adoption of AI tutors in U.S. K‑12 and higher education markets. (worldhealth.net) There is no evidence that trial‑lawyer‑driven litigation or regulation has “ended your ability” to use AI‑based personalized education tools in the United States as of November 30, 2025.

Conclusion

• Elements of the setup Sachs describes (AI tutors spreading globally; lawsuits and laws invoking AI‑related psychological harms) are beginning to appear, but the key outcome he predicts—U.S. access to AI‑powered personalized education being shut down by trial lawyers and regulations framed around “AI psychosis”—has not occurred.
• Because the prediction explicitly concerns developments “over the coming years,” and current trends are still unfolding, it is too soon to categorize it as either right or wrong.

Therefore, the appropriate status for this prediction as of November 30, 2025 is "inconclusive" (too early to tell).

Trump’s administration implemented essentially the full policy bundle Sacks described: (1) an executive order in March 2025 (“Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful”) directing the National Park Service to promptly clear homeless encampments and graffiti on federal land and to coordinate broad clean‑up and law‑enforcement efforts in D.C.; (2) a crime‑emergency order on August 11, 2025, federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department and deploying National Guard and federal agents; and (3) an August 25, 2025 order to end “cashless bail” in D.C. by maximizing federal detention and pressuring the city over its no‑cash‑bail regime.(whitehouse.gov) Congress has also moved in Trump’s direction on juveniles, with House‑passed bills in September 2025 that would lower the age at which D.C. teens can be tried as adults for serious violent crimes and require youth sentences to match adult mandatory minimums, and prosecutors have already charged high‑profile 17‑year‑old suspects as adults.(wsj.com)

There is clear evidence of rapid, visible changes in “lawlessness” of the kind Sacks emphasized. Following the March order, Interior and the National Park Service were directed to remove all homeless encampments and graffiti on NPS‑managed land in D.C., and by mid‑August Park Police had already dismantled about 70 encampments, with only two left to clear.(whitehouse.gov) After the August crime‑emergency declaration, National Guard troops and federal agencies were put to work not only on patrols but also on trash pickup, graffiti removal, and dismantling additional encampments across popular areas like the Mall and Union Station, which contemporaneous coverage describes as a highly visible clean‑up and “beautification” drive.(theguardian.com) Critics note that many unhoused people remain on benches and in shelters, so the problem is far from solved, but the physical signs of disorder (tents, graffiti, trash) on federal land have been substantially reduced in a matter of months, not years.(reuters.com)

On crime levels, the data show a large and ongoing decline that continued through and after Trump’s D.C. measures, with at least some evidence of further short‑term improvement. Violent crime and homicides had already fallen sharply from a 2023 spike: D.C. recorded a 31–32% drop in homicides and about a 35–40% drop in overall violent crime in 2024 versus 2023, with carjackings nearly cut in half.(axios.com) By August 2025—around the time of the federal takeover—police data showed violent crime down about 26% year‑to‑date compared with 2024, with big declines in robberies and carjackings.(politifact.com) In the weeks immediately following Trump’s August 11 "crime emergency," media reports (drawing on MPD and federal figures) highlighted 12 consecutive days without a homicide and early operation statistics claiming double‑digit percentage drops in overall crime, robberies, carjackings, and violent crime, along with more than 1,000 arrests—evidence of a noticeable short‑term shift in measured crime and enforcement intensity.(nypost.com)

By late November 2025, independent fact‑checks using MPD data report that homicides in D.C. are down roughly 29% year‑over‑year and that violent crime is at its lowest level in more than 30 years, even while noting that Trump has exaggerated the extent of improvement in his rhetoric.(apnews.com) Those same analyses also emphasize that the downtrend began well before Trump’s August 2025 takeover, and some question whether the “crime emergency” was ever justified.(davisvanguard.org) However, Sacks’ normalized prediction only conditions on the policies being implemented and then anticipates that visible disorder and crime will fall noticeably within months rather than years. In the actual timeline, Trump’s D.C. orders were implemented, encampments and graffiti were aggressively cleared from federal spaces, and crime statistics continued to fall—with some additional short‑term improvements highlighted right after the crackdown—over the ensuing few months. On that narrow, outcome‑focused reading, the prediction that lawlessness and crime in D.C. would show a rapid, noticeable decline after the policies were put in place has come true, even though much of the improvement predates the federal takeover and cannot be cleanly attributed to it.

Trump’s D.C. crime initiative has clearly been implemented: through the March 2025 “Safe and Beautiful” executive order and task force, followed by the August 11, 2025 executive order federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department and deploying National Guard and federal agents under a declared crime emergency. (whitehouse.gov) Early data the administration cites show notable drops in some reported crime categories (e.g., violent crime and carjackings) since these measures, and federal officials and allied media are actively touting D.C. as a success of Trump’s crime crackdown. (whitehouse.gov) However, mainstream reporting and fact‑checks stress that D.C. crime was already at or near a 30‑year low before the takeover, that homicides have continued during the deployment despite Trump’s exaggerated public claims, and that there is an ongoing federal investigation into potential manipulation or underreporting of crime data. (theguardian.com) The crackdown is also highly controversial: polls show large majorities in D.C. and nationally opposing the deployment, a federal judge has ruled the Guard deployment unlawful (stayed pending appeal), and large national protests have targeted Trump’s broader use of federal forces. (en.wikipedia.org) Crucially for the prediction, no major national election cycle (e.g., the 2026 midterms) has yet occurred since the August 2025 takeover, and current coverage frames D.C. as a partisan flashpoint rather than as broadly accepted proof that Republican crime policies outperform Democratic approaches in deep‑blue cities. (washingtonpost.com) Because the key outcome—how the national political narrative and electoral dynamics evolve in subsequent election cycles—has not yet had time to play out, it is too early to determine whether this prediction will ultimately be borne out.

Sacks’ prediction was that if Democrats continued to oppose Trump’s federal takeover and crackdown in Washington, D.C., it would prove a political “trap” that harms Democrats and benefits Trump/Republicans in later national debates and elections.

What actually happened so far

1. Democrats did publicly oppose the move. Trump invoked emergency powers on August 11, 2025 to take control of the D.C. police and deploy federal law enforcement and the National Guard, over the objections of Mayor Muriel Bowser and other Democrats, who described it as exaggerated, authoritarian, and an attack on home rule. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Local opinion in D.C. favors opposition to Trump’s move. A Washington Post–Schar School poll of D.C. residents in mid‑August found about 8 in 10 oppose Trump’s federalization of law enforcement, and roughly two‑thirds say his actions will not help combat violent crime. A majority approve of Bowser’s performance, and nearly half say she should do more to oppose Trump; only a small minority want her to support him. (reddit.com) This undercuts the idea that, at least in D.C. itself, Democrats are on the “wrong” side of a public‑safety issue.

3. National opinion is mixed and issue‑specific:

   • On Trump’s handling of crime overall, polls show this is one of his relatively stronger issues: an AP‑NORC survey found about 53% of U.S. adults approve of his handling of crime, making it his best‑rated policy area. (ap.org) That does support the idea that a tough‑on‑crime frame helps him generally.
   • But when pollsters ask specifically about the D.C. takeover and troop deployment, support is much weaker. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in late August found only 38% support using the National Guard to police D.C. and 36% support taking over the local police, with a plurality opposed. (reuters.com) AP‑NORC similarly reports that a majority of Americans say it is unacceptable for the federal government to take control of local police departments, even while many approve of Trump’s crime stance overall. (reason.com) Some polls (e.g., Harvard CAPS/Harris) show slim majorities saying the D.C. crackdown is “justified and necessary,” but also majorities opposing formal federal control and viewing the move as a distraction. (harvardharrispoll.com) The net picture is no clear national consensus that the D.C. move itself is popular, even if Trump’s broader crime rhetoric resonates.
   • There is also no stable, growing Trump advantage on crime clearly tied to this episode. Coverage of subsequent polling notes that while crime remains a top concern and Trump often polls slightly better than Democrats on the issue, some surveys show the gap narrowing or even Harris edging Trump on “trust to handle crime” by late September, and others show them effectively tied. (newsweek.com) That’s the opposite of a clear, durable gain for Trump from Democrats’ opposition.

4. Electoral results so far don’t show Democrats paying a visible price:

   • The major post‑crackdown elections were the November 4, 2025 gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, both carried comfortably by Democrats (Abigail Spanberger in VA with about 58% of the vote; Mikie Sherrill in NJ with about 57%). (en.wikipedia.org) Analyses of these races emphasize voter anger at Trump’s economic policies and federal layoffs, not Democratic weakness on crime. In Virginia, exit polls pegged Trump’s approval at just 39% and highlighted discontent with his economic and federal‑workforce decisions; the D.C. policing issue was not identified as a GOP advantage. (en.wikipedia.org) These results don’t look like immediate punishment for Democrats over their stance on the D.C. intervention.

5. Timing relative to the prediction. Sacks tied the “trap” to “subsequent national political debates and elections,” implicitly looking toward the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential race. As of November 30, 2025, those contests have not happened yet, and we have only a few months of polling and some off‑year state elections to go on.

Why this is rated inconclusive, not right or wrong

• There is evidence that Trump’s law‑and‑order message, including the D.C. crackdown, has strengthened his standing on crime relative to other issues, which is directionally in line with Sacks’ argument that Republicans gain from framing Democrats as weaker on public safety. (ap.org)
• There is not clear evidence that Democratic opposition to the D.C. takeover is itself politically toxic: the policy is unpopular in D.C., nationally many oppose federal control of local police, and early high‑salience elections since the move (VA and NJ 2025) have broken strongly in Democrats’ favor for reasons mostly unrelated to crime. (reddit.com)
• Crucially, the key tests Sacks pointed to — national elections where this specific episode might be litigated at scale — have not yet occurred. Without 2026 midterm or 2028 presidential results, we cannot say whether Democrats ultimately paid a political price for how they handled the D.C. intervention.

Given the mixed polling on the D.C. move itself, the lack of evident electoral penalty to Democrats so far, and the fact that the main elections Sacks had in mind are still in the future, the prediction is too early to definitively score as either right or wrong.

The prediction explicitly concerns “roughly the coming decade” of venture capital performance following widespread AI adoption in the mid‑2020s. Given the podcast date of August 15, 2025 and the current date of November 30, 2025, only a few months have elapsed.

Even if there are early signs that AI is generating new startups and increasing VC activity, that does not yet establish that, over a multi‑year period, venture capital as an asset class will outperform its prior several years or enjoy structurally better opportunities. Assessing a decade‑scale asset‑class prediction requires data across most or all of that horizon (e.g., fund returns, exit values, capital formation trends through the early‑to‑mid 2030s), which we do not yet have.

Because the forecast is long‑dated and we are still at the very beginning of the predicted window, there is not enough evidence to label it as correct or incorrect. Therefore, the prediction is too early to evaluate.

As of November 30, 2025, it is too early to determine whether this prediction is correct. Sacks’s claim was explicitly conditional (“if the trend continues”) and specified a time frame of “a couple of years” from August 2025, which reasonably extends out to around August 2027. We are still within that window, so the prediction cannot yet be evaluated as right or wrong.

Available reporting in 2023–2025 has discussed OpenAI’s private valuation in the range of roughly $80–$90 billion after major funding from investors such as Microsoft and others, but there is no credible evidence yet of a ~$1 trillion private valuation or IPO that would put its market cap at that level. (These figures come from financial and tech news coverage of OpenAI’s secondary share sales and investor deals.) However, the absence of a $1T valuation by late 2025 does not falsify a forecast whose deadline is ~2027.

Because the prediction deadline has not arrived, the only defensible classification is that it is inconclusive (too early) rather than right, wrong, or permanently ambiguous.

The prediction explicitly concerns "years to come" after the August 2025 speech—that is, it is about the dominant framing of AI policy over a multi‑year horizon. As of today (November 30, 2025), only about four months have passed since August 1, 2025. That is far too short a period to assess whether this framing will remain dominant for several years. Even if the “AI race”/“space race” framing is currently influential, we cannot yet determine whether it will continue to be the primary lens for U.S. and global AI policy debates over the forecasted time span. Therefore, the accuracy of this prediction is too early to judge.

Public records show that the GENIUS Act (a U.S. stablecoin regulation bill) passed the House on July 17, 2025, and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 18, 2025, according to the bill’s legislative history and multiple news outlets. (en.wikipedia.org) The White House published an official fact sheet dated July 18, 2025, explicitly stating that President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law that day. (whitehouse.gov) Since the podcast’s public release date is July 19, 2025, the signing and enactment indeed occurred before the episode was released.

Sacks’s prediction that the bill would go to the president’s desk "tomorrow," be signed in a bill‑signing ceremony, and become law before the pod was released is therefore borne out by the subsequent timeline.

Congressional and news records show that the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (the CLARITY Act, H.R. 3633) did not pass the Senate or reach President Trump’s desk by the end of September 2025, nor was it signed into law in October 2025.

Key facts:

• The CLARITY Act passed the House on July 17, 2025, by a 294–134 vote. It was then sent to the Senate and on September 18, 2025 was “received in the Senate and read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,” where it remains. Congress.gov lists its latest action as that September 18 referral, and its status is still only “Passed House,” not “Passed Senate,” “To President,” or “Became Law.” (congress.gov)
• A Congressional Research Service brief on the CLARITY Act, revised September 30, 2025, still describes it as pending legislation and does not indicate Senate passage or enactment. (legistorm.com)
• Senate sources through October 2025 describe the crypto market-structure bill (based on or related to the CLARITY framework) as being in draft/negotiation, with significant partisan disputes and no completed committee or floor vote. For example, coverage from early and late October notes that the market-structure bill “remains in the discussion phase in the Senate” and is stalled amid gridlock, clearly implying it has not yet passed. (axios.com)
• By contrast, the GENIUS Act (the stablecoin bill) did complete the process: it passed both chambers and was signed by President Trump on July 18, 2025, becoming the first major federal crypto law. This is consistently documented in legislative records and press reports, underscoring that if the CLARITY Act had been similarly enacted, it would appear in the same way—which it does not. (en.wikipedia.org)

David Sacks’ prediction, normalized as: “Assuming the process proceeds without major disruption, the CLARITY Act will pass the Senate and reach President Trump’s desk by the end of September 2025, enabling a signing into law around October 2025,” is therefore incorrect. The specified milestones (Senate passage by end of September and presidential signing in October) did not occur within that timeframe or by November 30, 2025, despite ongoing work on related Senate market-structure legislation.

The prediction specifies a three‑year window starting from the GENIUS Act’s enactment. The podcast episode is dated 19 July 2025, and the title claims the GENIUS Act Becomes Law on or around that time. Three years from mid‑2025 ends in mid‑2028, which is well after the current date of 30 November 2025 (i.e., only a few months have elapsed).

Because the deadline for the prediction (sometime in 2028) has not yet passed, we cannot determine whether:

1. The world’s largest stablecoin issuer in mid‑2025 (commonly understood to be Tether/USDT, operated by Tether Holdings Limited, an offshore entity),
2. Will in fact establish an onshore, U.S.‑regulated structure and
3. Comply with U.S. regulatory requirements within three years of the GENIUS Act’s enactment.

There is still substantial time remaining for either outcome, so the prediction cannot be judged as right or wrong yet.

The GENIUS Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025 and establishes a federal framework for “payment stablecoin” issuers, so its actual requirements are now clear.(en.wikipedia.org) Comparing those to Sacks’s prediction:

1. “All the stablecoin companies will have to operate in the United States” – The Act does not require every stablecoin issuer to be U.S.-based. It explicitly forbids foreign issuers from being licensed as U.S. permitted payment stablecoin issuers, but still allows U.S. digital asset service providers to offer some foreign-issued payment stablecoins if the foreign issuer is under a “comparable” non‑U.S. regime, registers for monitoring by the OCC, and holds sufficient reserves in the U.S. for U.S. customers, among other conditions.(debevoise.com) Foreign issuers can continue operating abroad and, if they meet these conditions, can still access the U.S. market. So it is incorrect to say that all stablecoin companies must operate in the U.S.; the law creates a U.S.-jurisdiction gate for access to the U.S. market, not a universal U.S.-location requirement.

2. “They’ll be subjected to quarterly audits” – The statute and regulatory analyses describe monthly reserve reporting with independent attestations and annual audited financial statements for large issuers, not quarterly audits. Issuers must publish a monthly reserve report (outstanding coins and reserve composition), with prior months’ reports audited by a registered public accounting firm, and issuers over certain size thresholds must produce annually audited GAAP financials.(debevoise.com) Commentators even note that the Act rejects traditional quarterly cadences in favor of monthly oversight for stablecoins.(theregreview.org) So the “quarterly audits” detail is specifically wrong.

3. “Every stablecoin … fully reserved or backed up by a dollar in a U.S. bank account” – The Act requires at least 1:1 reserves in specified high‑quality, U.S.‑dollar‑denominated liquid assets (U.S. currency and central bank reserves, FDIC‑insured bank deposits, short‑term U.S. Treasuries, Treasury repos, certain government money market funds, and tokenized versions of these).(debevoise.com) That is broader than “a dollar in a U.S. bank account” (it explicitly includes short‑term Treasuries, repos, and government MMFs), though directionally similar. More importantly, these rules apply to permitted U.S. payment stablecoins and qualifying foreign payment stablecoins offered in the U.S., not to every stablecoin globally or to all types of crypto tokens (algorithmic or non‑payment stablecoins are outside this core regime).(debevoise.com) So we will not literally “know that every stablecoin that’s been issued is fully reserved”; we will only have that assurance—via required disclosures and attestations—for the regulated subset within the Act’s perimeter.

4. Timing (“once the Act is in force and implemented”) – The law sets deferred and phased effective dates: it becomes effective the earlier of 18 months after enactment or 120 days after implementing regulations, and some prohibitions (e.g., on unlicensed U.S. issuers via intermediaries) don’t fully bite until years later.(debevoise.com) But regardless of that timing, the content of the eventual regime is already fixed in the statute and does not match Sacks’s description on the key points above.

Because two central elements of the prediction—universal U.S. operation for all stablecoin companies and a quarterly audit requirement—conflict with the actual text and structure of the GENIUS Act, and the claim about “every stablecoin” being backed by a dollar in a U.S. bank account overstates the law’s scope and narrows its allowed reserve types, the prediction is best classified as wrong, not merely incomplete or too early to judge.

As of November 30, 2025, there has not yet been trillions of dollars of additional cumulative demand for U.S. Treasuries driven by dollar‑backed stablecoins under the GENIUS Act, but the prediction was explicitly framed as occurring “over the coming years” after enactment, so it is too early to judge it right or wrong.

Key facts:

• The GENIUS Act was passed by Congress and signed into law in mid‑2025 (Senate passage on June 17, 2025; reporting on it being signed into law on July 18, 2025). (reuters.com)
• Following enactment, one analysis estimates that between July and November 2025, stablecoin issuers bought about $44 billion in Treasury bills to comply with the new 100%‑backing requirements, raising the stablecoin market cap from about $260 billion to roughly $304 billion. (cryptowakeup.com) That’s tens of billions, not trillions, of incremental demand so far.
• Broadly, dollar‑backed stablecoins already hold on the order of $150–200+ billion in Treasuries as reserves, given total stablecoin market caps in the low‑hundreds of billions and reserve ratios heavily weighted to T‑bills. (coinlive.com) This is material but still far below “trillions.”
• However, official and industry projections after GENIUS was enacted envision exactly the kind of outcome Sacks referenced: for example, U.S. Treasury and TBAC analyses, as well as bank research (Standard Chartered, Citi, etc.), project stablecoin market caps could reach $1–3.7 trillion+ by 2028–2030, implying $1–2+ trillion of additional demand for short‑term U.S. government securities if current reserve structures persist. (mdpi.com) Senior officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have publicly cited similar multi‑trillion‑dollar potential demand. (mdpi.com)

Putting this together:

• The descriptive part of Sacks’s statement — that studies project the GENIUS Act–style stablecoin regime could generate trillions in new Treasury demand — is supported by multiple government and bank analyses.
• The forecasted outcome itself (actual trillions of extra demand materializing) is meant to unfold over several years (often modeled out to 2028–2030). Only a few months of post‑enactment data are available, and the realized additional demand so far is in the tens of billions, while the relevant horizon is multi‑year.

Because we are still near the beginning of that horizon and the projected magnitudes have not yet had time to either materialize or clearly fail, the correct assessment today is “inconclusive (too early)”, not definitively right or wrong.

The prediction explicitly refers to "the coming years", implying a multi‑year horizon. As of now (30 Nov 2025), only a bit over four months have passed since the 19 Jul 2025 podcast, so the full time window has clearly not elapsed.

Empirically, dollar‑based stablecoins are seeing rapid global growth:

• Global stablecoin market cap has passed about $300B with daily average transaction volumes in the trillions, and they are expanding from trading into payments, savings, and business uses worldwide. (business-standard.com)
• Reports estimate stablecoins are actively used in 50+ countries, especially for remittances, ecommerce, and as a “digital dollar” in high‑inflation economies like Nigeria and Argentina. (coinlaw.io)
• Studies show hundreds of millions of wallet addresses and trillions of dollars of on‑chain volume, with significant shares of payments activity (P2P, B2B, and card‑based) now moving over stablecoins in multiple regions. (crypto.news)

At the same time, major regulators still describe real‑economy, day‑to‑day payment use as limited in some developed markets. For example, the European Central Bank notes that stablecoins’ use in the real economy is still limited in Europe, even while the sector is large and systemically relevant. (cincodias.elpais.com) That makes it hard to say they are already “commonly used for transactions” across many countries in the everyday sense implied by the normalized prediction.

Given:

1. The prediction’s multi‑year timeframe has not yet run its course, and
2. Current data show strong momentum but not yet clear, mainstream everyday usage “all over the world,”

it’s too early to judge definitively whether the prediction will ultimately be right or wrong.

It’s too early to determine whether this multi‑year prediction has come true.

1. The stated horizon (“next several years”) hasn’t elapsed.
The prediction was made on 19 July 2025 and explicitly framed as playing out over the next several years. Evaluating it by 30 November 2025—roughly four and a half months later—does not satisfy that timeframe, so the outcome cannot yet be judged.

2. Directionally, evidence supports growing stablecoin‑driven dollarization.
Recent analyses show rapid growth of dollar‑pegged stablecoins used as de facto digital dollars in high‑inflation or capital‑controlled economies such as Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria, and others. In these places, people use USDT/USDC for savings, payments, remittances, and invoicing, often explicitly to escape weak local currencies.(followin.io) Stablecoin transaction volumes globally have surged into the tens of trillions of dollars annually, and total stablecoin supply exceeds $200 billion, with usage heavily concentrated in emerging markets.(coindesk.com) This supports the trend sacks described: bottom‑up, dollar‑stablecoin usage in developing countries.

3. But current data do not yet show that a “large share” of all economic transactions has shifted.
Even optimistic reports emphasize that stablecoins, while important in certain niches (crypto trading, cross‑border payments, savings, some retail payments), still represent only a small fraction of total money supply and overall transaction volume in these economies. One analysis notes that despite fast growth, stablecoins are still only a few‑tenths of a percent of global money supply.(blog.wewire.com) Most day‑to‑day commerce in these countries still runs through cash and traditional banking systems, so the claim that a large share of all economic transactions has shifted to dollar stablecoins is not yet demonstrably true or false.

Because (a) the forecast’s multi‑year window has barely begun and (b) current evidence shows strong growth but not yet the clear, economy‑wide dominance implied by “a large portion of these economies,” the only defensible judgment at this point is inconclusive (too early).

The prediction is framed as a multi‑year structural claim (“over the coming years” community banks will not be put out of business or broadly wiped out by stablecoins). As of Nov. 30, 2025, only a little over four months have elapsed since the July 19, 2025 episode, so the intended time horizon has clearly not played out.

What we can see so far:

• Community banks remain a major part of the U.S. system and are still described in 2025 policy discussions as providing the majority of small‑business and agricultural lending, i.e., they have not been broadly wiped out or rendered insignificant in the short term.​(icba.org)
• An empirical study by Charles River Associates (commissioned by Coinbase) using 2019–2025 data finds no material impact of USDC stablecoin adoption on community‑bank deposits under current and near‑term adoption levels, with even aggressive scenarios implying only single‑digit percentage impacts on deposits.​(crai.com)
• Coinbase and other industry analyses likewise argue that, at current and projected scales, stablecoins are unlikely to meaningfully erode community‑bank funding, though they advocate for partnerships and guardrails.​(cointelegraph.com)

At the same time, regulators and policy groups continue to warn that future large‑scale, yield‑bearing or non‑bank stablecoins could trigger major deposit outflows and consolidation that would fall hardest on community banks, underscoring that the long‑run outcome is unresolved.​(icba.org)

Because the claim is explicitly about what will happen over the coming years and the system is still in the early phase of adaptation to the GENIUS Act and expanding stablecoin use, there has not yet been enough time to judge whether community banks will ultimately avoid being substantially displaced. Early evidence is consistent with the prediction, but it does not yet settle the long‑term question. Hence the result is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Evidence shows that by well before October 2025 a follow‑on CLARITY market‑structure bill for non‑stablecoin digital assets had in fact been drafted and significantly advanced in the U.S. Congress:

• After the GENIUS Act established a federal framework for payment stablecoins and was signed into law on July 18, 2025, news coverage described it as the first major stablecoin law and noted that the administration and congressional leaders were already pointing to a broader crypto market‑structure bill as the next step. 【0news13】【0search15】
• The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 ("CLARITY Act of 2025", H.R. 3633) was introduced on May 29, 2025. The House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees reported it favorably on June 23, 2025, with committee reports explicitly describing it as a comprehensive digital asset market structure framework that allocates jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC and clarifies treatment of digital commodities and secondary trading of tokens. 【0search1】
• The bill passed the U.S. House on July 17, 2025 (294–134) and on September 18, 2025 was received in the Senate and referred to the Senate Banking Committee, with its official status shown as "Passed House"—all well before October 2025. 【2view0】
• Associated press coverage of the July 17 House votes explicitly distinguishes three separate crypto bills: a bipartisan stablecoin regulation bill, a market structure bill defining which digital assets are commodities or securities, and a CBDC‑ban bill, with the market‑structure bill heading to the Senate. 【0news14】 This matches the predicted idea of a follow‑on non‑stablecoin market‑structure measure.
• On July 23, 2025, the Senate Banking Committee chair announced an initial discussion draft of broader digital‑asset market‑structure legislation, explicitly framed as building on both the GENIUS Act and the House‑passed CLARITY Act—indicating active intent to advance such a framework in the Senate. 【0search2】

By October 2025, therefore, a CLARITY‑branded market‑structure bill for non‑stablecoin digital assets had been drafted, moved through House committees, passed the House, and been taken up in the Senate, with leadership clearly signaling an aim to pass it. That satisfies the normalized prediction that a follow‑on “Clarity” market‑structure bill for non‑stablecoin tokens would be drafted, advanced, and positioned for passage by October 2025, even though it had not yet become law by that date.

Evidence since July 2025 shows Elon Musk’s “America/American Party” failed to become a viable third party and was quickly walked back.

• Musk announced the America Party on X around July 5, 2025, positioning it as a new third party aimed at winning a handful of House and Senate seats. However, early reports noted that it had no formal FEC registration, structure, or candidates, beyond social‑media posts and vague plans. (brb.yahoo.net)
• By August 9, 2025, Business Insider reported that Musk had not followed through on any of the concrete steps needed to build a party (ballot access, organization, etc.), concluding that the America Party was “nowhere to be seen” a month after the announcement. (businessinsider.com)
• On August 20, 2025, Reuters reported that Musk had “backed away” from plans to launch the America Party and was refocusing on his companies and maintaining ties with Republican leaders instead of building a separate party. (reuters.com) Reporting in other outlets the same week similarly described Musk as shelving or abandoning the project for strategic reasons. (nypost.com)
• Encyclopedic coverage now characterizes the American/America Party of 2025 as short‑lived or merely an announced/abandoned project, noting that by late August Musk no longer intended to found or proceed with the party. (en.wikipedia.org)

By November 30, 2025, Musk’s third‑party effort has produced no ballot line, no candidates, no elected officials, and no sustained organization, and has effectively been shelved. Under any normal definition of a “viable or successful third party,” this means the “third party stuff” did, in fact, not work, so Sacks’s prediction is best classified as right.

As of November 30, 2025, Elon Musk’s America/American Party has been announced and is organizing but has not yet contested its first federal election cycle.

– Musk launched the “America Party” (often described interchangeably as the American Party) in early July 2025 and has explicitly said it will target a small number of House and Senate seats in the 2026 midterm elections.(upi.com)
– Reporting and analysis consistently frame the party’s electoral impact as something that may occur in the 2026 midterms and possibly the 2028 cycle; there is no reporting of completed House or Senate races actually won or lost by America Party candidates yet.(financialexpress.com)
– The 2026 U.S. House and Senate elections are scheduled for November 3, 2026 and are listed as ongoing/future, meaning no results exist as of late 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
– Searches for 2025 special elections and FEC activity related to Musk’s party discuss organization, filings, and GOP concern, but not any concluded federal races with America Party nominees, let alone victories.(timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

Because the party’s initial election cycles (starting with 2026) have not yet taken place, we cannot say whether Musk‑backed American Party candidates will win “a few House races” and zero Senate races. There is simply insufficient outcome data so far, so the prediction cannot yet be judged.

On July 8, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the government’s emergency application to stay a preliminary injunction against President Trump’s broad workforce‑reduction Executive Order 14210 and an OMB/OPM memorandum. That 8–1 order allowed agencies to plan and begin large‑scale reductions in force, while explicitly stating the Court expressed “no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan” produced under the order. (scotusblog.com)

On July 14, 2025, in McMahon v. New York (No. 24A1203), the Court considered a specific large‑scale reduction in force at the Department of Education, which sought to eliminate roughly half the department’s workforce pursuant to Trump’s education‑reorganization executive order (and related RIF directives). The Court granted a stay of the district court’s injunction, thereby allowing the Education Department’s mass layoffs and restructuring to proceed while litigation continues—i.e., it ruled in favor of allowing implementation of this specific plan. (caselaw.findlaw.com)

Contemporaneous reporting on that July 14 order states that the vote was 6–3, with all three liberal justices (Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson) in dissent. This is a narrower margin than the earlier 8–1 ruling on the general RIF planning order. (upi.com)

Taken together, these events match Sacks’s prediction: once a concrete, large‑scale RIF plan under Trump’s workforce‑reduction program reached the Supreme Court, the Court again allowed it to move forward, and the vote was indeed closer than the original 8–1 decision.

In late June 2025, a U.S.- and Qatar-mediated ceasefire formally ended the 12‑day Iran–Israel war, and subsequent reporting notes that while there were initial violations in the hours after it began, the ceasefire between Iran and Israel "ultimately held" and there have been no renewed large-scale direct missile exchanges between the two states. (en.wikipedia.org)

However, after the podcast date (28 June 2025), armed conflict clearly resumed via Iran‑aligned proxies. The Houthis in Yemen are widely described by governments and analysts as Iran‑backed and part of Tehran’s regional “Axis of Resistance.” (dw.com) Israel has conducted an ongoing air campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen since May 2025; this includes major strikes on Sanaa on 24 August 2025 and a series of attacks on 28 August 2025 that killed senior Houthi leadership, including de facto prime minister Ahmed al‑Rahawi and other top officials, in operations explicitly catalogued as “Israeli attacks on Yemen (May 2025–present)” directed at the Iran‑backed Houthis. (en.wikipedia.org)

The Houthis have hit Israel directly in response: on 7 September 2025, a drone launched from Yemen struck the arrivals hall of Israel’s Ramon Airport near Eilat, injuring civilians and briefly shutting the airport, and on 24 September 2025 another Houthi drone attack on central Eilat injured 22 people; both are documented as Houthi drone strikes on Israeli civilian infrastructure within the broader Red Sea crisis. (reuters.com) Separately, Israel has also escalated against Hezbollah, Iran’s principal Lebanese proxy: on 23 November 2025 it carried out an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah’s acting chief of staff Ali Tabtabai; Reuters explicitly describes Hezbollah in this piece as “Iran‑backed,” and the strike is noted as a serious escalation despite an existing U.S.-brokered truce on the Lebanon front. (reuters.com)

Taken together, these post‑ceasefire Israeli airstrikes on Iran‑backed groups (Houthis and Hezbollah) and the retaliatory drone attacks on Israeli territory constitute clear instances of renewed military and proxy clashes between Israel and Iran’s regional network after the June 2025 12‑day war, even though the formal Iran–Israel ceasefire has largely held at the state‑to‑state level. That matches the substance of Sacks’s prediction that “this is not over” and that the conflict would “flare up again at some point” through further armed or proxy confrontations; therefore the prediction is best judged as correct.

As of November 30, 2025, this prediction is still framed for the "coming years", and only about five months have elapsed since it was made on June 28, 2025. That is not enough time to judge whether it ultimately comes true as a long‑run description of U.S. national politics.

Substantively, current evidence is mixed rather than clearly validating or falsifying the claim:

• Within the GOP, a large share of voters do identify as “MAGA Republicans” (around half of Republicans, depending on the poll), showing strong populist‑nationalist influence but not total dominance. Many Republicans explicitly do not identify as MAGA, indicating an ongoing split between MAGA and more traditional/establishment conservatives. (today.yougov.com)
• On the Democratic side, democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani (elected NYC mayor) are highly visible, but institutional power is still heavily held by moderates and centrists. The New Democrat Coalition, a pro‑business, Third‑Way, centrist group, is the largest ideological caucus among House Democrats, with over half of Democratic representatives as members. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Additional organizations such as Majority Democrats (a centrist PAC modeled on the old DLC) and the surviving Blue Dog Coalition of moderates show that non‑socialist, non‑populist factions remain organized and influential in the Democratic Party. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because:

1. The prediction is explicitly set over a multi‑year horizon ("coming years"), and that horizon has not yet passed.
2. Current party dynamics still show significant centrist/neoliberal and traditional conservative factions with real influence, instead of a fully crystallized binary "MAGA vs. socialism" structure.

…it is too early to say whether U.S. national politics will in fact solidify into the binary alignment described. Therefore the only defensible judgment today is inconclusive (too early) rather than right, wrong, or permanently ambiguous.

The GENIUS Act is the federal stablecoin bill discussed on the podcast. After the Senate passed it on June 17, 2025, the House of Representatives passed the bill on July 17, 2025, by a vote of 308–122. President Donald Trump signed it into law on July 18, 2025, making it Public Law 119‑27.

These dates are documented in:

• The GENIUS Act legislative history, showing House passage on July 17, 2025, and Trump’s signature on July 18, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Congress.gov, which lists S.1582 (GENIUS Act) as having "Became Public Law No: 119‑27" on July 18, 2025. (congress.gov)
• Contemporary news coverage confirming Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025. (politico.com)

The podcast aired June 21, 2025. The House acted 26 days later (about three and a half weeks), which reasonably fits the colloquial "next few weeks," and Trump did in fact receive and sign the bill during his current term. Both key elements of Sacks’s prediction—timing in the near future and ultimate presidential signature—were fulfilled, so the prediction is best judged right.

Key facts:

• The GENIUS Act, a federal framework for U.S. dollar stablecoins, was passed by Congress and signed into law on July 18, 2025, creating a new regulatory category for payment stablecoins that are not bank deposits (they are explicitly treated separately from traditional bank deposits and securities/commodities). (en.wikipedia.org)

• Since then, no major U.S. bank has launched a retail or broadly-available GENIUS‑Act "payment stablecoin":

  • Bank of America repeatedly says it is ready and expects to launch a fully dollar‑backed stablecoin but only once the regulatory path is fully clear; as of mid‑ to late‑2025 it still describes this as a future plan, with no product or launch date announced. (coindesk.com)
  • Citigroup likewise says it is considering or looking at the issuance of a Citi stablecoin for digital payments, but again only as an exploration, not a launched product. (reuters.com)
  • An August 12, 2025 Reuters piece notes that after the GENIUS Act, firms like Bank of America and Citigroup are exploring GENIUS‑compliant stablecoins, but stresses that deployment strategies, regulatory details, and timelines remain unresolved. (reuters.com)

• The one concrete on‑chain dollar instrument from a major U.S. bank is JPMorgan’s JPMD:

  • JPMorgan piloted and then, on November 12, 2025, made its USD deposit token "JPMD" available to institutional clients on Coinbase’s Base L2. (jpmorgan.com)
  • JPMorgan itself and multiple commentators stress that JPMD is a deposit token, not a GENIUS‑Act payment stablecoin: it represents insured bank deposits, accrues interest, and is framed as "commercial bank money" on‑chain. JPMorgan’s Kinexys unit explicitly says, “This is a deposit token and not a stablecoin; clients are sending and receiving real bank money on Base,” and the Financial Times similarly contrasts JPMD with stablecoins for regulatory purposes. (en.coinotag.com)

Interpretation:

• Sacks’ prediction was that after the GENIUS Act, major U.S. banks would issue their own U.S.-dollar stablecoins under the new framework.
• As of November 30, 2025:
  • Banks are clearly preparing and signaling intent to issue such stablecoins under GENIUS. (coindesk.com)
  • But no major U.S. bank has yet launched a GENIUS‑regulated payment stablecoin; JPMorgan’s live product is deliberately structured and branded as a deposit token rather than a GENIUS stablecoin, and other big banks remain in the planning phase.

Because the GENIUS Act only became law in July 2025 and large banks are still in the design/regulatory‑approval stage, it is too early to say that the prediction—"the banks ... are going to issue one" under this new framework—has failed. At the same time, the exact outcome Sacks described has not yet materialized.

Conclusion: The prediction is neither clearly right nor clearly wrong as of November 30, 2025; it remains inconclusive (too early).

The GENIUS Act was signed into U.S. law on July 18, 2025, and it includes a three‑year transition period after enactment before U.S. digital asset service providers are generally barred from offering payment stablecoins that are not issued by a "permitted payment stablecoin issuer"; foreign issuers can continue if they meet certain conditions to comply with U.S. lawful orders and reciprocal arrangements, rather than being strictly forced to redomicile onshore. 【1view0【【2view0【【3view0【 That three‑year window runs until July 18, 2028, which is still in the future as of November 30, 2025, so the time horizon of the prediction has not elapsed. 【1view0【【0news16】

Empirically, since passage of the GENIUS Act, Tether has announced plans to: (a) use the law’s foreign‑issuer pathway to make USDT available in the United States while remaining an offshore issuer, and (b) launch a separate, U.S.-based compliant stablecoin (variously reported as USAT/USA₮) issued through Anchorage Digital Bank under U.S. regulation. 【4search0【【4search8【【4news12【【4news13【 These steps do not yet amount to fully relocating Tether’s existing offshore stablecoin operations onshore, but because the statutory three‑year deadline has not arrived, it is still possible (though not guaranteed) that Tether and similar issuers could restructure to satisfy the prediction by 2028. Given the open time window and ongoing strategic moves, the prediction cannot currently be judged true or false.

The prediction has a two‑year horizon from the podcast date of 31 May 2025, i.e., until around 31 May 2027. Today is 30 November 2025, so we are only about six months into that two‑year window. It is therefore too early to say definitively whether the prediction will hold.

Empirically, as of 2025 the U.S. unemployment rate is in the 4–4.4% range, not remotely close to 20%:

• Monthly data for 2025 show unemployment at 4.0–4.4% from January through September 2025, with 4.2% in May (the podcast month). (theglobalstatistics.com)
• BLS‑based series and Fed/other summaries likewise report headline unemployment around 4.0–4.3% in early and mid‑2025. (economy.fedprimerate.com)
• Forecasts from professional forecasters and economists project unemployment in the mid‑single digits (around 4–4.5%) through 2026, not anywhere near 20%. (philadelphiafed.org)

So so far, the scenario of ~20% unemployment (overall, let alone explicitly “due to AI”) has not materialized. However, because the prediction explicitly concerns the state of unemployment two years after the podcast (by May 2027), we cannot yet confirm it as correct. A sharp unemployment spike between now and May 2027—whether or not attributed to AI—could still falsify the claim.

Given that the evaluation date precedes the end of the forecast window, the prediction’s ultimate accuracy is inconclusive (too early to tell).

The prediction explicitly sets a timeline of about four years from the May 2025 episode, i.e., by the end of the current presidential term, for models, chips, and data‑center capacity each to be ~100× more powerful, yielding roughly a 1,000,000× combined increase in effective AI compute.(speakai.co) As of today (November 30, 2025), only about seven months have elapsed since the prediction, while the horizon is around May 2029, so the specified deadline has not yet arrived and the claim cannot be definitively evaluated. Current reports focus on plans and build‑outs for very large AI clusters and multi‑gigawatt data centers targeting the later 2020s (e.g., 1 GW–class clusters and massive new hyperscaler data‑center investments), underscoring that much of the projected capacity is still under construction.(80000hours.org) Because the key date is still in the future and the relevant metrics (true realized 100× gains in algorithms, chips, and deployed capacity) cannot yet be measured for 2029, the accuracy of the prediction is presently inconclusive/too early to tell.

The prediction’s timeframe is “in the next several years” from May 2025, which is reasonably interpretable as by around 2030. As of November 30, 2025, that horizon has not yet arrived, so the prediction cannot be fully evaluated.

On the factual side as of late 2025:

• Industry reports and news articles describe very large data centers and AI-specific campuses in the hundreds of megawatts (MW) range, with some roadmaps and power‑purchase agreements targeting ~1 GW-class campuses over time, but there is no credible evidence of a single AI/data‑center facility with 5–10 gigawatts of total power draw already existing and operating.
• The largest publicly discussed hyperscale projects (including AI compute clusters and multi‑building campuses) still cite capacities well below 5 GW; where higher multi‑GW numbers appear, they generally refer to multi‑site regional plans or long‑term utility interconnection capacity, not one individual facility.

Since:

1. The relevant deadline (≈2030) has not yet passed; and
2. The prediction is about what will exist by that future time, not what exists by 2025;

the correct status as of now is inconclusive rather than right or wrong.

Evidence since April 2025 shows that the rare‑earths cutoff was directly addressed in U.S.–China trade talks and partially rolled back through formal agreements.

1. China did halt rare‑earth exports after the April 2025 tariffs. On April 4, 2025 China imposed export controls on seven categories of medium and heavy rare earths in response to U.S. tariffs, and reporting in early April noted that shipments of those rare earths effectively stopped, with exporters waiting indefinitely for licenses.(energynews.oedigital.com) This is the “cutoff” Sacks was referring to.

2. A formal trade agreement explicitly tied to rare earths was reached in June 2025. On June 11, 2025, Reuters reported that President Trump announced a new U.S.–China trade agreement under which China would supply the U.S. with magnets and rare‑earth minerals, while the U.S. kept 55% tariffs; the deal, framed as a trade truce, was described as lifting China’s export restrictions on rare earths, pending final approval by Trump and Xi.(reuters.com) A contemporaneous Gulf News analysis summarized the same London deal as committing China to provide “full magnets and any necessary rare earths” to the U.S., resuming exports after roughly two months of severe restrictions, via export permits for U.S. firms (valid for six months and renewable).(gulfnews.com) That is a formal, negotiated trade arrangement that explicitly addresses the rare‑earth cutoff.

3. That deal restored at least civilian U.S. access to Chinese rare earths. Industry and policy analyses describe this London agreement as a rare‑earths “deal” or truce that restarted flows of Chinese rare‑earth magnets to U.S. manufacturers, even while emphasizing it is temporary, license‑based, and leaves China with major leverage.(rareearthexchanges.com) These accounts stress that military‑grade magnets and some specialized rare‑earth products remain outside the fast‑track system, so access is partial and focused on non‑military uses rather than comprehensive.

4. Later negotiations reinforced (but did not fully liberalize) this framework. A subsequent deal after Trump–Xi talks in Busan on October 30, 2025 suspended a planned expansion of Chinese rare‑earth export controls for a year as part of a broader trade agreement, effectively preserving the existing flow regime rather than tightening it further.(en.wikipedia.org) U.S. and Chinese officials have since referred to a continuing, repeatedly extended truce under which lower tariffs and ongoing Chinese rare‑earth exports to the U.S. are maintained, while both sides argue over draft regulations that could re‑tighten controls.(uk.marketscreener.com)

5. Assessment relative to the prediction. Sacks’ normalized prediction was that the rare‑earth cutoff would be “explicitly resolved in a formal agreement, restoring US access to rare earth materials or processing from China.” That did occur in substance: rare‑earth exports were shut off in April, then explicitly addressed and partially rolled back in a negotiated London trade deal that committed China to resume supplying magnets and rare earths to the U.S., followed by later agreements that kept that flow going (though under restrictive licensing and with military‑grade items still constrained). The resolution is imperfect and fragile, but a formal agreement did explicitly restore significant U.S. access to Chinese rare‑earth materials. On that basis, the prediction is best judged as right (directionally correct, albeit with important caveats about scope and durability).

The prediction is explicitly about "the next couple of decades"—i.e., roughly 20 years of stable, closely aligned U.S.–India security and trade relations. As of today (30 November 2025), only about seven months have elapsed since the podcast release (26 April 2025), which is far too short to evaluate a 20‑year forecast.

Available evidence so far actually shows deepening U.S.–India alignment in security and trade: a new 10‑year defense framework agreement has been signed and described by U.S. officials as indicating that military ties have "never been stronger"; joint leaders’ statements from early 2025 reaffirm a comprehensive global strategic partnership and launch new defense, trade, and technology initiatives; and recent commentary describes the relationship as entering a phase of “structured stabilisation,” with growing defense sales and efforts to resolve trade frictions. (whitehouse.gov) None of this, however, can confirm or falsify the 20‑year stability claim yet.

Because the prediction concerns a much longer time horizon than has passed, the correct rating is inconclusive (too early to tell).

The prediction concerns the entire 21st century, asserting that no other country will surpass China as the primary security threat for both India and the United States before 2100. As of today (November 30, 2025), fewer than 75 years remain in that horizon, and we are only about a quarter of the way through the century. There is no way to definitively determine now whether some other power (for example, a resurgent Russia, a future unified bloc, or a currently minor power) might become the top security concern for either country later in the century. Because the claim is explicitly about a long-term future state extending to 2100, it is too early to judge its accuracy. Therefore the correct classification is: inconclusive (too early to tell).

Evidence from the quarters immediately after the April 26, 2025 podcast shows that hyperscaler data‑center and AI infrastructure capex was maintained or increased, not meaningfully reduced, despite tariff uncertainty.

1. Alphabet/Google (the specific ~$75B reference)

   • On Feb. 4, 2025 Alphabet said it expected to invest about $75B in 2025 capex, mostly for servers and data centers.(cnbc.com)
   • In its Q1 2025 earnings commentary (late April, i.e., right around the podcast), Alphabet reiterated that it still expected to invest approximately $75B in 2025 capex, noting this could fluctuate by quarter due to delivery and construction timing but not cutting the total.(alphabet2025ir.q4web.com)
   • On April 9, 2025, amid market volatility from President Trump’s tariffs, Alphabet publicly reaffirmed its ~$75B 2025 spending plan “despite turmoil over U.S. tariffs,” explicitly tying this to data center and AI build‑out.(investing.com)
   • By Q3 2025 (within two quarters of the podcast), Alphabet had raised its 2025 capex guidance first to $85B and then to $91–93B, with the “vast majority” going to technical infrastructure (servers, data centers, networking).(datacenterdynamics.com)
     This is the opposite of a cut: Google’s planned ~$75B was maintained and then increased.

2. Meta

   • In its late‑2024 guidance, Meta expected 2025 capex of $60–65B.(marketscreener.com)
   • In Q1 2025 (May 2, 2025—the very next quarter after the podcast), Meta raised that 2025 capex outlook to $64–72B, citing additional data‑center investments to support AI and higher infrastructure‑hardware costs.(datacenterdynamics.com)
   • Meta explicitly attributed some of the increase to uncertainty and higher costs from Trump’s tariffs and trade discussions, not to cutting investment.(datacenterdynamics.com)
     So tariffs raised Meta’s costs, but its DC/AI capex plans grew rather than being reduced.

3. Microsoft and Amazon

   • Microsoft signaled plans to spend about $80B in fiscal 2025 on AI‑enabled data‑center capex, and Q3 FY25 results (reported April 30, 2025) showed capital expenditures rising sharply, with management saying capex would continue to grow in the next fiscal year even after Trump’s tariffs were announced.(reuters.com)
   • While Microsoft later said it was “slowing or pausing” some specific data‑center projects (e.g., an Ohio site), it still planned to invest over $80B in AI infrastructure globally, and analysts continued to model roughly that spend, describing project moves as portfolio adjustments rather than a broad capex pullback.(apnews.com)
   • For Amazon, contemporaneous coverage of Q1 2025 results noted that it left its 2025 capex outlook roughly unchanged around ~$105B, most of it AI/cloud‑related, even as trade tensions rose.(mitrade.com)
   • Subsequent announcements of large new AWS government and regional data‑center investments later in 2025 are consistent with an ongoing, elevated build‑out rather than a near‑term cut.(reuters.com)

4. Industry‑wide picture under tariffs

   • Analysis of the top hyperscalers ahead of and during 2025 shows them collectively targeting around $350B+ in 2025 cloud/AI datacenter capex, up dramatically from prior years, with commentary that tariffs and trade war risks might eventually force moderation but had not yet done so.(forbes.com)
   • Another industry summary puts Q1 2025 total datacenter capex up ~50% year‑over‑year, with the top four cloud providers’ capex up ~73%, noting that hyperscalers were “investing proactively in anticipation of tariffs” rather than pulling back.(linkedin.com)

Across Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon—the core “hyperscalers” Sacks was talking about—capital‑expenditure plans and data‑center buildouts in the one to two quarters after April 26, 2025 were maintained or increased, even as tariffs raised costs and created uncertainty. There is no evidence of a meaningful reduction in these strategic investments over that time window; if anything, the trend was further upward.

Given that, Sacks’s prediction that hyperscaler data‑center/AI capex (including Google’s ~$75B plan) would “hold up” over the next quarter or two despite tariff turmoil is best evaluated as right.

Sacks predicted that (1) the DOGE program in the US federal government would continue operating beyond 2025 and (2) Elon Musk would dial back his involvement to about 1–2 days per week instead of being there full time.

The second part largely happened: following Musk’s own comments on a Tesla earnings call, contemporary coverage reported that he planned to scale back his DOGE time to a day or two per week while refocusing on Tesla. (businessinsider.nl) Subsequent reporting and the DOGE overview note that he then left his formal White House/DOGE role entirely by late May 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)

However, multiple later reports show that DOGE itself did not continue past 2025. In late November 2025, major outlets (Guardian, Time, SF Chronicle, New York Post, People) all reported that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was dissolved or dismantled months ahead of its scheduled July 4, 2026 end date, with its functions largely absorbed by the Office of Personnel Management and other entities. (theguardian.com) These articles consistently describe DOGE as having been disbanded as a centralized program in November 2025, not continuing into 2026.

Because a core element of the prediction was that the DOGE program would keep operating beyond 2025, and it in fact ended in November 2025, the overall prediction must be judged as wrong, even though Musk’s short‑term shift to a 1–2‑days‑per‑week mode did occur before he exited the role entirely.

As of November 30, 2025, the United States has not experienced a singular, acute debt or fiscal crisis of the kind typically described as a break-point event (e.g., default, failed Treasury auctions, sudden loss of market access). There are ongoing concerns about high federal debt and deficits, but nothing that is widely characterized as a distinct crisis that clearly forced Congress into a new structural regime on spending/appropriations.

Likewise, there is no evidence that Congress has, in the wake of such a crisis, broadly recognized and praised Elon Musk’s deficit-cutting efforts via Doge (Dogecoin) or any Doge-linked fiscal mechanism; no such mechanism has been adopted in U.S. fiscal policy, and there has been no wave of congressional credit to Musk along those lines.

However, Sacks’s prediction is explicitly framed as eventual (no time bound) and depends on future political and economic developments that may still occur after November 30, 2025. Because:

1. The hypothesized crisis has not occurred in a clearly recognizable form yet, and
2. There is no specified deadline by which it must occur,

we cannot say the prediction is wrong; it simply has not had enough time to be tested. Thus the correct status, as of now, is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Sacks’ prediction is conditional and long‑term: if Harvard keeps DEI‑style, race‑conscious policies, then every 1–2 years there will be new whistleblower‑driven litigation revealing ongoing racial discrimination in admissions, with repeated legal findings against Harvard. The key testable elements are (a) a recurring pattern over multiple 1–2‑year cycles and (b) court or formal legal findings that Harvard is again liable for race‑based discrimination in admissions, post‑2023. The Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision did find Harvard’s prior race‑conscious admissions unlawful, but that is the baseline event Sacks is referring to, not a post‑prediction data point. (en.wikipedia.org) Since the podcast aired on April 19, 2025, only about seven months have elapsed (to November 30, 2025), which is less than the first 1–2‑year window he specified. In that interval, there has been a federal Office for Civil Rights compliance review and a denial‑of‑access letter over Harvard’s refusal to turn over admissions data, but that review has not yet produced a legal finding that Harvard is again violating Title VI in admissions. (ed.gov) There has also been a civil‑rights complaint by America First Legal alleging unlawful DEI programs and DEI‑linked use of federal funds, which calls for investigation and potential sanctions but is not itself a whistleblower admissions‑discrimination lawsuit with a liability finding. (nypost.com) Other prominent Harvard cases since 2024 concern hostile‑environment and antisemitism claims under Title VI and have led to settlements and policy changes, not new judicial findings that Harvard is again discriminating by race in its undergraduate admissions decisions. (en.wikipedia.org) Because (1) the first 1–2‑year period following the prediction has not yet elapsed, and (2) the pattern of repeated whistleblower‑driven admissions cases with fresh liability findings has not had time either to materialize or be ruled out, the available evidence neither clearly confirms nor clearly falsifies Sacks’ forecast. It is therefore too early to judge, so the prediction is best classified as inconclusive at this time.

Evidence from 2025 indicates that Ezra Klein’s “abundance” agenda has significantly influenced mainstream Democratic policy and discourse, contradicting Sacks’s claim that Klein would not “convince Democrats of this.”

1. Klein’s ideas are explicitly shaping top Democrats’ thinking. Klein’s book Abundance (March 2025) became a bestseller and is widely discussed inside the party. California Governor Gavin Newsom called it “one of the most important books Democrats can read,” sent copies to Democratic legislative leaders, and hosted Klein to discuss reorienting the party around building more housing and infrastructure with fewer bureaucratic barriers.(notus.org) Klein also briefed Senate Democrats at their May 2025 retreat, a sign that his framework is being taken seriously by national party leadership and 2028 hopefuls.(nypost.com)

2. Democratic-led governments have enacted major abundance-style reforms. In mid‑2025, California’s Democratic legislature and Newsom overhauled the state’s landmark environmental review law (CEQA) via AB 130 and SB 131, exempting most infill housing and some industrial projects from lengthy environmental review to cut red tape and speed construction—widely described as one of the most significant housing-policy changes in decades.(en.wikipedia.org) California also passed SB 79, the Abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act, pre‑empting local zoning to allow mid‑ and high‑rise multifamily housing near transit, a core “YIMBY”/abundance demand.(en.wikipedia.org) These are large, mainstream Democratic policy moves in the party’s flagship state that directly embody the permitting and zoning reforms Klein advocates.

3. Congressional Democrats have organized around an explicitly abundance-oriented agenda. In May 2025, Rep. Josh Harder launched the bipartisan Build America Caucus, with more than two dozen members and over 30 House Democrats eventually involved, focused on energy permitting, transmission, housing, and infrastructure, explicitly inspired by Klein and Thompson’s Abundance and framed as cutting federal red tape to build more.(inclusiveabundance.org) Separately, reporting notes an “Abundance Caucus” and an Abundance Network–backed group of mayors and local officials (mostly Democrats) organizing to govern with an “abundance mindset.”(lemonde.fr) This is no longer a fringe current; it’s an organized, visible faction inside the Democratic mainstream.

4. Mainstream Democratic policy at the federal level now incorporates abundance-style deregulatory housing reforms. The bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act of 2025, co-led by Sen. Tim Scott (R) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D), passed the Senate Banking Committee unanimously and was later folded into the Senate-passed NDAA. The bill is described as one of the most significant housing packages in over a decade and includes provisions aimed at increasing supply via zoning, permitting, and land-use reforms and other measures to cut red tape while expanding federal support.(washingtonpost.com) That Warren—hardly a marginal figure—has co-authored and championed a package centered on expanding housing supply and streamlining processes underscores that abundance-style thinking has penetrated the party’s policy core.

5. Media and think-tank coverage describe ‘abundance’ as reshaping Democratic discourse, not failing to gain traction. Analyses in the Washington Post and others say Klein and Thompson’s abundance agenda is “reshaping Democratic Party discourse,” especially around housing, infrastructure, and climate, even as it provokes debate with the party’s left.(washingtonpost.com) Le Monde similarly describes “abundance” as an emerging guiding principle among U.S. Democrats, citing an Abundance Caucus and recent California rollbacks of environmental rules as a “significant pivot” in Democratic strategy.(lemonde.fr) The centrist think tank Third Way has also rolled out a major housing plan explicitly aligned with the abundance framework—more construction, fewer regulatory barriers—as a recommended party direction.(axios.com)

6. There is still internal resistance—but that doesn’t mean there’s no substantial shift. Progressive activists and some electeds criticize abundance politics as corporatist or insufficiently focused on equity, and polling suggests Democratic voters slightly prefer a populist, anti-corporate frame over an “abundance agenda” when forced to choose.(axios.com) However, Sacks’s prediction was not that Klein’s ideas would face resistance; it was that Klein wouldn’t convince Democrats. The combination of: (a) high-profile Democratic governors and members of Congress explicitly embracing abundance framing, (b) major Democratic-run jurisdictions enacting large deregulatory permitting and zoning changes, and (c) congressional caucuses and bipartisan landmark bills centered on cutting red tape and boosting supply, all indicate that mainstream Democratic policy has moved meaningfully toward the abundance/permitting-reform model since Klein began his push.

Given this record, Sacks’s statement that Klein would not persuade Democrats in a meaningful way is best judged wrong as of November 30, 2025: the party’s mainstream policy conversation and significant legislative actions have, in fact, shifted substantially in the direction Klein advocated, even if the intra-party contest over how far to go remains ongoing.

The podcast was released 8 March 2025, so 'in the next few weeks' / 'by early April 2025' implies a new FIT21-style digital asset market structure bill would be formally introduced in the House by roughly the first half of April.

In reality, Rep. French Hill and other House leaders released only a discussion draft of a digital asset market structure bill on 5 May 2025, which is already later than early April and was not a formally introduced bill. (jdsupra.com) The actual new FIT21-style market structure bill, H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, was formally introduced by Chairman French Hill on 29 May 2025 as a comprehensive digital asset market structure framework that builds on and refines FIT21. (congress.gov)

Because Hill did introduce a new FIT21-style market structure bill, but not within 'the next few weeks' or by early April 2025 (it came about eleven weeks later), the prediction as normalized — which is explicitly time-bound — did not come true and is therefore classified as wrong.

Legislation piece (successor to FIT21): partly realized, but not yet law.

• The House’s Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (H.R. 3633), explicitly described by press and law firms as a successor building on the prior FIT21 market‑structure effort, was introduced May 29, 2025 and passed the House on July 17, 2025. It is now sitting in the Senate Banking Committee and has not become law as of Nov. 30, 2025.
  • Congress.gov shows H.R. 3633 passed the House (294–134) and was then “Received in the Senate and read twice and referred” on Sept. 18, 2025, with no further action yet. (congress.gov)
• Substantively, the CLARITY Act does contain the kind of disclosure regime Sacks described:
  • It adds a new Securities Act §4B that requires digital commodity issuers relying on an offering exemption to file offering statements with detailed issuer information, business operations, financial condition, distribution plans, and development plans for the blockchain system – effectively covering issuance mechanics. (congress.gov)
  • Later sections and committee materials describe "transaction reporting and beneficial ownership disclosure obligations" for digital commodity related persons and affiliated persons (i.e., founders, executives and other insiders) and impose limits and reporting on their token sales, which tracks the idea of insider token‑holding disclosure. (congress.gov)
  • Earlier FIT21 committee reports (which CLARITY builds on) also spelled out enhanced disclosures specific to digital assets, including the launch and supply process, governance regime, development plan, and material risks of the token – again, issuance mechanics in substance. (congress.gov)
• So on the content dimension, Sacks’s claim that the next market‑structure bill after FIT21 would bake in these disclosure concepts is accurate; on the enactment dimension, that bill exists but has not yet cleared the Senate or been signed, so we cannot say the legislative prediction is fully realized.

SEC framework piece: still in development, not yet established.

• The SEC created a Crypto Task Force in January 2025 to develop a comprehensive framework, and under new Chair Paul Atkins it launched “Project Crypto” in July 2025 to modernize securities rules for digital assets. These initiatives explicitly aim to craft “clear and simple rules of the road for crypto asset distributions, custody, and trading,” including tailored disclosures and safe harbors. (sec.gov)
• However, the SEC’s own regulatory agenda released in September 2025 lists “Crypto Assets” and “Crypto Market Structure Amendments” only at the proposed rule stage with target dates in 2026; market commentary notes that Project Crypto is in Phase 1 and final rules are expected around 2026, not yet adopted. (jdsupra.com)
• Recent speeches by Atkins outline a conceptual token taxonomy and intentions to offer purpose‑built disclosure regimes for ICOs, airdrops, and network rewards, but these remain policy blueprints and draft initiatives rather than completed, binding frameworks. (sec.gov)

Net assessment:

• Sacks predicted (a) that the next FIT21‑style market‑structure legislation would contain robust disclosure terms (including insider and issuance‑mechanics style disclosures), and (b) that the SEC would, in parallel, create its own disclosure/market‑structure frameworks after its rule review.
• As of Nov. 30, 2025: (a) is substantively borne out in the House‑passed CLARITY Act, but that bill is not yet law; (b) is clearly underway via the Crypto Task Force and Project Crypto, but the SEC has not yet finalized the promised frameworks in rule form.

Because the core SEC rulemaking is still in progress and the key market‑structure statute has not yet been enacted, the prediction cannot yet be judged clearly right or wrong. The most accurate rating as of today is "inconclusive (too early)."

This prediction is about a conditional and multi‑year outcome:

If the U.S. hobbles its AI industry with unnecessary regulations while China does not, then China will win the AI race over the ensuing years.

As of 30 November 2025, both sides of that conditional and the long‑term outcome are not clearly settled:

1. Has the U.S. “hobbled” its AI industry with heavy regulations while China stayed lax?

   • Federally, the U.S. actually moved toward deregulation in 2025: Trump’s Executive Order 14179 is explicitly titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” and rescinds Biden’s more restrictive Executive Order 14110, aiming to roll back policies seen as constraints on AI development. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Some U.S. states, notably California, have introduced targeted frontier‑model safety and transparency rules (e.g., SB‑53 / Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act), but these are still relatively new, and there is an ongoing political fight over whether federal law will pre‑empt stricter state regulation. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • China, for its part, has also rolled out substantial AI regulations, including 2023–2025 generative‑AI rules requiring algorithm registration, security reviews, and mandatory labeling of AI‑generated content, with new labeling measures taking effect in September 2025. (cimplifi.com)
     Given this, it is not accurate to say the U.S. is clearly hobbling itself while China refrains from similar or stronger controls; both are regulating, but in different ways.

2. Has China clearly “won” the global AI race by late 2025?
   Available indicators point to a competitive, mixed picture rather than a decisive Chinese win:

   • On investment and market leadership, the U.S. remains far ahead in private AI investment (about $109B vs. China’s $9.3B in 2024) and is widely projected to remain the front‑runner in global AI market share and frontier model development through 2030, with China as a fast‑growing second pole. (allaboutai.com)
   • On overall capability indices, a 2025 comparative AI index finds the U.S. composite AI score (68.1) still exceeds China’s (59.4), even though China is catching up quickly and shows strong regional clusters. (arxiv.org)
   • On research output and specific niches, China leads the world in share of AI publications and is surging in some model benchmarks and in the global market for open‑weight models, where recent work shows Chinese models slightly surpassing U.S. models in download share (17% vs. 15.8%) and performance on some tests. (arxiv.org)

3. Timeframe: “over the ensuing years”
   The statement was made in February 2025; only about nine months have elapsed. The prediction explicitly concerns a multi‑year trajectory (“ensuing years”) of global leadership. Current data show an ongoing, evolving competition rather than a settled outcome, and many forecasts still treat 2025–2030 as the decisive window rather than a period whose results are already known. (allaboutai.com)

Because (a) the antecedent conditions (U.S. uniquely hobbling itself while China does not) have not clearly materialized, and (b) the long‑term outcome (China definitively winning the AI race) cannot reasonably be judged this early and is not reflected in present indicators, the prediction cannot yet be evaluated as right or wrong.

So the appropriate classification is “inconclusive (too early to tell).”

Multiple major tech companies launched and marketed AI agents as a distinct, commercially available product category throughout 2025, matching Sacks’s prediction of “a whole new wave” of agentive products.

Evidence of a broad 2025 agent wave:

• Microsoft security agents (early 2025): At Microsoft Secure and RSA Conference 2025, Microsoft rolled out Security Copilot agents—described as autonomous AI designed to tackle high‑volume security tasks—and began phased public preview to paying enterprise customers.(techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Microsoft 365 Copilot agents & Agent 365 (late 2025): At Ignite 2025, Microsoft announced Word/Excel/PowerPoint “agents in chat,” an “Agent Mode” in Office apps, and Agent 365 as a control plane for managing large numbers of agents across an organization. These capabilities are positioned as a new agent ecosystem layered on top of the already widely deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot, which Microsoft says is used by over 90% of the Fortune 500.(news.microsoft.com)
• Salesforce Agentforce 360 (Oct 2025): Salesforce launched Agentforce 360, an AI agent platform that automates routine workflows across its cloud products. Reuters reports that Agentforce 360 already had about 12,000 customers at global launch, indicating substantial commercial uptake rather than a niche experiment.(reuters.com)
• Consumer/SMB autonomous agents (Manus): Butterfly Effect’s Manus AI agent, launched March 6, 2025, is marketed as an autonomous agent capable of independent reasoning and multi‑step task execution, available as a web, iOS, and Android product—one of the first general-purpose consumer agent apps.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Cross‑industry framing of a new “agentic” era: Industry coverage in 2025 explicitly talks about the “age of agentic AI,” describing agents as a shift from simple copilots or chatbots to systems that plan, reason, and execute multi‑step workflows across tools and data sources.(itpro.com) In parallel, analysts like IDC (via Microsoft) forecast over a billion AI agents by 2028, reinforcing that vendors and enterprises regard “agents” as a distinct, emerging product category rather than a mere UI tweak.(microsoft.com)
• Commerce and vertical agents: Financial analysis from Morgan Stanley in 2025 discusses “agentic commerce” and AI shopping agents used by major retailers (e.g., Amazon’s Rufus and other shopping assistants), treating agents as a new way consumers will interact with e‑commerce by autonomously handling search, comparison, and purchase flows.(businessinsider.com)

Across enterprise security, productivity suites, CRM, and consumer/mobile, 2025 saw a clear wave of explicitly branded AI “agents” and “agentic” products moving beyond simple chat to delegated, multi‑step task execution. These products were commercially available (often to large paying customer bases) within the 2025 calendar year, and industry commentary treats them as a notable new category. That aligns closely with Sacks’s forecast of “a whole new wave” of agentive products arriving in 2025, so the prediction is right.

Evidence shows that within a few weeks of the January 25, 2025 podcast, David Sacks moved from a tentative, onboarding phase into an active policy‑shaping role on crypto and AI.

• Official role and authority: Public records list Sacks as White House AI and Crypto Czar with a term start of January 20, 2025, and as chair/co‑chair of relevant presidential advisory bodies, giving him formal responsibility to shape policy in these domains.(en.wikipedia.org) Executive Order 14178 (“Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology”), signed January 23, 2025, creates a President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets and tasks it with proposing a federal regulatory framework for digital assets within 180 days; multiple summaries state that this working group is led/chaired by Sacks in his special advisor role.(en.wikipedia.org) That structure is exactly the kind of policy‑shaping authority he was describing.

• Active policy shaping within ~10 days: By February 4, 2025—about ten days after the podcast—CNBC reports Sacks, described as the newly appointed White House AI and crypto czar, meeting with lawmakers and publicly setting concrete priorities: making stablecoin legislation a top focus, and leading a task force studying a U.S. Bitcoin or digital‑asset reserve at the president’s direction. He explicitly frames objectives and timelines (e.g., getting legislation through Congress in roughly six months), which goes well beyond a mere “listening mode” and into active agenda‑setting.(cnbc.com) That timing fits the prediction’s “over the next couple of weeks” window.

• Major policy initiatives soon after: On March 6, 2025, Trump signs an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile; coverage notes that this move followed recommendations and public advocacy by Sacks in his capacity as White House crypto and AI advisor, and that his working group is central to executing the policy.(politico.com) This is clear evidence that by early March—still only about six weeks after the podcast—Sacks was deeply involved in designing and promoting specific federal crypto policy.

• Ethics/onboarding process: Reports describe Sacks serving as a special government employee (SGE) under ethics waivers, with Democratic lawmakers later scrutinizing whether he has complied with SGE rules and time limits—an indication that the White House ethics apparatus formally processed his status.(mexc.com) Additional reporting details a White House memo (dated early March and publicly noted mid‑March) documenting that Sacks and Craft Ventures divested hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto‑related holdings and obtained conflict‑of‑interest waivers to serve as the president’s special advisor for AI and crypto, explicitly tying these divestments to compliance with government ethics regulations.(ainvest.com) While some ethics questions persisted later, this evidence shows that an ethics/onboarding process did occur and was sufficiently advanced by late winter 2025 for him to operate in a fully engaged advisory role.

Putting these pieces together: by early February 2025—well within “a few weeks” of the January 25 podcast—Sacks had moved into visible, substantive policy‑shaping activities on crypto and AI, under a formally recognized White House role and associated ethics framework. The existence of later ethics controversies does not contradict the core claim that, after an initial onboarding period, he transitioned from listening to actively shaping policy in the timeframe he described. Therefore, the prediction is right.

Multiple All-In Podcast episode descriptions after January 25, 2025 explicitly note David Sacks participating on-air. For example, the official All-In episode list for mid/late 2025 includes descriptions such as Episode #245 (October 3, 2025), where it states that “Sacks joins the discussion,” and other episodes in August–September 2025 that describe David Sacks sharing insights or being part of the conversation, indicating he is an active on-air participant again after the January 25 episode.

The aggregated All-In site and the PodcastAI episode index both list David Sacks as one of the four primary hosts, with updated speaking-duration statistics through at least Episode 252 on November 22, 2025, confirming continued on-air appearances well after January 25, 2025.

Additionally, 2025 press coverage (e.g., Business Insider and New York Post) describes David Sacks making comments on the All-In podcast in his role as Trump administration AI/crypto adviser, further corroborating that he returned as an on-air participant during 2025.

Taken together, these sources show that after the January 25, 2025 episode in which he said “I’ll be back,” David Sacks did in fact return as an on-air participant on the All-In Podcast.

Sources: All-In official episode list and descriptions, including episodes in August–October 2025; PodcastAI episode index with host participation metrics through Episode 252 (Nov 22, 2025); 2025 news articles referencing Sacks’ appearances on the All-In Podcast as a Trump administration official.

Citations: [All-In episode index & descriptions] (allin.onpodcastai.com) [Press references to Sacks on the All-In Podcast] (businessinsider.com)

Public documents and reporting show that DOGE was intended to sunset on July 4, 2026 (the U.S. Semiquincentennial), but in reality it was dissolved earlier.

• The executive order establishing DOGE’s temporary organization explicitly scheduled its termination for July 4, 2026, tying it to an 18‑month agenda ending on that date. (whitehouse.gov)
• Contemporary coverage of DOGE’s launch likewise reported that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy had set an explicit expiry date of July 4, 2026 for the initiative. (businesstoday.in)

However, subsequent reporting and official statements indicate DOGE was effectively disbanded in November 2025, well before that date:

• Reuters reported that DOGE had been quietly disbanded with eight months left on its charter, and that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director confirmed DOGE was no longer a centralized entity and its functions were being absorbed by OPM and others. (reuters.com)
• Other major outlets similarly described DOGE as dissolved months before its scheduled conclusion on July 4, 2026. (nypost.com)
• A current encyclopedic summary lists DOGE as dissolved in 2025, consistent with these reports of an early shutdown. (en.wikipedia.org)

Since the prediction was that DOGE “will be sunsetting or disbanding at the 250th anniversary of America, which would be July 4th of 2026,” but the initiative was in fact disbanded in 2025, the specific forecast about its sunset date is incorrect.

As of 30 November 2025, the core condition of the prediction has not yet been met, but it still could be within the current Congress/Trump term.

Key points:

• FIT21 itself was never enacted. It passed the House in May 2024 but died in the 118th Congress without becoming law. (jonesday.com)
• In the 119th Congress, House Republicans advanced a successor bill, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (H.R. 3633, the “CLARITY Act”), which explicitly builds on and refines FIT21 to establish a crypto market‑structure regime and divide jurisdiction between the CFTC and SEC over digital commodities vs. securities. (congress.gov) It passed the House on July 17, 2025, but as of late November 2025 it has only been received and referred in the Senate and has not been voted on there or sent to the president, so it is not law yet. (congress.gov)
• The GENIUS Act, a major crypto bill focused on stablecoin regulation, was enacted and signed by President Trump on July 18, 2025, but it addresses payment stablecoins, not the broader commodity–security classification problem for all digital assets that FIT21/CLARITY target. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Separately, Gary Gensler is no longer SEC chair; he was replaced by Paul Atkins in April 2025, and the SEC is developing its own “token taxonomy” guidance. (en.wikipedia.org) This shift supports the spirit of Sacks’s claim that the Gensler era is ending, but it does not satisfy the specific prediction that Congress will enact a FIT21‑like market‑structure law.

Because the 119th Congress and Trump’s term continue into 2026, there is still time for CLARITY or similar legislation to be enacted. At present, therefore, the prediction is not yet fulfilled nor definitively falsified, so the status is best characterized as inconclusive (too early).

Evidence from 2025 shows that, under Trump’s second administration, the U.S. government did actively pursue structural antitrust remedies against Google, matching Sacks’s prediction that breakup efforts would be “pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated.”

1. Search monopoly case (filed 2020, remedies pursued under Trump 2.0)

   • The DOJ’s 2020 search case against Google (United States v. Google LLC, D.D.C.) resulted in an August 5, 2024 ruling that Google is an illegal monopolist in search.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • In Trump’s second term, the Trump Justice Department explicitly reaffirmed Biden‑era proposals to break up Google, including forcing divestiture of the Chrome browser and banning default‑search payment deals that entrench Google’s dominance. This was reported in early March 2025 as “the first significant antitrust move under Trump’s new administration,” and was framed as a continued aggressive push to dismantle parts of Google.(washingtonpost.com)
   • Although the final September 2, 2025 remedies order in the search case stopped short of ordering an immediate breakup and instead imposed strong conduct and data‑sharing remedies, those court‑ordered remedies followed a 15‑day remedies trial in May 2025 where DOJ had argued for significant structural measures.(justice.gov)

2. Ad‑tech monopoly case (filed 2023, structural breakup remedies pushed in 2025)

   • In a separate DOJ case over Google’s advertising technology (filed 2023), a federal court on April 17, 2025 found Google had illegally monopolized key ad‑tech markets.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • Following that liability ruling, the DOJ in May 2025 formally proposed structural divestitures—forcing Google to sell its AdX ad exchange and DFP publisher ad‑server business—arguing that “nothing short of a structural divestment” would restore competition.(cnbc.com)
   • These proposed remedies were filed and pursued during Trump’s 2025–2028 term and are classic examples of antitrust actions specifically aimed at breaking up parts of Google.

Taken together, Trump’s DOJ not only continued but affirmatively pursued structural breakup remedies against Google in multiple ongoing antitrust cases during 2025. Even though those suits pre‑dated the administration and the ultimate remedies are still being litigated or appealed, the core condition of Sacks’s prediction—serious, government‑driven antitrust efforts in the next Trump administration to structurally break up Google—has already been met. Accordingly, the prediction is best classified as right.

Authoritative post‑election tallies for the 2024 U.S. Senate elections show Republicans ending with 53 Senate seats, not 54. The official 2024 Senate elections summary lists the post‑election composition as 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents, with the Independents caucusing with Democrats, yielding a 53–47 functional split in favor of Republicans.(en.wikipedia.org)(congress.gov)(everycrsreport.com) Independent roundups (e.g., CBS News and other national outlets) likewise describe GOP control as a 53‑seat majority, not 54.(cbsnews.com)(grokipedia.com)

Moreover, Congressional Research Service profiles of the 119th Congress confirm that the Senate has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents who both caucus with the Democrats; there is no indication of any party switch or GOP‑caucusing independent that would have taken the Republican caucus to 54 at any point during that period.(congress.gov)(senate.gov)

Since the predictor said the final counts in the remaining undecided races would bring the Republican caucus to 54 seats within about a week of November 8, 2024, and the caucus in practice stabilized at 53, the prediction did not come true.

The prediction was that with a 53–54 seat Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be able to secure confirmation to a major cabinet-level position in the incoming Trump administration.

Relevant facts:

1. Republicans ended up with a 53-seat majority in the Senate for the 119th Congress. After the 2024 U.S. Senate elections, Republicans held 53 seats (Democrats 45, Independents 2), giving them a 53–47 majority. (en.wikipedia.org)
2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds a major cabinet-level post in the Trump administration. He has served as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump since February 13, 2025. This is a cabinet-level position. (en.wikipedia.org)
3. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in that role. Multiple reports and his biography describe that the Senate confirmed him as HHS Secretary on February 13, 2025, following a full Senate vote. (en.wikipedia.org)

Putting this together:

• The condition described (a 53–54 seat Republican majority) did occur (Republicans have 53 seats).
• Under that majority, RFK Jr. was confirmed to a major cabinet-level position (Secretary of Health and Human Services) in the Trump administration.

Therefore, the prediction that such a majority would allow RFK Jr. to secure confirmation to a major cabinet post in the Trump administration came true.

Donald Trump’s second term began with his inauguration on January 20, 2025, and there was no peace treaty or formal end to the Russia‑Ukraine war on that day or in the weeks immediately following; instead, the war continued and only later did talks about a temporary ceasefire emerge. (en.wikipedia.org) Reporting on Trump’s early Ukraine diplomacy notes that his promised 24‑hour resolution did not occur and that an initial U.S. proposal tied to aid and economic arrangements went unsigned by Kyiv because Zelenskyy judged it unacceptable and said he could not “sell Ukraine away,” indicating a refusal to accept the demanded terms. (en.wikipedia.org) Throughout early and mid‑2025, Zelenskyy repeatedly and publicly ruled out territorial concessions as the price of peace or a ceasefire, stating that Ukraine would not recognize occupied land as Russian and would not give up territory under any circumstances. (eadaily.com) As of late 2025, Ukrainian officials still insist they will not cede territory even though draft peace plans from the U.S. and Russia explicitly require Ukraine to surrender land, underscoring that Kyiv has not been willing to make the key concessions Trump and Moscow have sought. (theguardian.com) While Russia’s own maximalist demands are also a major obstacle, the specific claim that Trump could not end the war on “day one” because Ukraine was not yet prepared to make the concessions his kind of deal would require is well supported by the subsequent record, so the prediction is best judged as right.

As of November 30, 2025, Donald Trump has not begun a new presidential term, because he did not win the 2024 U.S. presidential election; therefore, the condition "During Trump’s upcoming term" has not been triggered.

Since the prediction is explicitly about what Congress will or will not do during a future Trump term, and that term has not occurred, we cannot yet evaluate whether Congress enacts $2 trillion in federal spending cuts in such a term.

Accordingly, the correct classification is inconclusive (too early): the scenario the prediction is about has not taken place, so the prediction cannot be judged right or wrong.

Available evidence shows no government‑wide "massive declassification effort" under Trump’s second administration that substantially reduces the overall volume of classified federal documents.

What has happened:

• Targeted assassination‑records declassification. Executive Order 14176 (Jan. 23, 2025) orders declassification of records related to the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, with implementation plans led by the DNI. This is significant but narrowly focused on three historical cases, not a system‑wide program. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Specific large document releases. Following EO 14176, the administration released over 10,000 pages of RFK‑assassination documents, again important but confined to one topic. (nypost.com)
• Issue‑specific transparency laws. The Epstein Files Transparency Act (Nov. 19, 2025) requires the DOJ to release all unclassified records related to Jeffrey Epstein; it does not itself overhaul or substantially shrink the classified universe, and applies only to one case. (en.wikipedia.org)

What has not happened:

• No new overarching classification/declassification order. The general national‑security classification framework continues to be governed by earlier Executive Order 13526 and its declassification rules (e.g., 25‑year automatic declassification), with no Trump‑era replacement or major amendment establishing a broad mass‑declassification program. (archives.gov)
• No evidence of a cross‑agency "large‑scale" declassification initiative. Reviews of the catalog of Trump’s second‑term executive orders show actions on DEI programs, censorship, WHO withdrawal, climate agreements, digital assets, DOGE, etc., but nothing creating a government‑wide drive to systematically declassify large swaths of classified holdings across agencies. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the prediction specifically called for a **"massive" or "large‑scale" declassification program that substantially reduces the volume of classified documents across the federal government, and what we see instead are narrow, topic‑specific releases and one‑off transparency measures, the prediction is best evaluated as wrong rather than partially fulfilled.

Sacks predicted that a core, outcome-defining question of Trump’s second term would be whether he could curb the autonomy of the federal bureaucracy and bring agencies under tighter presidential control. That is exactly how the second Trump administration has been widely characterized so far.

Trump has made implementation of the Project 2025 vision to “dismantle the administrative state” and centralize control of agencies in the White House a central tenet of his second term, according to detailed reporting and analysis.(en.wikipedia.org) On taking office in January 2025, he immediately reinstated and expanded Schedule F–style classifications (now “Schedule Policy/Career”), making tens of thousands of policy‑influencing civil servants easier to remove and more directly answerable to presidential directives.(theguardian.com) He also created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk to drive layoffs and restructuring across agencies, leading to roughly 200,000–300,000 federal employees being fired or pushed out in 2025 alone, an effort commentators describe as an unprecedented attempt to reshape the civil service and concentrate executive power.(en.wikipedia.org)

Additional executive orders have aimed to bring independent regulators under White House control and to “commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state,” explicitly framing bureaucratic restructuring as a top presidential priority.(politico.com) Major outlets and scholars now treat the struggle over the administrative state—reclassifications, mass layoffs, union rollbacks, and litigation over agency independence—as one of the defining battles of Trump’s second term, not a side issue.(millercenter.org)

Because this fight over reducing bureaucratic autonomy and increasing direct presidential control has, by late 2025, become a central organizing theme of Trump’s governance and a major determinant of his administration’s trajectory, Sacks’s prediction about what would be a key, outcome‑shaping issue of the term is borne out by events to date.

The prediction is explicitly about a long-term trend: starting with the 2024 election and playing out "over subsequent election cycles," abortion supposedly becomes progressively less salient as a national wedge issue. As of 30 Nov 2025, there has not yet been another federal election cycle (e.g., the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential) to test whether the issue’s salience is actually declining over time. We only have partial indicators (polling, legislative fights, and 2025 state-level developments), which still show abortion as a prominent and mobilizing issue in U.S. politics, but that does not yet falsify or confirm a multi‑cycle decline in salience. Because the claim is about a trend across multiple future cycles, and we are still within the first cycle after the prediction, it is too early to determine whether it will prove correct or not. Therefore the status has to be marked as inconclusive (too early).

Evidence since the 2024 election shows that while top Republicans have de‑emphasized a formal national abortion ban, they have actively pursued significant federal abortion restrictions, contradicting the prediction that they would “know not to touch this” and leave the issue primarily to the states.

On the “national ban” side, the 2024 Republican National Committee platform—crafted with Trump’s backing—dropped its longstanding call for a federal abortion ban and instead framed abortion as an issue for the states, a notable shift after four decades of federal-ban language.​ (axios.com) Trump and his running mate JD Vance repeatedly said during and after the 2024 campaign that abortion policy should be left to the states, distancing the ticket from a one‑size‑fits‑all national ban.​ (politifact.com) There has also been no new, leadership-driven 15‑week national ban enacted in the 119th Congress, even though some Republicans and the Republican Study Committee continue to signal interest in that kind of bill.​ (ncregister.com) This partially aligns with the prediction’s claim about avoiding a national ban.

However, GOP leaders have very much “touched” abortion at the federal level through major nationwide restrictions, especially via funding and insurance rules:

• In January 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14182, “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” which ended federal funding for elective abortions, revoked Biden-era orders expanding access to abortion-related care, and directed federal agencies to implement stricter anti-abortion funding policies nationwide.​ (en.wikipedia.org)
• The large GOP “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” budget/tax package that passed the House in May 2025 includes a provision to stop federal payments to Affordable Care Act plans that cover abortions except in limited cases (rape, incest, life of the mother), a sweeping national restriction on abortion coverage tied to federal subsidies.​ (en.wikipedia.org)
• Ongoing negotiations over extending ACA premium subsidies in late 2025 have been nearly derailed because congressional Republicans are demanding tighter abortion restrictions on all subsidized insurance plans, going beyond current Hyde rules; Democrats and reporters describe these abortion demands as the main sticking point in the deal.​ (washingtonpost.com)
• House Republicans also reintroduced measures like the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a federal criminal law governing care in the context of abortions, backed by well over 100 GOP cosponsors and party leadership.​ (en.wikipedia.org)

Because national Republican leaders have, post‑2024, made federal abortion policy a live issue—pursuing broad, nationwide restrictions via executive action and major legislation, and using abortion rules as leverage in core budget and health-care negotiations—the claim that the issue is “over” and that Republicans would largely avoid federal abortion restrictions has not held up. The absence of a new enacted national gestational ban does not offset the substantial federal restrictions they have actively sought and, in some cases, implemented, so the prediction is best judged wrong overall.

As of November 30, 2025, Florida has held only one recent statewide abortion-rights referendum: the November 5, 2024 Amendment 4 measure, which would have allowed abortion until fetal viability (around 23–24 weeks) and received about 57% support—below the 60% supermajority required for passage. (en.wikipedia.org) This measure concerned viability/24 weeks, not a 15‑week limit.

Available reporting on Florida’s abortion law and ballot measures shows no subsequent statewide initiative that offers a 15‑week abortion limit as a compromise proposal; instead, the legislature has moved to further restrict the citizen‑initiative process after the near‑pass of Amendment 4, making future amendments harder to qualify for the ballot. (en.wikipedia.org) Because the specific contingency Sacks described—“if they went back with a 15‑week proposal in a future referendum”—has not actually occurred, there is no real‑world result against which to test his claim that such a measure would likely clear 60%. The prediction therefore cannot yet be evaluated for correctness.

As of 30 November 2025, the prediction’s timeframe (“within the next several years … through at least 2027”) has not yet elapsed, so it cannot be definitively judged.

To see if it has already been falsified, we can check whether U.S. long‑term interest rates (e.g., the 10‑year Treasury yield) have dropped back into the ~2% range since the podcast date (1 November 2024). Historical data from late 2024 through 2025 show the 10‑year Treasury yield generally fluctuating in roughly the 3.7–5% range and not returning to anything close to ~2%. Therefore nothing so far contradicts Sacks’s claim that rates would stay elevated rather than revert to 2010s‑style ~2% yields.

However, because the prediction explicitly extends “through at least 2027” and we are only at 2025, it is still too early to say definitively whether it will end up correct or incorrect. The proper status at this time is therefore inconclusive (too early).

The prediction explicitly concerns the “near future” over roughly the next 5–10 years after November 2024. That window runs approximately from 2029 to 2034. As of today (30 November 2025), we are only about one year into that period, so the full outcome cannot yet be assessed.

What we can say so far:

• Current and projected U.S. federal budgets do show growing shares for entitlements and interest costs, with discretionary spending (both defense and non‑defense) shrinking as a share of GDP over the long term. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that, under current law, spending growth is driven mainly by Social Security, major health programs (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies), and interest, while discretionary spending falls as a share of GDP over the next 30 years.
• However, as of the most recent enacted and proposed budgets (FY 2024 and FY 2025), the federal government still funds a wide range of non‑defense discretionary programs (education, scientific research, infrastructure grants, etc.). Non‑defense discretionary has not been “mostly eliminated” yet; it remains a significant category, even if constrained and projected to decline as a share of the budget.

Because the claim is specifically about where things will end up over the next 5–10 years (i.e., by the early–mid 2030s) rather than where they stand right now, and we have not yet reached that horizon, the correct classification is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than right or wrong at this time.

Donald Trump did in fact win Pennsylvania in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Official results from the Pennsylvania Department of State show Trump receiving 3,543,308 votes (about 50.37%) to Kamala Harris’s 3,423,042 votes (about 48.66%), and the governor certified Trump’s slate of electors for the state. (pa.gov) Independent tallies and summaries of the 2024 Pennsylvania presidential vote report the same figures and confirm that Trump carried the state and its 19 electoral votes. (en.wikipedia.org) Because the prediction was that Trump would win Pennsylvania in 2024, and he ultimately did, the prediction was correct.

Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election, receiving 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226 and winning the national popular vote with 49.8% to Harris’s 48.3%. This outcome is documented in official result summaries and post‑election analyses of the 2024 United States presidential election, which identify Trump as the elected (and now serving) president following the November 5, 2024 vote. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given David Sacks’s prediction that “all the data is basically pointing one direction, which is a Trump victory,” and the verified election outcome showing that Trump indeed won, this prediction is right.

Trump did in fact win the national popular vote in 2024, taking about 49.8% to Kamala Harris’s 48.3%, and won the Electoral College 312–226.(en.wikipedia.org) However, multiple nonpartisan analyses explicitly conclude that this was not a landslide: the Council on Foreign Relations and others note that 312 electoral votes and a 1.5‑point popular‑vote margin are modest by historical standards and smaller than classic "landslide" wins like 1964, 1972, or 1984.(cfr.org) The Cook Political Report points out that the race ultimately hinged on roughly 230,000 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, underscoring how close the outcome was.(cookpolitical.com) In addition, pre‑election national polling averages generally showed Harris with a small lead rather than Trump clearly leading the popular vote, contradicting the scenario the prediction envisioned.(aljazeera.com) Since Trump did win the popular vote but the result is widely characterized as a narrow or modest victory rather than an Electoral College landslide, the conditional claim "if Trump is winning the popular vote, then it’s a landslide" did not hold in practice.

Donald Trump did win the November 5, 2024 U.S. presidential election, receiving 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226 and winning the national popular vote 49.8% to 48.3% (a margin of about 1.5–1.6 percentage points).(en.wikipedia.org)

However, David Sacks’s prediction was not just that Trump would win, but that he would win “not that close”—a “solid victory” and “pretty handily”—as opposed to a very tight race.

Post‑election analyses characterize 2024 as a close election:

• FiveThirtyEight/ABC’s retrospective explicitly concludes that “the 2024 presidential election was close, not a landslide,” noting Trump’s national popular-vote edge of only about 1.6 points and that Harris would have won the Electoral College had she done just a couple of points better in a few key states.(goodmorningamerica.com)
• Pennsylvania, the tipping‑point state, was decided by roughly 1.7 percentage points (50.4%–48.7%), meaning a swing under 2 points nationwide could have flipped the outcome.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Commentators have stressed that Trump’s margin is historically small, with opinion pieces pushing back on claims of a “landslide” or overwhelming mandate and emphasizing the narrow popular‑vote margin and relatively modest Electoral College spread.(theguardian.com)

Given that:

1. The national popular‑vote margin was about 1.5–1.6 points; and
2. The tipping‑point state margin was about 1.7 points, leaving the election easily flippable with a small swing; and
3. Major analysts explicitly describe the outcome as a close election rather than a landslide or decisive blowout,

Sacks’s qualitative claim that Trump would win “not that close” and “pretty handily” is not borne out by how the results and subsequent expert analyses characterize the 2024 race. The direction (Trump wins) was correct, but the core prediction being evaluated—victory by a clear, not‑close margin—was wrong, so overall this prediction is best scored as wrong.

Kamala Harris’s interview with Bret Baier on Fox News aired on October 16, 2024, where she tried to distance herself from President Biden and sparred with Baier over immigration and other issues, but coverage treated it as a tough, contentious exchange rather than a breakthrough performance.(cnbc.com)

On October 15, the day before the interview, 538’s national polling average had Harris leading Trump by about 2.4 points (48.5%–46.1%), with RealClearPolitics showing a 1.7‑point Harris lead; in 538’s swing‑state averages she held razor‑thin leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada, while Trump led narrowly in North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona.(newsweek.com) That’s the baseline immediately before the Baier interview.

By October 29—roughly two weeks after the interview—Newsweek reported that Trump’s national numbers had improved relative to the prior week: 538 now had Harris ahead by only about 1.4 points (48.1%–46.6%), down from a 1.7‑point lead just a week earlier, and RealClearPolitics had Trump ahead nationally by 0.5 points (48.1%–47.6%).(newsweek.com) In the swing states, 538 showed Harris and Trump essentially tied in Wisconsin, with Trump slightly ahead in Pennsylvania and Nevada and leading more clearly in North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona; RealClearPolitics showed Trump ahead in all seven battleground states.(newsweek.com) Relative to the pre‑interview picture, this is, if anything, movement in Trump’s direction, not evidence that Harris closed the gap.

The final election results confirm that Harris did not close the gap in any meaningful sense: Trump won the Electoral College 312–226 and the national popular vote 49.8%–48.3%.(en.wikipedia.org) Polling aggregates on election eve still had Harris only modestly ahead nationally (by less than a point on average) and Trump favored or narrowly ahead in key swing states, a pattern consistent with the eventual outcome.(en.wikipedia.org)

Across the weeks after the Baier interview and leading up to November 5, there is no sign of a durable improvement in Harris’s standing versus Trump; her national edge shrank and her swing‑state position either stagnated or deteriorated slightly. That aligns with Sacks’s prediction that the Fox interview would not improve her standing or help her close the gap with Trump in the weeks before the election.

As of November 30, 2025, it’s too early to know whether the U.S. will ultimately see large‑scale deployment of SMRs or whether NIMBY opposition will be the decisive factor preventing it.

Key points:

• No large-scale SMR deployment yet, but multiple first-wave projects are advancing. As of 2024–2025, operational SMRs exist only in Russia and China; none are in commercial operation in the United States.(en.wikipedia.org) The first U.S. deployments are still targeted for late this decade or the early 2030s—e.g., Holtec’s plan for SMR‑300 units at the Palisades site in Michigan by 2030 as part of a 10 GW North American SMR fleet in the 2030s; TerraPower’s Natrium demonstration plant at Kemmerer, Wyoming, which has broken ground on non‑nuclear facilities and received key state and NRC environmental approvals; and Dow/X‑energy’s Xe‑100 SMR project in Seadrift, Texas, now under NRC construction‑permit review.(reuters.com) These show a serious build‑out attempt is underway, but it is still pre‑deployment.

• So far, the main obstacles have been economics and project risk, not local NIMBY backlash. The highest‑profile SMR project to be canceled in the U.S., NuScale’s Carbon Free Power Project in Idaho, failed primarily due to escalating costs and insufficient utility subscription, not community opposition.(markets.financialcontent.com) Early advanced‑nuclear sites like Kemmerer, WY (TerraPower), Dow’s industrial site in Seadrift, TX (X‑energy), and planned tech‑driven SMR projects (e.g., Amazon/Energy Northwest’s Xe‑100 project in Washington) have generally emphasized local economic benefits and report cooperative local or state engagement rather than sustained NIMBY‑driven blockage.(terrapower.com)

• Public opinion is moving toward more support for nuclear, not away from it. Recent Gallup and related polling in 2024–2025 finds that a clear majority of Americans (around 55–61%) now favor the use of nuclear energy, the highest support in over a decade, even if people remain more cautious about plants in their direct vicinity.(news.gallup.com) This undercuts the blanket claim that “no one wants a nuclear plant in their backyard,” though localized resistance could still emerge as siting diversifies beyond existing industrial or coal‑plant locations.

• The time horizon of the prediction is effectively multi‑decadal. SMR vendors, utilities, tech companies, and the U.S. Department of Energy are all planning deployments stretching through the 2030s (e.g., Holtec’s ~10 GW SMR fleet, DOE tenders supporting multiple SMR consortia, Google and others signing long‑term SMR MOUs), which, if realized, would constitute the very kind of large‑scale build‑out Sacks said “is not going to happen.”(reuters.com) But because these projects are still in permitting, early construction, or financing stages, their eventual success or failure can’t yet be judged.

Given that:

• large‑scale U.S. SMR deployment has not yet occurred,
• substantial evidence of future large‑scale deployment efforts now exists, and
• NIMBY opposition has not yet clearly emerged as the dominant limiting factor (compared with cost, regulation, and technology risk),

there isn’t enough outcome data to say Sacks is clearly right or clearly wrong. The prediction remains inconclusive (too early) rather than demonstrably correct or refuted.

As of 30 November 2025, there has been no widely reported, serious nuclear power plant accident in the United States since the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979, which is still cited as the country’s worst commercial nuclear accident (INES Level 5).(en.wikipedia.org) More recent U.S. nuclear issues include a tritium-contaminated water leak at Minnesota’s Monticello plant in 2022, which regulators characterized as minor with no offsite health impact,(en.wikipedia.org) and a variety of low‑level operational events logged in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s event notification reports (e.g., for 2025) that are classified as non‑emergencies and do not involve harmful radioactive fallout affecting surrounding communities.(nrc.gov) Broader coverage of nuclear energy in 2024–2025 focuses on license extensions (e.g., Turkey Point), reactor restarts (e.g., Palisades, Three Mile Island Unit 1), and SMR approvals rather than on any major accident releasing dangerous fallout on nearby (often working‑class) communities.(theguardian.com) Because Sacks’s prediction is explicitly open‑ended ("inevitably" / "at some point in the future"), and no qualifying U.S. accident has occurred since he made it on 18 October 2024, it has not been falsified or confirmed yet. Therefore the correct status is inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than right or wrong.

The prediction explicitly concerns what will happen over the subsequent presidential term (2025–2029) if Donald Trump loses the 2024 election. As of November 30, 2025, we are less than one year into that four‑year window, so it is not yet possible to evaluate whether lawfare will have “significantly” increased over the entire term.

While one can already point to various high‑profile investigations and lawsuits involving political figures and major business leaders during 2025, the prediction is about the overall pattern through 2029. Because that period is still ongoing, any judgment now would be speculative rather than factual.

Therefore, the correct classification at this time is “inconclusive (too early)”: there has not yet been enough time in the 2025–2029 term to determine whether Sacks’s long‑horizon prediction is right or wrong.

The prediction was explicitly conditional: only if the Biden–Harris–aligned governing coalition was not electorally defeated in 2024 would legal and regulatory “lawfare” against Elon Musk and others continue or intensify in the 2025–2029 term.

In reality, that condition did not occur:

• In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump (Republican) defeated Kamala Harris (Democrat), 312–226 in the Electoral College, and took the popular vote as well. Trump was subsequently certified by Congress and inaugurated as president on January 20, 2025, replacing the Biden administration. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given this, the antecedent of Sacks’s conditional prediction (“if they’re not defeated…”) is false in the actual world. That means we cannot empirically observe what the Biden–Harris coalition would have done had it remained in power for the 2025–2029 term. Any claim about whether they would have continued or intensified “lawfare” is now counterfactual and not verifiable from real-world developments.

Because the necessary condition for testing the prediction never obtained, its truth or falsity cannot be determined, even though enough time has passed. Hence the outcome is best categorized as ambiguous, not right or wrong.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election ended up close, not a landslide, which aligns with Sacks’s basic conditional framing (“either Trump in a landslide, or it’s very close”).

What actually happened:

• Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris with 312 electoral votes to 226.
• He won 49.8% of the popular vote vs. 48.3% for Harris, a national popular-vote margin of about 1.5–1.6 percentage points.
• Key tipping‑point states like Pennsylvania were decided by roughly 1.7 points, indicating a narrow underlying contest despite Trump sweeping the battlegrounds.

These figures come from official-style tallies and summaries of the 2024 results, which consistently report Trump’s 312–226 Electoral College win and sub‑2‑point popular‑vote margin. (en.wikipedia.org) Post‑election analyses explicitly characterize 2024 as “close, not a landslide” and warn that calling it a landslide is misleading, pointing to the tight popular vote and small margins in the decisive states. (goodmorningamerica.com) Even Trump‑focused retrospectives describe his victory as “decisive” but “not a landslide,” again emphasizing that the win was solid but not overwhelming in historical terms. (en.wikipedia.org)

Comparing to Sacks’s statement:

• He did not flatly predict that Trump would win in a landslide; he said that, as of that moment, Trump was the only candidate who looked like he could get a landslide.
• He then added: “Otherwise, it’s going to be very close.”
• In reality, no landslide occurred, and the election outcome matches the “very close” branch of his conditional: a narrow national margin and close tipping‑point state, widely described by analysts as a close election rather than a landslide.

Because (1) the race was in fact close in the sense used by election analysts, and (2) no non‑Trump landslide materialized that would contradict his “only Trump could get a landslide” framing, Sacks’s prediction is best judged as right on the main point he was making about the 2024 election’s likely shape.

The prediction was conditional on a Republican—specifically Donald Trump—winning in 2024 and taking office in January 2025. That condition was met: Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the November 5, 2024 election and was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)

The substantive claim was that, under that Republican administration in 2025, it would become easier to get M&A done than under the prior Democratic administration.

Evidence shows a meaningful easing of merger enforcement and greater receptivity to large deals in 2025 relative to the Biden years:

• While the FTC and DOJ initially kept the Biden‑era 2023 Merger Guidelines in place in February 2025—contrary to expectations of an immediate rules rollback(mayerbrown.com)—subsequent practice shifted.
• A July 2025 analysis notes that new Trump‑appointed antitrust leaders explicitly rejected the Biden “anti‑merger” agenda and began rolling back tactics such as routine “prior approval” requirements and other policies that had discouraged many transactions, characterizing these as a departure from the previous administration’s merger policies.(forbes.com)
• A Wall Street Journal report in late November 2025 describes corporate dealmaking as “bigger and bolder under Trump,” with U.S. deal value up over 40% year‑over‑year to $1.9 trillion, twice as many deals over $10 billion, and only three mergers challenged that year versus an average of about six annually under Biden—a roughly 50% reduction in challenges. The article attributes this shift to more lenient antitrust enforcement and a willingness to clear or settle large transactions, including in media and tech.(wsj.com)
• Specific cases reinforce that high‑profile deals became easier to clear: DOJ quickly ended its probe into T‑Mobile’s $4.4 billion acquisition of UScellular, a move widely read as a sign of decreased scrutiny under Trump, and T‑Mobile is pursuing additional acquisitions.(businessinsider.com) Likewise, Trump reversed earlier opposition to Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel by negotiating political conditions (e.g., a golden share and governance guarantees) and allowing the acquisition—one that had faced significant resistance under Biden—to close in June 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Trump also fired the remaining Democratic FTC commissioners in March 2025, leaving the agency in full Republican control—an institutional change expected to soften the stance on major mergers, particularly in tech and other concentrated industries that had been focal points for Biden‑era enforcement.(washingtonpost.com)

At the same time, enforcement did not disappear: antitrust suits against Big Tech (e.g., the Meta monopolization case) and a continued focus on “pocketbook” sectors like housing, healthcare, and groceries persisted, and several law‑firm and practitioner memos describe Trump’s second‑term approach as still “robust” but more case‑by‑case, with the stricter guidelines retained for now.(wilmerhale.com) This nuance, however, is fully compatible with the forecast: the claim was not that antitrust enforcement would vanish, only that M&A would be easier to get done than under the Biden administration.

Given:

• The realized condition (Trump taking office in January 2025), and
• Multiple independent indicators of materially more permissive merger enforcement and a surge in large‑scale M&A activity relative to Biden’s term, including fewer challenges, rollback of prior‑approval requirements, faster clearances, and high‑profile deals that likely would have faced more resistance previously,

the prediction that “there will be an opening up of M&A” and that it would be easier to get M&A done in 2025 under a Republican administration than under the preceding Democratic one is best judged as right.

OpenAI did publicly announce and ship a formal agents product well within 12 months of September 27, 2024.

• On March 11, 2025, OpenAI published “New tools for building agents,” introducing the Responses API (with built‑in tools like web search, file search, and computer use) explicitly framed as “building blocks that will help developers and enterprises build useful and reliable agents,” and defining agents as systems that independently accomplish tasks on behalf of users. The post states that the Responses API is available to all developers starting today, i.e., a shipped product rather than a research demo. (openai.com)
• The same day, TechCrunch reported that “OpenAI launched new tools designed to help developers and enterprises build AI agents,” describing the Responses API and the open‑source Agents SDK as OpenAI’s new platform for creating production agents that can search the web, navigate sites, and work with company data. (techcrunch.com)
• OpenAI’s later AgentKit and “API Agents” documentation explicitly build on the March 2025 Responses API and Agents SDK as a unified platform for designing, deploying, and optimizing agents (Agent Builder, Agents SDK, ChatKit, etc.), reinforcing that these earlier releases were a formal agents product line, not just experiments. (openai.com)
• Separately, on January 23, 2025, OpenAI launched Operator, a browser‑controlling AI agent, as a research preview for paying Pro users, further confirming that OpenAI had moved from mere demos to a user‑facing agent product within the window, even if branded as “research preview.” (openai.com)

Because OpenAI’s Responses API + Agents SDK (and associated tooling) constitute a clearly labeled, widely available agents platform announced and shipped about 5½ months after September 27, 2024—well inside the ~12‑month horizon—the prediction that OpenAI would “publicly announce and ship a formal ‘agents’ product” in that timeframe is fulfilled.

Evidence through November 30, 2025 shows that Apple Vision Pro has remained a niche, short‑lived product rather than a widely adopted, enduring platform.

Lack of mainstream traction

• IDC estimates that Apple shipped only about 400,000 Vision Pros in 2024, versus 5.6 million Meta headsets, and notes that premium headsets over $1,000 (including Vision Pro) account for just 5–6% of the market and are largely bought by enterprises and enthusiasts, not the mass consumer market. (theverge.com)
• Business and market reports repeatedly describe Vision Pro’s reception as lukewarm and the device as a niche product: for example, Jefferies cited a “lukewarm reception” when discussing Apple’s outlook, and broader AR/VR headset shipments are projected to decline ~12% in 2025, reinforcing that this category has not gone mainstream. (investing.com)
• An August 2025 report notes that Vision Pro is “struggling to gain traction,” with fewer than 1 million units sold in the U.S. after roughly a year and a half, despite OS and app improvements. (benzinga.com) These numbers are far from the scale associated with a mainstream Apple platform (hundreds of millions of users).

Brief relevance and signs of fading prominence

• By April 2024 Apple had already cut shipment forecasts for Vision Pro due to cooling demand in its core U.S. market, signaling that initial hype did not translate into sustained broad interest. (technewsday.com)
• In 2025, multiple reports indicate Apple has scaled back or paused development of major follow‑on headsets: Reuters, summarizing Bloomberg reporting, says Apple halted work on a next‑generation Vision Pro and a cheaper N100 model to shift resources toward AI smart glasses, citing “declining momentum” and limited mainstream content. (reuters.com) MacRumors likewise reports that development of both the lighter “Vision Air” and a redesigned Vision Pro has been paused, with only an incremental M5 refresh planned, and explicitly notes the product is still unlikely to enjoy mass appeal. (macrumors.com)
• Analyst roadmaps for the M5 refresh forecast only 150,000–200,000 units shipped in 2025 and describe Vision Pro as likely to “remain a niche product,” essentially a stopgap to maintain minimal market presence rather than a growing mass platform. (macrumors.com) Meanwhile, French‑language coverage notes that production of the original M2 model was stopped in 2025 due to disappointing sales, further underscoring its short commercial life. (fr.wikipedia.org)

Synthesis

• By late 2025, Vision Pro has not achieved mainstream adoption by any reasonable metric (shipments, user base, or app ecosystem scale) and is widely characterized as niche and struggling to gain traction.
• Apple’s strategic pivot away from expanding the Vision Pro headset line and toward smart glasses, combined with very modest projected shipments and the end of production for the initial model, supports the view that Vision Pro’s window of prominence has been relatively brief and is waning, rather than expanding into a dominant, long‑lived platform.

Given this evidence, Sack’s normalized prediction—that Vision Pro would fail to gain sustained mainstream traction and would fade rather than become a broadly adopted, durable platform—is substantially borne out by the data available as of November 30, 2025.

The prediction tied a clear time window to Ukraine’s supposed military collapse: the speaker said Ukraine was “getting close to being combat incapable” and could collapse “in the next month… two months… six months” from the Sept 27, 2024 episode—i.e., by roughly late March 2025.

Open-source assessments of the front as of March 2025 show a severely strained but still functioning Ukrainian military, not a force that had become combat‑incapable or collapsed:

• A March 2025 campaign review notes that Russia was making slow, incremental territorial gains (about 73 square miles in the month) but that the overall strategic picture “remained largely unchanged,” with intense fighting and Ukrainian defenses still holding on multiple axes—indicating continued organized resistance, not collapse. (globalsecurity.org-www.globalsecurity.org)
• March 27–28 operational summaries describe Ukrainian Defense Forces conducting coordinated strikes that destroyed Russian armored vehicles, radar, ammunition depots, and command/logistics hubs, and inflicting large daily Russian losses in personnel and equipment—evidence that Ukraine retained the ability to plan and execute combined-arms operations. (amazing-ukraine.com)
• On March 25, 2025, Ukraine carried out a cross‑border HIMARS strike in Russia’s Belgorod region, reportedly destroying four Russian helicopters and operating on Russian territory—again inconsistent with a force that had become combat‑incapable. (theguardian.com)
• New large‑scale engagements beginning in late March and February 2025 (e.g., the Novopavlivka offensive and the Sumy offensive) explicitly list multiple Ukrainian brigades and corps as active combatants, showing that Ukrainian forces remained organized and field‑capable well beyond the six‑month horizon. (fr.wikipedia.org)

Looking beyond the prediction window, by late 2025 Ukraine’s armed forces are still clearly functioning: major battles and offensives on multiple fronts continue, and Western and Ukrainian officials are planning around Ukraine maintaining a strong post‑war army, not around a collapsed military. (reuters.com)

Because Ukraine did not become “combat‑incapable” and did not “eventually… collapse” within roughly 1–6 months after the Sept 27, 2024 episode, the prediction is best classified as wrong.

Evidence since the podcast (27 Sep 2024) broadly matches both parts of the prediction:

1. Ukraine’s military position deteriorated toward potential collapse.

   • By November 2024, major outlets were explicitly warning that parts of the Ukrainian frontline were at risk of collapse as Russian forces advanced “village after village” amid severe Ukrainian manpower and equipment shortages.(news.sky.com)
   • Analyses in 2024–25 repeatedly noted that delays in Western aid and ammunition put Ukrainian lines "at risk of collapse" and highlighted Ukraine’s serious manpower problems.(hudson.org)(en.wikipedia.org)
   • In 2025 Russia mounted a large spring and then summer offensive, capturing places such as Kurakhove (announced by Russia in January 2025) and pushing toward key hubs like Dobropillia and Pokrovsk, with Ukrainian officers describing the situation as "very difficult."(en.wikipedia.org)(en.wikipedia.org)(en.wikipedia.org)
   • Russia also opened a new front in Sumy Oblast, seizing Kostiantynivka in June 2025 and bringing Russian forces within 20–25 km of Sumy city, further straining Ukraine’s defenses.(en.wikipedia.org)
     Collectively, this supports the claim that Ukraine’s military situation continued to worsen and was widely discussed in terms of possible local or broader front-line collapse.

2. Western political/strategic pressure to intervene more directly increased as the situation worsened.

   • Even before the podcast, France’s President Emmanuel Macron had broken a taboo in February 2024 by saying that sending Western ground troops to Ukraine could not be ruled out, explicitly arguing that “nothing should be excluded” to prevent a Russian victory.(reuters.com)(kyivpost.com)
   • As Russian advances and Ukrainian shortages mounted, this debate evolved into concrete planning for Western troop deployments inside Ukraine (even if framed as non-frontline). In 2025 the UK and France began leading a “Coalition of the Willing” to prepare a multinational reassurance force to be deployed in Ukraine after a ceasefire, with around 30 countries involved in operational talks about troop contributions.(en.wikipedia.org)(euronews.com)
   • European and UK leaders repeatedly discussed this force as part of security guarantees needed because of ongoing Russian offensives and Ukraine’s vulnerability, and Zelensky himself urged coalition members to establish a framework for deploying such a reassurance force under a U.S.-backed peace plan.(reuters.com)(theguardian.com)
   • At the same time, there was strong resistance from many NATO members to full-scale combat deployments, and official positions continued to rule out NATO combat troops. But the fact that serious planning for multinational troops in Ukraine became a live issue at all – after being unthinkable early in the war – shows that political and strategic pressure to consider more direct involvement did increase as Ukraine’s position worsened.(theguardian.com)(globalsecurity.org-www.globalsecurity.org)

Because (a) Ukraine’s military position clearly deteriorated and was widely described as being at risk of collapse in parts of the front, and (b) Western leaders moved from flat rejection of any troops toward openly debating and planning for deployments of multinational forces on Ukrainian soil (even if limited and post‑ceasefire), the core directional claim of the prediction is borne out. The prediction did not say that the West would actually send combat forces, only that the temptation and pressure to intervene directly would grow as Ukraine approached collapse, which has happened in a qualified but real way.

As of November 30, 2025, we are only ~14 months into a 2–3 year prediction window that runs roughly from September 2026 to September 2027 for the full outcome. It is therefore too early to decisively judge whether “massive disruption” has occurred or will occur in that time frame.

What we see so far (supports possible future disruption):

• Multiple surveys indicate that a majority of contact centers already use some form of AI (chatbots, assistants, analytics), with estimates around 50–65% adoption, and large shares planning further investment. (emerge.haus)
• Industry reports project rapid growth in call-center AI markets through the late 2020s, with strong economic incentives for automation and workforce reduction. (businessresearchinsights.com)
• Some forward‑looking analyses specifically forecast that by 2027 leading call centers could have 50–60% smaller human workforces due to AI, implying substantial disruption if these projections materialize. (emerge.haus)

What we don’t yet see (why it can’t be called “right” today):

• Current credible estimates still show most customer interactions handled by humans, with AI automating a minority of volume. Gartner, for example, projects only about 10% of agent interactions fully automated by 2026, which is significant but not obviously a “massive” displacement of the industry as a whole. (sci-tech-today.com)
• A 2025 Cavell study projects that global contact-center agent roles will increase from 15.3M (2025) to 16.8M (2029), concluding that AI will slow agent growth rather than cause net job collapse in the near term. (cxtoday.com)
• A Goldman Sachs–linked survey finds that, as of late 2025, only about 10% of firms have actually cut jobs due to AI, and many executives still consider AI too early for broad deployment, even though they expect more impact over the next few years—especially in customer support. (businessinsider.com)

Why the verdict is “inconclusive (too early)”

• Sacks’s prediction is about what will happen within 2–3 years, not what must be true just one year in. For it to be clearly wrong, we would need to reach at least the 3‑year mark (September 2027) without seeing industry‑wide, large‑scale displacement or transformation.
• For it to be clearly right already, we would need strong evidence that by late 2025 a “massive disruption” had already occurred—e.g., large, measurable drops in global call‑center employment or a clearly dominant share of interactions being AI‑handled. Current data instead shows rapid adoption and meaningful efficiency gains, but still incremental displacement and even net growth in agent headcount.

Given the remaining time in the forecast window and the mixed but rapidly evolving data, the only defensible status as of November 30, 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)”, not definitively right or wrong.

The prediction’s explicit timeframe is within roughly 2–3 years of September 2024, i.e. by about September 2026–September 2027. As of today (30 November 2025), that window has not yet elapsed, so it is too early to say definitively whether it will prove right or wrong.

Current evidence shows strong adoption of AI tools in contact centers, but not the outcome described (“all the level one customer support is going to get replaced by AI”):

• A 2025 Calabrio “State of the Contact Center” report finds 98% of contact centers are using some form of AI, mostly chatbots/voicebots and analytics, but describes AI as an add‑on to human agents and focuses on challenges balancing automation with human empathy, not wholesale replacement of front‑line staff. (businesswire.com)
• The Emerge Haus AI Atlas notes that as of 2024 fewer than 1% of organizations are piloting fully autonomous AI agents that handle live customer calls, with broader Level‑3 (autonomous agent) adoption projected only to start inflecting around 2025–2027. Even their aggressive forecast for 2027 is that perhaps ~50% of major call centers will use AI agents for some call types, implying substantial human involvement remains. (emerge.haus)
• A KPMG-based analysis of large U.S. firms reports that only about 11% have deployed AI agents at scale in customer service, and emphasizes that “human call agents remain the backbone” of support operations, with the vast majority of interactions still handled by people. (dinocajic.com)
• Broader enterprise surveys find that agentic AI adoption significantly lags the hype: Gartner-style projections put major AI resolution rates (e.g., ~80% of customer service issues handled by AI) closer to 2029, and note that most organizations still insist on human oversight. (itpro.com)
• A Goldman Sachs banker survey indicates only about 10% of firms have cut jobs due to AI so far, though many expect customer-support roles to be among the most affected in coming years—evidence of early impact but not mass replacement yet. (businessinsider.com)

So as of late 2025, level‑one call center work has not been “essentially all” replaced by AI; humans still handle a large share of first‑line interactions. However, because the prediction allows until roughly 2026–2027, there is still time for further adoption and job displacement. Given that the deadline has not passed and the trajectory could still change, the status of the prediction is best classified as **“inconclusive (too early)” rather than clearly right or wrong.

The macro condition Sacks described has largely occurred, but whether the consequence (“a new, sustained golden era…not a bubble”) has come true is not objectively resolvable yet.

1. Macro preconditions were basically met
• After the initial 50 bp cut on September 18, 2024, the Fed cut another 25 bp in November and 25 bp in December, taking the funds rate from 5.25–5.50% before September down to 4.25–4.50% by year‑end—i.e., roughly another 50 bp of cuts in 2024, and about 100 bp in total. (forbes.com)
• Additional cuts in September and October 2025 lowered the target range further to 3.75–4.00%, meaning rates moved down substantially from their peak while remaining far from zero. (forbes.com)
• U.S. inflation fell sharply from 2022–23 peaks; by 2024 headline CPI was about 2.9% and core about 3.2%, with the Fed itself characterizing inflation as moving sustainably toward its 2% goal and citing “cooling” inflation when cutting in late 2024. (jpmorgan.com)
On the narrow macro terms Sacks specified (more ~50 bp of cuts in 2024, inflation contained, rates down but not to zero), the condition was broadly satisfied.

2. Evidence for an AI‑driven tech/VC boom
• The Nasdaq Composite gained roughly 30% in 2024 and the Nasdaq‑100 about 26%, with further strong gains into 2025 and fresh all‑time highs in October 2025, driven heavily by AI‑centric names like Nvidia. (investor.wedbush.com)
• U.S. VC investment rebounded in 2024 to about $209B (up nearly 30% YoY), with AI startups capturing a record ~46% of that capital. (reuters.com)
• By 2025, AI accounts for an estimated 58% of U.S. VC dollars and roughly one‑third of deals; many venture‑backed tech companies are again growing revenue, and the tech IPO window is reopening. (prnewswire.com)
This is strong evidence of a powerful AI‑driven upswing in opportunity and performance across large parts of the tech and venture ecosystem.

3. But the “golden era, not a bubble” characterization is disputed
• The venture environment is highly uneven. The number of active U.S. VC firms fell more than 25% from 2021 to 2024 as capital concentrated in a handful of mega‑funds, and multiple reports highlight continued fundraising weakness and firm closures. (ft.com)
• Asia’s startup funding fell to a 10‑year low in 2024, with AI investment there notably lagging the global AI boom—so the “ecosystem” is far from universally flourishing. (news.crunchbase.com)
• At the same time, prominent voices warn explicitly of an AI bubble: Sam Altman has called the current AI market a speculative bubble; the Nasdaq‑100 has suffered one of its worst quarters in years amid “AI bubble fears”; and fiscal authorities like the UK’s OBR have modeled serious downside risks from a potential AI‑stock crash. (theverge.com)
• Other analysts argue valuations are “stretched but not yet at levels consistent with historical bubbles,” with the Nasdaq‑100 at ~28× forward earnings versus a 10‑year average of ~23×—high, but not definitively bubble territory. (nasdaq.com)
So there is genuine disagreement among informed observers about whether today’s AI‑driven tech market represents a healthy rerating or a classic bubble.

4. Why the prediction is ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong
• Sacks’s claim bundles several qualitative and long‑horizon ideas: a “new, sustained golden era” comparable to the early‑2000s boom, and “not…a bubble‑level of excess.” These terms are inherently subjective and would normally require many years of data to judge. By November 2025 we have only about one year of post‑prediction history.
• The observable facts cut both ways: AI has clearly powered a major boom in tech markets and VC dealflow, but fundraising stress, regional weakness, and persistent “AI bubble” warnings complicate any claim that the era is both broadly golden and clearly non‑bubble.

Because the macro precondition largely occurred, but the downstream claim about a “sustained golden era” without bubble‑level excess depends on contested, long‑term, and partly subjective judgments, the outcome cannot be assessed as definitively right or wrong at this point. Hence the result here is ambiguous.

Kamala Harris did not win the 2024 U.S. presidential election; Donald Trump won with 312 electoral votes to Harris’s 226 and took office as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) Because there is no Harris administration in 2025–2029, there is no real‑world record of "her administration’s economic policies" to compare against the 2021–2024 Biden–Harris/Elizabeth Warren–style program, so the conditional prediction (as normalized) cannot be evaluated. It is therefore not that the prediction clearly came true or failed; instead, the relevant scenario never occurred, making the outcome impossible to determine from actual policy data.

Sacks predicted that the 2024 U.S. presidential election would be a nail biter that “comes down to a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of votes in swing states.” In reality, while the race was competitive, it was not that razor-thin.

Nationally, Donald Trump won 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226, a clear Electoral College margin, and carried all seven major swing states (PA, GA, NC, MI, AZ, WI, NV). He also won the popular vote 49.8% to 48.3%, by roughly 2–2.5 million votes. (en.wikipedia.org)

Analyses of the tipping-point states show the outcome did not hinge on just “a few thousand” votes. The Cook Political Report estimates that the election was effectively decided by about 229,766 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—still close historically, but an order of magnitude larger than Sacks’s “few tens of thousands” framing. (cookpolitical.com) Moreover, several key swing states had six‑figure margins: Arizona by about 187,000 votes, Georgia by about 115,000, and North Carolina by about 183,000. (en.wikipedia.org)

So although 2024 was closer than a landslide—especially in percentage terms—it was not the ultra‑narrow, “few thousand votes in swing states” scenario Sacks predicted. Hence the prediction is best classified as wrong.

Two parts of Sacks’ prediction can be checked: (1) whether the Harris–Walz campaign was forced to show more policy substance instead of running purely on “joy” and minimal press, and (2) whether Harris’s post‑“hot swap” polling lead eroded between late August 2024 and Election Day.

1. Did the campaign have to reveal more policy substance / do more interviews?

Policy detail roll‑out

• On Aug. 16, 2024—just before the podcast date—Harris gave a major economic speech in Raleigh unveiling an “opportunity economy” agenda, including a federal ban on grocery price‑gouging, a new $6,000 child tax credit for newborns, $25,000 down‑payment help for first‑time homebuyers, and a goal of building 3 million new housing units. This was widely described as her most specific economic plan to date.(cnbc.com) Subsequent coverage and policy summaries (Reuters, TIME, Kiplinger) detailed a broader suite of tax, childcare, housing, and small‑business proposals, including higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, expanded child tax credits, and housing tax credits.(reuters.com)

Shift from low‑press strategy to a media blitz

• Through late summer and early fall, reporters and experts noted that Harris–Walz had been giving very few traditional interviews and press availabilities, a strategy described as unusually low‑profile and risky, with the campaign signaling that more press engagement was coming.(businessinsider.com)
• In early October, the campaign pivoted into a clear media blitz: Harris did a full primetime 60 Minutes candidate interview that grilled her on her economic plans and foreign policy (Israel, Ukraine, Putin), and included a segment with Walz.(theguardian.com)
• At roughly the same time, she launched a series of high‑profile interviews and appearances aimed at different voter blocs: Call Her Daddy, Howard Stern, The View, and other talk shows and podcasts, explicitly framed in coverage as a concerted “media blitz” to answer criticism that she was avoiding interviews.(theguardian.com) In those appearances she discussed abortion rights, economic policies (e.g., Medicare expansion, in‑home care), and broader governing priorities.

Taken together, the record shows that the initially interview‑shy, vibes‑heavy strategy was not sustained through to Election Day. Harris rolled out detailed policy proposals and moved into a more substantive and frequent interview posture in September–October 2024, matching Sacks’ claim that a near‑press‑free, “joy”‑based campaign would not be sustainable.

2. Did Harris’s polling lead erode relative to her initial post‑swap bump?

Initial post‑“hot swap” bump (late July–August)

• After Biden stepped aside and Harris became the nominee, national polls and aggregates showed her opening a clear lead over Trump. A Decision Desk HQ / The Hill, FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin average using polls through Aug. 23, 2024 put Harris at about 48.1% to Trump’s 43.7%—roughly a 4–5 point national lead.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Individual late‑August polls around and just after the Democratic convention also showed her ahead by mid‑single digits, e.g., ABC/Ipsos 52–46, Clarity 51–45, Suffolk/USA Today 48–43.(en.wikipedia.org) This is the “post‑swap bump” Sacks was referring to.

Erosion of that lead by late October / pre‑election

• By late October, a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 26–28, 2024 had Harris at 44% and Trump at 43% among registered voters, explicitly noting that although she had led in all their polls since July, her advantage had “steadily diminished since late September,” leaving essentially a statistical tie.(reuters.com)
• The Guardian’s review of national polling averages found that just before Election Day, the average showed Harris only narrowly ahead, 48%–47%—an edge of about one point, markedly smaller than the 4–5 point advantage she held in late August.(theguardian.com)
• Actual results then went further: preliminary national vote totals show Trump winning the popular vote 50%–48%, meaning Harris’s support not only fell from its early‑August high but ended below Trump’s on Election Day.(theguardian.com)

So, between late August and Election Day, Harris’s initial multi‑point post‑nomination lead did erode to a razor‑thin edge in the polls and then to a narrow loss in the actual vote, aligning with Sacks’ claim that her early “hot swap” bump would “correct” downward as the race went on.

Causality vs. correlation We can’t prove that the added policy substance and interviews caused the polling erosion; many factors (economic perceptions, events, Trump’s campaign, debates, etc.) also played roles. But Sacks’ prediction was about what would happen—that (a) the campaign wouldn’t stay substance‑free and press‑shy, and (b) Harris’s inflated post‑swap polling lead would shrink over time. On both counts, the observable trajectory of the campaign and the polling matches his forecast, so the prediction is best scored as right rather than ambiguous.

As of 30 Nov 2025, the United States has not implemented a federal wealth tax comparable to those discussed in France or Norway, so the conditional prediction cannot yet be evaluated.

• Proposals by figures like Elizabeth Warren and, more recently, Kamala Harris have advocated federal wealth taxes, but none have passed Congress or been enacted into law.
• Some U.S. states (e.g., California, New York, Washington) have floated or enacted measures targeting very high net worth or high income, but these are not nationwide wealth taxes of the type referenced in the quote, and data so far are limited and mixed on capital flight and revenue outcomes.

Because the core "if" condition—a U.S.-wide wealth tax similar to those in France/Norway—has not occurred, we cannot say whether the subsequent causal claims (wealth fleeing, revenue shortfalls vs projections, broadening the tax base) are right or wrong. The appropriate classification is therefore "inconclusive (too early)."

Evidence from the 2024 campaign shows that Kamala Harris did, in fact, move into exactly the pattern Sacks described: mainstream interviews plus more detailed economic policy roll‑outs well before mid‑November 2024.

Mainstream media interviews (post–"hide" phase):

• Aug. 29, 2024: Harris and Tim Walz did a 27‑minute primetime CNN joint interview, her first major national TV interview as the new nominee.(reuters.com)
• Sept. 25, 2024: She did her first solo one‑on‑one network interview as nominee with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, focused heavily on her economic agenda (“opportunity economy”), housing and tax policy.(theguardian.com)
• Oct. 7, 2024: A full "60 Minutes" election interview aired on CBS, where she discussed the economy, immigration, and contrasts with Trump.(people.com)
• Oct. 16, 2024: She sat for a contentious Fox News interview with Bret Baier, her first appearance on that network.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Late campaign: AP reported a "media blitz" including The View, Howard Stern, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in addition to earlier 60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper interviews.(apnews.com) Analyses still described her as doing fewer interviews than past nominees, but they also note she "stepped up" interviews in the final weeks.(businessinsider.com)

Substantive economic policy proposals:

• From late August onward, Harris rolled out detailed economic planks: an expanded Child Tax Credit (including a $6,000 newborn credit), a large housing plan with down‑payment support and construction incentives, and a ten‑fold expansion of the small‑business startup deduction.(abc17news.com)
• In early September she broke with Biden on capital‑gains rates, laid out specific tax changes (corporate rate to 28%, 28% top capital‑gains rate, 25% minimum tax on ultra‑wealthy), and packaged these into an "opportunity economy" agenda in a high‑profile Pittsburgh speech.(theguardian.com)

All of this occurred in September–October 2024—well within three months of the Aug. 16 podcast and well before the Nov. 5 election—matching Sacks’s forecast that Harris would not be able to "run out the clock" without doing mainstream interviews and issuing more substantive economic policy proposals.

Sacks argued that Kamala Harris’s August 2024 polling “sugar high” would end once she released substantive policy proposals—specifically including measures like grocery price controls—triggering a significant correction downward in her standing vs. Donald Trump before November.

1. Timing and nature of the policy proposals
Harris did, in fact, roll out economic proposals in August 2024, including a call for a federal ban on corporate “price gouging” on groceries and an expanded child tax credit. These were framed as tools to lower grocery prices and were widely covered as part of her August economic agenda. (amp.cnn.com) This matches the kind of grocery price‑control proposal Sacks was referring to.

2. What happened to her polls after the proposals
Available polling and averages do not show a large, sustained downturn in Harris’s relative standing vs. Trump following the August rollout:

• A compiled table of national polling for 2024 shows that in August, Harris and Trump were roughly tied nationally (both around 47–48%). In September, Harris’s position improved, with averages showing her about 1–3 points ahead of Trump (e.g., Harris 48–49% vs. Trump 46–47%), not worse. In October, the race tightened back to roughly even, but not to a clear or durable Trump lead. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Individual poll and model snapshots in mid‑September—after the economic proposals—show Harris still gaining or holding a lead. For example, a Newsmax summary of Nate Silver’s model and RealClearPolitics averages around Sept. 16–17 had Harris leading Trump nationally by about 2 points (FiveThirtyEight: ~48.5–46.3; RCP: ~49.1–47.3), and a large Morning Consult poll at that time showed Harris +6 (51–45). (newsmax.com) This is opposite of an immediate “big correction” down.

3. Position just before Election Day
By late October and the final week before the election, national polls and aggregators still showed an extremely close race with Harris generally a hair ahead, not in a clearly corrected slump:

• A Guardian analysis of national polling averages found that throughout October 2024, Harris polled about 1–2 points above Trump, with the gap narrowing to about 1 point by Oct. 31. (theguardian.com)
• On the day before the election, a Yahoo News summary of three major aggregators (Silver Bulletin, FiveThirtyEight, New York Times) showed Harris leading Trump nationally by about 0.5–1 point in each average—still a small Harris edge, not a Trump lead. (yahoo.com)
• The Wikipedia compilation of late‑October polls lists many high‑quality national surveys with Harris at roughly 49–51% and Trump at roughly 46–49%, again indicating a neck‑and‑neck race with Harris often marginally ahead, not a large correction against her. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Final outcome vs. pre‑election “correction” story
In the actual result, Trump won the popular vote by about 49.8% to 48.3% (roughly Trump +1.5), while final national polls generally had Harris at about 48–49% and Trump around 47–48%. (en.wikipedia.org) Post‑election analyses emphasized that polls underestimated Trump’s support, as in prior cycles, rather than documenting a major pre‑election plunge in Harris’s standing triggered by her August policy rollout. (politico.com)

Putting this together:

• Harris did enjoy an August surge.
• She did release grocery price‑gouging/price‑control‑style proposals in August.
• But after those proposals, her polling relative to Trump mostly held or improved through September, and by late October she still had a tiny lead in most national aggregates. There is no evidence of the large, proposal‑driven “big correction” in polling that Sacks forecast; instead, the race gradually tightened and then the polls slightly missed in Trump’s favor.

Because the central claim—that the rollout of those policy proposals would mark the start of a significant pre‑election decline in Harris’s relative polling vs. Trump—did not materialize in the polling data, this prediction is best classified as wrong.

Sacks predicted that within about three months of Aug. 16, 2024, Kamala Harris would not be able to keep running a “vibes only,” low‑interview, low‑substance campaign as a seeming moderate, because her more progressive policy views would become clear to voters.

There is evidence supporting his view that her progressive policy orientation became more visible:

• In mid‑August and September 2024, the Harris campaign rolled out an “Agenda to Lower Costs for American Families” and a broader economic plan (“A New Way Forward for the Middle Class”) featuring a federal ban on grocery price gouging, large expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, substantial new housing subsidies, and other redistributive measures—policies widely covered in mainstream and specialist outlets and generally characterized as aggressive, interventionist economics. (democracyinaction.us)
• Fact‑checking and analysis pieces treated the price‑gouging ban as a central plank of her campaign, noting that her ads referencing it ran at scale, and economic commentators across the spectrum debated whether it amounted to de facto price controls. (factcheck.org)
• The Dispatch, which closely tracked her platform, described these domestic proposals as “very progressive” while noting that she projected a surface image of moderation and normalcy. (thedispatch.com)
• Polling in early September 2024 (NYT/Siena, Marist and others) found a plurality of voters saying Harris was “too liberal or progressive”, with roughly 44–48% labeling her too liberal and around 41–43% saying she was “about right.” (newsmax.com) This suggests that many voters did see her as left‑of‑center ideologically, not as a centrist.

But there is also strong evidence against his claim that she would be forced to abandon a vibes‑heavy, low‑interview, low‑detail strategy:

• Through September and into October 2024, reporters and analysts repeatedly noted that Harris had done very few sit‑down interviews, no press conferences, and tightly choreographed appearances. An ECFR “Letter from Washington” described her as “almost allergic to policy specifics,” running a “vibes” campaign with only one network interview and no pressers, and speeches “heavy on mood and light on policy.” (ecfr.eu)
• Media reports and commentary during the campaign (e.g., Daily Caller, Free Beacon, and others summarizing Politico/CNN reporting) criticized the Harris–Walz operation for a “basement” or low‑exposure strategy, saying both candidates were kept on a very limited interview diet and that this backfired at the debate. (dailycaller.com)
• Post‑election insider accounts and donor grumbling in early 2025 likewise faulted her for being extremely risk‑averse and doing too few interviews, saying “there was nothing to peel the onion back for people.” (pagesix.com) Even Donald Trump’s later “advice” to her—that she needed to start giving interviews—explicitly framed her 2024 campaign as unusually guarded with the press. (nypost.com)
• Broader campaign analyses (e.g., the Boston Globe and ECFR) described the overall 2024 race as driven by emotions and “vibes,” with neither Trump nor Harris offering a fully fleshed‑out policy program, reinforcing that her public image never moved far from a vibes‑heavy approach. (bostonglobe.com)

Putting this together:

• Harris did not really abandon the low‑interview, carefully stage‑managed, rhetoric‑heavy style Sacks was criticizing; contemporaneous coverage and later postmortems agree that she stuck with a vibes‑forward, low‑risk media strategy through Election Day.
• At the same time, she did put forward a set of clearly progressive economic proposals (price‑gouging ban, large child‑benefit expansions, housing subsidies, etc.) that were widely reported and debated, and polling shows many voters saw her as “too liberal or progressive.”

Because the prediction mixes several subjective elements—how “vibes‑only” the campaign remained, how “moderate” she looked, and how “clear” her progressive positions became to the public—and the empirical record cuts both ways, reasonable observers could plausibly argue that Sacks was either vindicated (on ideological visibility) or refuted (on the sustainability of a vibes‑heavy, low‑interview strategy). For that reason, the outcome is best categorized as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

As of 30 November 2025, Ukraine has not experienced the kind of overall military or state collapse that Sacks predicted for “probably next year” (i.e., 2025). The Ukrainian state and armed forces remain intact and are still conducting defensive and limited offensive operations along an ~800‑mile front, including around Kupiansk and Pokrovsk, despite heavy pressure and serious manpower shortages.

For example, late‑November reporting notes that Ukrainian forces continue to defend Kupiansk and conduct operations against Russian troops there, contradicting Russian claims of full control. Ukrainian units are also still contesting Russian advances around Pokrovsk and reinforcing other sectors such as Zaporizhzhia, indicating a strained but functioning defense rather than systemic collapse. (reuters.com)

Major analyses of the 2025 campaign likewise describe Russia achieving incremental territorial gains at high cost, not a decisive breakdown of Ukrainian lines. A late‑November Washington Post assessment explicitly states that Russia’s leadership had bet on a collapse of Ukrainian defenses along the front, but that this collapse had not occurred as of late 2025. (washingtonpost.com) Other reporting similarly portrays Russia fighting for limited blocks of small towns over many months, rather than exploiting any large‑scale Ukrainian rout. (businessinsider.com)

Regarding the Kursk offensive, subsequent analysis does support part of Sacks’s concern: the cross‑border incursion is widely judged to have been strategically costly for Ukraine, tying down elite units in Kursk while Ukraine faced acute manpower shortages on other fronts, and contributing to Russian gains and increased risk of local front collapse in eastern Ukraine. (en.wikipedia.org) However, even critical analysts frame this as worsening Ukraine’s position and raising the risk of collapse, not as having already produced the nationwide military collapse Sacks forecast.

Because Sacks’s prediction was time‑bounded to “probably next year” and 2025 is not yet over on the evaluation date (30 November 2025), it is too early to say with certainty that a collapse will not occur by the end of the year. At the same time, existing evidence up to late November shows no Ukrainian military collapse despite severe strain. Given that the deadline he named (the end of 2025) has not fully elapsed, the fairest classification under your schema is “inconclusive (too early)”: the prediction has clearly not come true so far, but the full time window he specified has not yet closed.

Public reporting shows that Russia did not fully “mop up” or expel the Ukrainian incursion force from Russia’s Kursk region within roughly a year, and that Ukraine still maintains a (small) foothold there even now.

Key points:

• Ukraine launched its Kursk offensive on 6 August 2024, seizing over 1,000–1,300 km² of Russian territory and dozens of settlements, including the town of Sudzha. (en.wikipedia.org)
• By November 2024, Ukraine had lost more than 40% of the territory it had initially seized, and by 12 March 2025 Russia had retaken Sudzha and much of the Ukrainian-held area, significantly shrinking the bridgehead. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Reuters in March 2025 reported Russia was nearing complete expulsion of Ukrainian troops and that Ukraine’s foothold had dwindled to <81 km², but even then it was not entirely eliminated. (reuters.com)
• On 22 June 2025 (about ten months after the incursion started and within the “roughly a year” window), Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told the BBC that Ukrainian forces were still holding about 90 km² of territory in the Kursk region despite about 10,000 Russian troops trying to dislodge them. (feeds.bbci.co.uk)
• On 6 August 2025, at the one‑year anniversary of the operation, Ukrainian command again stated that their forces continued to hold positions in the Glushkivskyi district of Russia’s Kursk region. (mezha.net)
• Subsequent reporting and analysis (ISW‑summarized in the Kursk campaign article, and Ukrainian/Ukrinform statements) confirms that as of late 2025 Ukraine still maintains some positions on Russian territory in the Kursk sector. (en.wikipedia.org)

It is true that Ukraine has suffered heavy losses and has been pushed back from most of the territory it initially seized; several analysts describe the Kursk operation as costly and, in strategic terms, at least a partial failure. (en.wikipedia.org) But Sacks’s specific prediction was that Russia would essentially wipe out the Kursk bridgehead over time—“mop them up”—rather than allow a durable foothold.

Given that Ukrainian forces still hold a small but persistent pocket of territory inside Russia more than a year after the offensive began, the core of that prediction (complete defeat/forced withdrawal within roughly a year, no lasting foothold in Russia) has not come true.

Therefore, the prediction is best judged as wrong.

At the time of the prediction in early August 2024, USD/JPY was around 146–147 (for example, 1 USD = 146.67 JPY on 9 August 2024).(exchange-rates.org) Over the following weeks the yen actually strengthened for a time, with the rate falling toward 141–143 and reaching a 2024 low of about 140.66 per dollar in mid‑September.(exchange-rates.org)

However, over the subsequent months and into 2025 the medium‑term direction matched the prediction: USD/JPY moved well above the 147–150 area, trading above 151 by late October 2024 and around 153–155 in November 2024, and ending 2024 near 156–157.(exchange-rates.org) In 2025 the pair reached highs around 158–159 (for example, 158.35–158.87 in January) and has mostly traded above 150 in late 2025, with recent levels around 155–157 yen per dollar and a six‑month gain of roughly 9–10% for the dollar versus the yen.(exchange-rates.org)

Japan did begin raising policy rates in 2024–2025, bringing the Bank of Japan's short‑term rate to about 0.5% by January 2025, but this still left Japanese rates far below U.S. levels and the yen remained structurally weak.(cnbc.com) Overall, from August 2024 to late 2025 the U.S. dollar does indeed buy meaningfully more yen than at the time of the podcast, so the prediction about further yen depreciation against the dollar has been borne out in broad terms despite interim fluctuations.

By roughly one year after the discussion (around August 2025), the U.S. had not experienced two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth, nor had the NBER declared a new recession.

Evidence:

• BEA data show real GDP was positive throughout 2024, with Q4 2024 growing at about 2.3–2.4% annualized. (apps.bea.gov)
• Real GDP then declined in Q1 2025 (around −0.5 to −0.6% annualized after revisions), but rebounded in Q2 2025, growing about 3.3–3.8% annualized, so there was only one negative quarter followed by strong growth, not two negative quarters in a row. (bea.gov)
• The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee listings and later summaries show no new recession peak/trough dates after the April 2020 trough, meaning no officially dated recession in 2024–2025 as of late 2025. (nber.org)

Since the realized outcome by about August 2025 was that the U.S. had not entered a recession under either the common two‑negative‑quarters rule of thumb or the official NBER dating, the prediction that a recession was “more likely than not” by that time ended up being wrong in hindsight.

Evidence shows that Tim Walz did remain Kamala Harris’s running mate through the 2024 Democratic National Convention and beyond, contrary to the prediction that he would have to drop out before or during the convention.

Key facts:

• The 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was held August 19–22, 2024, with Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee and Tim Walz as the vice‑presidential nominee listed on the official convention record. (en.wikipedia.org)
• On August 6, 2024, the Democratic Party formally certified Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as the official Democratic nominees for president and vice president, respectively, after the delegate roll call. (democrats.org)
• During the convention itself, Walz formally accepted the Democratic Party’s vice‑presidential nomination in a televised speech, explicitly thanking delegates for nominating him as vice president. (dw.com)
• Post‑election coverage and later analyses consistently refer to Walz as Harris’s 2024 vice‑presidential running mate and the Democratic vice‑presidential nominee, with no record of him withdrawing or being replaced on the ticket. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because Walz remained on the ticket through the Democratic National Convention and the November 2024 election, the prediction that he "might have to drop out" before or at the convention was not borne out.

Tim Walz was selected as Kamala Harris’s running mate on August 6, 2024 and remained on the Democratic ticket through the November 2024 election, so the condition of the prediction was met.

However, the predicted outcome — recurring, publicly reported protests by Gold Star families at Harris–Walz campaign events, effectively dogging “all of their events” and creating an ongoing media headache through Election Day — did not occur.

What did happen is a concentrated controversy around Donald Trump’s August 26, 2024 visit to Arlington National Cemetery with Gold Star families of the 13 service members killed at Abbey Gate. Harris criticized Trump’s team for filming there as a political stunt, and several of those Gold Star families responded with videos, a joint statement, and later a Trump campaign ad sharply attacking Harris and the administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. This generated a burst of negative coverage for Harris across outlets from the AP and Boston Globe to numerous conservative sites, but the conflict was framed around her comments on Trump’s Arlington visit and the 2021 withdrawal, not around protests at her rallies. (en.wikipedia.org)

By contrast, contemporaneous reporting on Harris–Walz campaign events shows repeated disruptions by pro‑Palestinian / Gaza protesters and “uncommitted” activists, including at major rallies in Detroit and Phoenix and at a New York City support event, as well as organized Gaza‑focused protests around the Democratic National Convention and in Minneapolis. These stories consistently describe Gaza-related activists — not Gold Star families — as the source of recurring protest pressure on the Harris–Walz campaign. (wdet.org)

Extensive news searches turn up Gold Star families’ videos, letters, and media statements criticizing Harris, but no evidence of them repeatedly protesting at Harris–Walz campaign stops in person, and no narrative that Gold Star family protests became a constant presence “at all of their events.” Given that such a pattern would have been newsworthy and is absent from major coverage, the specific, event-focused and recurring-protest scenario described in the prediction did not materialize. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as wrong.

Key elements of Sacks’s prediction did occur within the ~100‑day window from early August 2024 to Election Day (November 5, 2024):

1. Harris was forced into at least one debate and unscripted questioning.
   • Kamala Harris and Donald Trump participated in an ABC News presidential debate on 10 September 2024 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, their first head‑to‑head debate of the campaign. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Coverage and transcripts show real‑time moderator questions and exchanges on policy (abortion, immigration, Afghanistan, etc.), i.e., an unscripted, live format rather than controlled speeches. (abc7.com)
   • Harris also sat for a long‑form, nationally televised “60 Minutes” interview in October 2024; the FCC later sought unedited transcripts and video, confirming a substantive, extended Q&A format with mainstream press. (apnews.com)
   This matches the prediction that her strategy of limited exposure would “fall apart” and she would “have to do a debate” and answer questions.

2. She had a clear polling surge in August.
   • Shortly after Biden withdrew and Harris became the de facto nominee, national polling averages showed her opening a noticeable lead. FiveThirtyEight’s early‑August average had Harris around 45% vs. Trump 43.5%, already a modest edge. (newsmax.com)
   • By later in August, multiple aggregators and analyses described a Harris “surge” or “convention bounce,” with Silver’s and FiveThirtyEight‑style averages putting her national lead in the roughly 3–4 point range and many individual polls showing her up by mid‑single digits. (newsweek.com)
   That is the “bloom on the rose” phase Sacks was referring to.

3. After that period, her bounce faded and the race reverted to a near‑tie.
   • Analyses just before Election Day reported that Harris’s national lead had shrunk from a late‑August peak (about 3.5–3.7 points in FiveThirtyEight‑style averages) to roughly 1 point or less by early November. (forbes.com)
   • On the eve of the election, three separate aggregators (Silver Bulletin, FiveThirtyEight, and the New York Times) all had Harris ahead nationally by between 0.1 and 0.9 percentage points, and commentators characterized the contest as one of the closest, essentially a dead heat. (yahoo.com)
   • RealClearPolitics’ unweighted national average had Harris ahead by just 0.1 point going into Election Day, again functionally an even race. (forbes.com)

Putting this together: within roughly 40 days of Sacks’s statement, Harris did in fact participate in a major televised debate and other unscripted interviews. Over the subsequent weeks, her earlier post‑nomination/convention polling advantage eroded, and by Election Day the national polling picture had “normalized” to a roughly even Harris–Trump race, exactly as he described. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as right.

By the cutoff date in the prediction—January 20, 2025, when the next U.S. president was sworn in—there was no widely recognized regional war directly pitting Israel and Iran against each other in a sustained, large‑scale campaign.

What did exist before that date was:

• The Gaza war and parallel fronts with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran‑aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, described collectively as a broader Middle Eastern crisis (2023–present), with multiple Iran‑backed groups attacking Israel and U.S. interests.(en.wikipedia.org)
• A series of direct but limited exchanges between Israel and Iran in 2024 (Iran’s April 13–14 drone/missile barrage and Israel’s limited April 19 strike; Iran’s large missile salvo on October 1; Israel’s October 26 strikes on Iranian targets). These are grouped in sources as the “2024 Iran–Israel conflict” and explicitly characterized as a prelude to a later Iran–Israel war, not that war itself.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Diplomatic statements in mid‑ to late‑2024 warning about the risk of a full‑scale regional war in the Middle East, which by implication had not yet occurred.(theguardian.com)
• On January 19, 2025, just before inauguration, a ceasefire and hostage‑prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas went into effect in Gaza, marking a pause rather than an expansion into a new, broader war.(en.wikipedia.org)

The kind of large, overt regional war involving both Israel and Iran directly, with multi‑country spillover—what most observers would call a true regional war—began later, with the Iran–Israel war of 2025, which started on June 13, 2025 after a massive surprise Israeli attack on Iranian territory, followed by extensive Iranian missile strikes and wider regional involvement.(en.wikipedia.org) This is several months after the January 20, 2025 deadline in the prediction.

Because the predicted regional war did not materialize by the specified date (even though something very similar did happen later in 2025), the prediction must be scored as wrong on timing, and thus wrong overall under a strict “by this date” standard.

Evidence shows a major escalation, but not clearly the kind of regional war Sacks seemed to be talking about, and his claim was probabilistic (≥50%), not categorical.

Key facts:

• Since October 2023, the Middle East has been in a multi‑theater “Middle Eastern crisis” involving Gaza, Lebanon/Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen/Houthis, Iraq‑based militias, and Iran–Israel tensions, with U.S. and U.K. military involvement and attacks across several countries.(en.wikipedia.org)
• In June 2025 there was a direct Iran–Israel war (“Twelve‑Day War”) with large Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, massive Iranian missile and drone barrages on Israel, and U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, plus an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Qatar.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Analyses of that conflict emphasize that, despite its intensity and the wider regional crisis, it “did not escalate into a broader regional war but remained geographically and operationally limited,” with Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others acting in constrained ways rather than triggering a full multi‑state regional war.(diplomatmagazine.eu)

Interpretation issues:

• Whether this amounts to the “regional war” Sacks feared is partly definitional: some might argue that simultaneous fighting involving Israel, Iran, U.S. forces, and Iran‑aligned groups across multiple countries is already de facto regional; others, including the cited analysts, explicitly say it stopped short of a broader regional war.
• His prediction was that the odds were “at least 50–50” that tensions would escalate to such a regional war in the “foreseeable future.” Because this is a probability estimate with a vague time horizon and an imprecise event definition, observing one world in which the conflict escalated heavily but was still widely described as not a full regional war does not let us cleanly judge the forecast as simply right or wrong.

Given the mixture of (1) substantial escalation including an Iran–Israel war, (2) credible expert characterizations that it did not become a true broader regional war, and (3) the inherently probabilistic, time‑fuzzy nature of the prediction, the outcome is best classified as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

The prediction is explicitly long‑term: that Trump’s choice of JD Vance "means that this America First MAGA message is going to continue into the future, many years into the future." Evaluating whether a faction will dominate a major party for "many years" requires observing intra‑party dynamics over multiple election cycles, not just the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election and the 2025 political environment. As of November 30, 2025, only one election cycle (2024) and part of one presidential term have elapsed since the prediction (July 2024), which is not enough to determine whether the MAGA / America First faction will continue to dominate the Republican Party for "many years" beyond 2024. Therefore, the accuracy of this prediction cannot yet be determined.

Donald Trump did win a second, non‑consecutive term in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and was inaugurated again as president on January 20, 2025, beginning his new administration at that time. (en.wikipedia.org)

Lina Khan’s official FTC biography lists her as former Chair, stating that she served as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from June 15, 2021 to January 20, 2025. (ftc.gov) Independent biographical information likewise records her term as FTC Chair ending on January 20, 2025, with Andrew N. Ferguson succeeding her; it also notes that while she remained an FTC commissioner briefly until January 31, 2025, she was no longer Chair (the head of the agency) once Trump took office. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because:

• The condition in the prediction (“a second Trump administration beginning in January 2025”) did occur, and
• From the start of that administration onward, Lina Khan was not serving as Chair (i.e., not “running that agency”),

the prediction that she would not be running the FTC in a second Trump administration was borne out by events.

Apple did release the iPhone 16 in September 2024 with its broader Apple Intelligence branding, but the core scenario Sacks described never materialized:

• The advanced Siri overhaul based on large‑language‑model tech that was advertised alongside iPhone 16 was delayed to 2026, not shipped with iPhone 16. Apple executives and reporting (e.g., Bloomberg, summarized by MacRumors and others) note that the personalized, LLM‑driven Siri features slipped to an iOS 26.4 release in spring 2026 after quality problems, despite being used in iPhone 16 marketing. (macrumors.com)
• Instead of relying solely on an Apple‑built on‑device LLM, Apple is now planning to power major parts of revamped Siri with Google’s Gemini models running in Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, handling planning and summarization for Siri with a target around March 2026. That means the Siri upgrade is not purely on‑device nor purely Apple’s own model, contrary to the prediction’s premise about "rolling their own LLM" and not sharing data with third‑party LLMs. (androidcentral.com)
• On the demand side, analyst work from UBS finds that last year’s iPhone 16 and its Apple Intelligence branding did not spur a widespread upgrade cycle: the average iPhone in use (outside China) remained about 37 months old, and UBS explicitly concluded there is “no groundbreaking AI use case” and no significant AI‑driven sales boost, contrary to expectations of a massive upgrade wave. (barrons.com)
• Broader coverage of Apple’s 2025 software cycle similarly describes investors as underwhelmed by Apple’s AI progress and skeptical that current AI features will drive a major iPhone upgrade boom; Apple’s market cap fell on news of Siri delays, and analysts characterized updates as incremental rather than super‑cycle‑inducing. (businessinsider.com)

Given that (1) the exact condition Sacks specified—an iPhone 16 with a working, Apple‑only on‑device LLM powering Siri—still hasn’t occurred, and (2) the actual iPhone 16 + Apple Intelligence launch has not led to “everyone” upgrading or a clearly massive AI‑driven upgrade cycle, the prediction about a huge iPhone 16 AI upgrade wave is best judged wrong based on the real‑world outcome to date.

The quote and context check out: in the July 12, 2024 All‑In episode, Sacks says Glue’s LLM‑powered results are “kinda like a B plus right now” and adds that “in a year or so… the next gen version of all the models… At that point, it’s going to be an A plus.”(podscripts.co)

Within roughly a year, his “next gen” condition did occur. OpenAI released several successor models to GPT‑4, including GPT‑4.5 in February 2025 and GPT‑4.1 in April 2025, followed by GPT‑5 and GPT‑5.1 later in 2025; these were marketed and benchmarked as substantially more capable and reliable than GPT‑4/4o, with improved coding, instruction following, and lower hallucination rates on certain tests.(en.wikipedia.org)

However, whether that constitutes "A+" practical quality for Glue‑style applications is inherently subjective and not directly measurable from public data:

• No objective Glue metrics – Public coverage of Glue describes its AI as a virtual employee layered on top of Slack/Teams‑like chat, powered by models such as ChatGPT and Claude, but there are no later public benchmarks or statements from Sacks quantifying that its outputs have become “A+” versus the earlier “B+.”(techcrunch.com)
• Hallucinations and reliability remain open issues – Even by late 2024 and through 2025, peer‑reviewed work and industry analysis still describe hallucinations as a “critical barrier” for enterprise use, with state‑of‑the‑art methods often failing to exceed ~80% factual faithfulness on some benchmarks.(arxiv.org) Studies and reporting in 2025 note that newer reasoning models like OpenAI’s o3 and o4‑mini can hallucinate in 30–50% of cases on certain tasks, and major outlets emphasize that leading LLMs still generate incorrect or fabricated content often enough to demand human verification.(livescience.com)
• Mixed real‑world sentiment – Aggregated user‑review data shows that mentions of hallucinations in reviews of leading chatbots (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) dropped markedly between March and October 2025, but did not disappear; non‑trivial shares of users still report accuracy and hallucination concerns.(learn.g2.com)

Because “B+ vs A+” is Sacks’s own informal grading with no standardized threshold, and there is no transparent data on how Glue’s actual output quality changed relative to that scale, yet frontier models clearly did improve while still exhibiting meaningful errors, the prediction cannot be judged definitively true or false from available evidence. That fits best under “ambiguous” rather than “right” or “wrong.”

Evidence shows that President Joe Biden both completed and aired the scheduled sit‑down interview with George Stephanopoulos before he dropped out of the 2024 race.

• ABC News announced that Biden would sit down with Stephanopoulos on Friday, July 5, 2024, with the interview taped that day in Wisconsin and aired in full as a primetime special on Friday, July 5, and again on This Week on Sunday, July 7. Clips began airing on World News Tonight that same Friday. (abc.com)
• Biden did not withdraw from the 2024 presidential election until July 21, 2024, when he publicly announced his decision to end his re‑election campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. (theguardian.com)

The prediction being evaluated is: “Joe Biden will not drop out of the 2024 presidential race before he completes and airs the scheduled sit‑down interview with George Stephanopoulos on the weekend following July 3, 2024.” Since Biden remained in the race through and well past the July 5–7 interview airings, this condition was satisfied.

Therefore, the prediction is right.

Available reporting shows that the George Stephanopoulos ABC interview on July 5, 2024 did not restore confidence in Biden’s candidacy and instead was widely seen by key Democrats as failing to quell anxieties:

• Coverage immediately afterward noted that the interview “did not assuage Democratic anxieties” and that more Democratic lawmakers publicly called on Biden to bow out of the race, adding to a growing chorus of concerned donors and strategists.(cnbc.com)
• Hill Democrats described the interview as “not impressive,” saying “no one’s mind has been changed” and that Biden was “toast,” with lawmakers preparing to increase public pressure for him to step aside.(axios.com) ABC’s own follow‑up segment framed the situation as “pressure mounts on Biden after ABC News interview,” explicitly noting that the hoped‑for calming effect inside the party did not materialize and that the number of Democrats urging him to exit was growing.(abcnews.go.com) The Guardian similarly called the appearance “unlikely to appease his critics,” despite no major gaffes.(theguardian.com) Together this indicates the interview was broadly perceived as weak or at best mixed, not the kind of strong performance that would quell speculation.

What happened next lines up with the prediction’s “poor interview” branch:

• Over the following days, intra‑party and donor pressure intensified, with more Democratic members of Congress and influential figures calling for Biden to step aside, largely rooted in concerns over his age, debate performance, and failure to calm fears in subsequent appearances, including the ABC interview.(cnbc.com)(axios.com)
• On July 21, 2024—roughly 16 days after the interview—Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement, explicitly bowing to “weeks of growing pressure” from within his own party.(cnbc.com)(axios.com) He thus exited the race within “the subsequent weeks,” as the prediction specified.
• Following his withdrawal, Kamala Harris launched her campaign on July 21 and officially became the Democratic presidential nominee on August 5, 2024, meaning Biden was not ultimately the Democratic nominee.(en.wikipedia.org)

The prediction, as normalized, said: if the Stephanopoulos interview was broadly perceived as strong, pressure would subside; if it was broadly perceived as poor, Biden would be forced out within the next few weeks and would not end up as the nominee. The realized path matches the second branch: the interview was widely judged as failing in its core goal of reassuring Democrats, pressure escalated rather than subsided, and within about two weeks Biden ended his campaign and Harris became the nominee. Given these facts, the prediction is best classified as right.

Kamala Harris did not become President of the United States as a result of the 2024 cycle.

Key events:

• On July 21, 2024, Joe Biden announced he would not seek re‑election. This led to the launch of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign the same day, and she officially became the Democratic nominee on August 5, 2024.(en.wikipedia.org)
• In the November 5, 2024 election, Donald Trump was elected the 47th president, beginning a formal transition from President Joe Biden to President‑elect Trump.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Biden’s presidency ended on January 20, 2025; Kamala Harris’s term as vice president ended at the same time. She never assumed the presidency by succession.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025 and has served in that role since then.(en.wikipedia.org)

Because Harris neither succeeded Biden as president nor won the 2024 election, and Donald Trump instead became (and remains) president, the prediction that “we are going to get President Kamala Harris” as the outcome of the 2024 cycle is wrong.

Joe Biden initially ran for re‑election in 2024 but withdrew from the race on July 21, 2024, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his preferred successor. (en.wikipedia.org)

Following Biden’s withdrawal and endorsement, Harris announced her own presidential campaign and quickly consolidated delegate support, becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. (en.wikipedia.org)

Through a virtual roll‑call vote in early August, Harris was formally confirmed as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee (with sources noting the official nomination on August 5–6, 2024). (en.wikipedia.org)

No other Democrat—such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Michelle Obama, or an outsider—secured the nomination; the ticket was headed by Kamala Harris, not by any alternative candidate. (en.wikipedia.org)

Since the final nominee was Kamala Harris, one of the two outcomes the prediction allowed (Biden or Harris, with no one else), the prediction that “it’s either going to be Harris or Biden” was borne out by events.

The prediction stated that Democrats would not replace Joe Biden as their 2024 presidential nominee. In reality, Biden suspended his reelection campaign on July 21, 2024, and endorsed Kamala Harris. She quickly secured delegate support, became the presumptive nominee, and was formally chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee via a virtual roll call in early August and then at the Democratic National Convention, heading the ticket in the November 5, 2024 general election. (en.wikipedia.org)

As of November 30, 2025, it’s too early to judge whether Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) will ultimately fail to be a “top‑tier winner” in the AGI race due to its safety‑first strategy.

What we can see so far:

• SSI was founded in June 2024 with a mission explicitly centered on building safe superintelligence and insulating safety from short‑term commercial pressure.(ssi.inc)
• Through 2024–2025, SSI has operated in deep R&D mode, with no public model, API, or benchmarks; this is an intentional “straight‑shot” strategy focused on long‑term superintelligence rather than near‑term products.(asapdrew.com)
• Despite the lack of products, SSI has raised around $3B at a valuation near $30–32B from top‑tier investors (a16z, Sequoia, DST, Alphabet, NVIDIA, etc.), putting it in the same financial league as leading frontier labs.(vctavern.com)

However, the prediction concerns whether over the next several years this safety‑first posture will cause SSI not to be a top‑tier AGI winner relative to OpenAI, Google, and other fast‑moving labs. The industry has not yet reached AGI or superintelligence, and no clear long‑term “winner” has emerged. SSI’s strategy and funding position keep it a serious contender, but there is also not yet evidence that it will win.

Because the core claim is about a multi‑year competitive outcome that has not yet played out, the prediction cannot be evaluated at this time, so the result is inconclusive (too early).

It is too early to determine whether this structural, multi‑year prediction has come true.

The claim is:

In the emerging race to AGI over the coming years, AI companies that prioritize safety more than their competitors will systematically lose market share and technological leadership, leading to a Darwinian dynamic that favors less safety‑constrained firms.

Key reasons this is inconclusive as of Nov 30, 2025:

1. Timeframe: “over the coming years”
   The prediction explicitly concerns a multi‑year competitive dynamic in an industry that is still rapidly evolving. As of late 2025, only ~1.5 years have passed since the statement (June 2024), which is not long enough to see whether a long‑run “Darwinian” pattern systematically plays out across cycles of technology deployment, regulation, and market consolidation.

2. Ambiguous mapping of “safety‑prioritizing” vs “less safety‑constrained” firms
   Major labs—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, and xAI—publicly emphasize both capability and safety. They differ in rhetoric, openness, and governance (e.g., Anthropic’s public positioning as more safety‑oriented, OpenAI’s capped‑profit structure, DeepMind’s integration within Google and focus on alignment research), but there is no clear, agreed‑upon ranking of which firms “care more about safety” in a way that would let us objectively test the prediction. Any classification here would be contestable and largely qualitative.

3. Market and leadership status is still fluid

   • Different firms lead on different axes (model performance, user base, enterprise deals, research breakthroughs, chip access, etc.).
   • Leadership has already shifted multiple times since early GPT‑4–era systems, and regulatory, antitrust, and safety‑oriented governance efforts are still ramping up in the US, EU, and elsewhere. These moving parts make it premature to say that any systematic Darwinian effect has locked in.

4. No clear evidence yet of a safety‑leadership tradeoff dominating the field
   While there have been tensions between releasing powerful models quickly and imposing strict safety constraints (e.g., staged releases, regional limitations, content restrictions), we do not yet see unambiguous, widely accepted evidence that more safety‑conscious firms are clearly and systematically losing overall market share and technological leadership because of their safety stance. Some firms perceived as relatively safety‑oriented have continued to secure large funding rounds, strategic partnerships, and regulatory goodwill, which could just as easily be interpreted as advantages rather than handicaps.

Because (a) the horizon of “coming years” has not fully played out, (b) the relevant concepts (who is most safety‑oriented, what counts as leadership) are not crisply measurable yet, and (c) industry structure and regulation are still in flux, the prediction cannot be fairly judged as right or wrong at this point.

Therefore the status is inconclusive (too early) rather than right, wrong, or permanently ambiguous.

By November 30, 2025, there is some evidence consistent with parts of Saks’s thesis, but not enough – and the time horizon is too long – to say the full conditional prediction has clearly come true or failed.

1. Regulators did move toward a la carte-style remedies, at least for Teams
After the Slack/Salesforce complaint, the European Commission formally found that bundling Teams with Office/Microsoft 365 gave Teams an unfair distribution advantage and accepted legally binding commitments from Microsoft. Microsoft must now offer Office 365 / Microsoft 365 suites with and without Teams worldwide, with mandated price gaps between the two options and minimum standalone pricing for Teams, enforced for seven years. (microsoft.com)
Separately, the Australian ACCC has sued Microsoft over how it presented a more expensive Microsoft 365 + Copilot plan versus a cheaper “Classic” option without Copilot, again pushing toward clearer, a la carte‑style choices. (windowscentral.com)
These moves do not perfectly implement Saks’s exact remedy (he wanted the summed a la carte prices to equal the bundle price), but they undercut the simple "Teams is free in the bundle" story he was reacting to. That makes the antecedent of his conditional ("if we don’t do that") only partially true.

2. Microsoft is continuing to add and bundle new capabilities into Microsoft 365
Since mid‑2024, Microsoft has indeed layered more products and functionality into its 365 ecosystem:

• In October 2025 it launched Microsoft 365 Premium for consumers, a higher-priced subscription that deeply integrates Copilot AI across Word, Excel, Outlook and more, plus Defender security features and 1 TB storage – effectively a new, richer bundle tier. (reuters.com)
• Internal planning documents and announcements describe new AI services like “Tenant Copilot” and broader “Agent Factory” concepts being built directly into Microsoft 365, showing a continued pattern of embedding new functionality into the suite. (businessinsider.com)
  This supports the narrower part of his claim that Microsoft would keep adding new products/features into the 365 bundle on an ongoing basis.

3. "Systematically dominate broad swaths of enterprise software" is a long‑run, structural claim
As of 2025, Microsoft already had very high share in enterprise productivity (over 80% in the enterprise segment of office productivity software) and substantial positions in cloud and security, but it still faces strong, viable competitors across major enterprise categories (AWS and Google Cloud in IaaS, Salesforce/Oracle/SAP/others in enterprise apps, Google Workspace in productivity, and a large ecosystem of security vendors). (markets.financialcontent.com)
Regulatory pressure is increasing, not disappearing: the EU DMA gatekeeper regime, the EU Teams commitments, and UK/CMA scrutiny of Microsoft’s cloud licensing all push against unchecked expansion via bundling. (markets.financialcontent.com)
Given that Saks framed the outcome as something that would occur "over time" if regulators failed to act, and we are only ~17 months past the June 29, 2024 episode – with major regulatory interventions still unfolding – it’s too early to say whether Microsoft will, because of bundling, end up "systematically" dominating many more enterprise software segments than it already did.

4. Net assessment

• Partially borne out: Microsoft has continued to enrich and promote bundled 365 offerings (including new AI and security capabilities), consistent with his concern about the power of the bundle. (reuters.com)
• Partially undercut: Key regulators have imposed a la carte and pricing-structure remedies around Teams and are scrutinizing other aspects of Microsoft’s cloud and licensing behavior, so the simple “no regulatory response” scenario he described has not materialized. (microsoft.com)
• Too early on the core outcome: Whether this will ultimately let Microsoft "systematically dominate" broad new swaths of enterprise software is a multi‑year question, and current data does not yet show a clear, new wave of monopoly-style dominance caused by post‑2024 bundling.

Because the central, long‑term consequence Saks predicted (systematic domination across broad enterprise categories due to unchecked bundling) cannot yet be clearly confirmed or falsified, the prediction is best classified as inconclusive (too early) at this point.

1. What actually happened in the Tesla fee case

• The plaintiffs’ lawyers in Tornetta v. Musk asked for a fee in Tesla stock worth well over $5–7 billion.
• In March 2024, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick rejected that multi‑billion‑dollar request and instead awarded about $345 million in fees (cash or stock) — a huge sum, but not “billions of dollars” as Sacks’ conditional referred to.
  • Associated Press and Bloomberg coverage of the decision report the fee at roughly $345 million, far below the multi‑billion request. (apnews.com)

So the explicit trigger in the normalized prediction — Delaware awarding the lawyers billions of dollars in fees — did not occur.

2. What happened to Delaware’s status as a corporate hub

Since the January 2024 ruling voiding Musk’s Tesla pay package, there has been a noticeable but still modest “DExit” trend:

• A Harvard Law Forum empirical study finds that from 2024 through mid‑2025, Delaware lost a net 11 large public companies (market cap > $250m) to reincorporations elsewhere (16 left, 5 moved in). (corpgov.law.harvard.edu)
• The same analysis notes Delaware still accounts for ~80–90% of IPO incorporations, with only a slight dip in its share in early 2025. (thegamingboardroom.com)
• A broader overview of the “Delaware corporate exodus” reports at least a dozen billion‑dollar public companies reincorporating away by late 2025, and an 8% drop in new business formations, but emphasizes there has been “no mass exodus”; defections are high‑profile but numerically small. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Delaware still hosts roughly two‑thirds of Fortune 500 companies and more than 2.1–2.2 million registered entities, and remains widely described by officials and legal experts as the premier corporate domicile, albeit under new competitive pressure from Texas and Nevada. (en.wikipedia.org)

So there is some material movement away from Delaware, but Delaware has not clearly lost its status as the leading U.S. state for incorporation; it is still dominant while facing increased competition and modest erosion at the margin.

3. Why the forecast is scored as ambiguous

The normalized prediction is explicitly conditional:

If the Delaware court awards the plaintiff’s lawyers billions in fees, then Delaware will suffer a significant loss of premier status, with a material shift of incorporations elsewhere.

• The antecedent (billions awarded) never happened; the court capped the fee at ~$345m, not billions. (apnews.com)
• Nonetheless, some exodus did occur after the Tesla ruling and broader Chancery decisions, but:
  • It is modest relative to Delaware’s enormous base, and Delaware clearly remains the primary incorporation venue.
  • The observed shifts are driven by a mix of factors (judicial scrutiny of founders, overall legal climate, tax and cost considerations), not specifically by a multi‑billion fee award that never materialized. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the key condition in Sacks’ forecast (a multi‑billion‑dollar fee award) did not occur, we cannot directly test his stated “if X then Y” claim. At the same time, Delaware’s dominance has been dented but not clearly “lost”, making it impossible to give a clean “right” or “wrong” verdict on the normalized consequence even by analogy.

Given those factors, the fairest evaluation is “ambiguous”: the conditional was never triggered, and the real‑world outcomes (modest DExit, continued Delaware dominance) do not let us definitively confirm or falsify the full, conditional prediction.

Evidence indicates that both products did, in fact, sell out of their initial available inventory shortly after launch:

1. Tesla Mezcal

   • Tesla announced its $450 Tesla Mezcal around June 6, 2024; coverage notes that it "has since sold out" shortly after being announced and listed for sale on Tesla’s site. (autos.yahoo.com)
   • Multiple reports on the mezcal’s first release state that the initial batch sold out quickly in June and then later returned to the store for a holiday restock. (barrons.com)
   • Secondary-market listings and specialist retailers describe it as a limited release that is sold out from Tesla, with bottles reselling at a premium, reinforcing that Tesla’s own inventory was exhausted rapidly. (poshmark.com)
     Together, these show the initial Tesla Mezcal run sold out soon after launch, consistent with the prediction.

2. All‑In branded liquor (Besties All‑In Tequila)

   • The All‑In Podcast later launched a limited-release spirits line, The Besties All‑In Tequila. A TechCrunch report on June 24, 2025 notes that the tequila, launched that Saturday night, "promptly sold out" according to liquor e‑commerce sites. (techcrunch.com)
   • The All‑In podcast’s own Wikipedia entry likewise records that the June 2025 tequila release (7,500 numbered bottles) sold out within 48 hours. (en.wikipedia.org)
     This directly matches the claim that the forthcoming All‑In liquor would quickly sell through its available inventory.

Since both the Tesla Mezcal and the All‑In tequila sold out their initial production runs shortly after launch, Sacks’s prediction that both products would quickly sell out is right.

Sacks predicted that the late‑May 2024 Silicon Valley Trump fundraiser would “break the ice” and trigger a preference cascade in which high‑profile business and finance figures would start openly backing Trump, making such support more acceptable in elite circles.

Evidence from the 2024 cycle shows exactly that pattern:

• Within days, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya’s San Francisco fundraiser for Trump (early June 2024) raised about $12 million and drew dozens of prominent tech investors. Jacob Helberg, a former Democratic fundraiser who himself donated about $1 million to Trump, said that in 2016 he knew only one Silicon Valley Trump supporter (Peter Thiel) but by mid‑2024 he counted them “in the dozens” and described the prior six months as seeing “the dam break.”(cnbc.com) In a separate interview he noted that “the social cost of supporting Trump isn’t as great as it was” and called himself one of a “cadre of high‑powered Silicon Valley businessmen” newly warming to Trump.(dailywire.com) That is precisely the dynamic Sacks forecast.

• A dedicated Trump super PAC, America PAC, was founded by Elon Musk in 2024 with backing from multiple high‑profile tech investors including Joe Lonsdale, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Ken Howery, Shaun Maguire, and Antonio Gracias—an organized cluster of Silicon Valley and crypto‑aligned business elites publicly financing Trump’s bid.(en.wikipedia.org) Separately, Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc., saw very large checks from billionaire financiers Timothy Mellon, Diane Hendricks, Howard Lutnick, and Paul Singer in mid‑2024, including Mellon’s $50 million contributions in both May 31 and July, underscoring strong, visible support from the financial elite.(en.wikipedia.org)

• Several very prominent business figures who had been Democrats or non‑Trump Republicans made public pro‑Trump moves after this period:

  • Elon Musk, by early 2024 already leaning right, formally endorsed Trump minutes after the July 2024 assassination attempt and went on to become the single largest individual donor of the 2024 election, giving roughly a quarter‑billion dollars in support of Trump and allied efforts.(en.wikipedia.org)
  • Bill Ackman, a long‑time Democratic donor who had backed Dean Phillips and RFK Jr. earlier in the cycle, publicly endorsed Trump on July 13–14, 2024, in widely covered posts on X, explicitly framing it as a careful, data‑driven choice.(investing.com)
  • Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co‑founders of Andreessen Horowitz and historically Democratic donors, announced on their own podcast and in a TechCrunch‑covered statement on July 16, 2024, that they would support and vote for Trump, citing tech and crypto policy as reasons.(techcrunch.com)
  • Thomas Peterffy, a billionaire who had previously said he would not fund Trump, reversed course and in August 2024 both attended a high‑dollar Aspen fundraiser for Trump and contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars after giving nothing to Trump earlier in the cycle.(en.wikipedia.org) Together with other financiers such as Scott Bessent—an ex‑Democratic donor turned seven‑figure Trump fundraiser—this represents exactly the “flipping” of business and finance leaders Sacks anticipated.(en.wikipedia.org)

• Compiled endorsement lists for Trump’s 2024 campaign show a substantial roster of named CEOs, founders, hedge‑fund managers, and crypto leaders in the finance and technology categories, including Musk, Ackman, Andreessen, Charles Hoskinson, Thomas Peterffy, Joe Ricketts, the Winklevoss twins, and others.(en.wikipedia.org) Post‑election commentary by Bill Gates explicitly notes the emergence of a “significant right‑of‑center group” of tech leaders—he specifically names Musk, Sacks, Thiel, Patrick Collison, Horowitz, and Andreessen—who had backed Trump in 2024, emphasizing how unusual this was given Silicon Valley’s historic Democratic tilt.(nypost.com)

At the same time, many corporate leaders continued to back Democrats (especially Kamala Harris once she became the nominee), and some high‑profile Republicans on Wall Street, like Ken Griffin, remained outspoken Trump critics or sat the race out.(en.wikipedia.org) But Sacks did not predict that elite support would be monolithic—only that there would be a noticeable cascade and that open Trump support would become more acceptable in elite business circles.

Given:

• the rapid sequence of highly visible endorsements and mega‑donations from new or previously reluctant business and finance leaders after the late‑May / early‑June 2024 fundraiser,
• explicit contemporary descriptions of a “dam break” in Silicon Valley Trump support and a reduced social cost to backing him,
• and subsequent recognition that a sizable, coherent pro‑Trump faction had emerged among tech and financial elites,

Sacks’s prediction that the fundraiser would be followed by a noticeable preference cascade of elite business and financial support for Trump during the 2024 cycle is best judged as right.

The prediction was that Democrats would not pull off a late switch and that Joe Biden would remain their nominee through the 2024 election. In reality, Biden withdrew from the 2024 race on July 21, 2024, citing the best interests of his party and the country, and he endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. (cnbc.com) Following his withdrawal, the Democratic Party moved forward with Harris, who officially became the Democratic presidential nominee on August 5, 2024, and then headed the ticket in the November election, which she ultimately lost to Donald Trump. (en.wikipedia.org) Because there was a late switch and Biden did not remain the nominee through Election Day, Sacks’s prediction is wrong.

How the prediction was framed

Sacks’ prediction had two parts:

1. The ~20% post‑earnings drop in late May 2024 would be a buying opportunity for Salesforce (CRM).
2. Marc Benioff would successfully pivot Salesforce to benefit from the AI trend rather than missing it or being caught flat‑footed.

1. Was the May 2024 crash a buying opportunity?

• After weak Q1 FY25 results, Salesforce fell about 20% on May 30, 2024, closing near $216, its worst day since 2004. (upi.com)
• The next day (May 31, 2024) it rebounded but still finished the month around $232–234 per share. (statmuse.com)
• From that level, CRM went on a very strong run:
  • It reached a highest closing price of $365.66 on December 4, 2024, up roughly 55–60% from the late‑May closing level. (statmuse.com)
  • It ended 2024 at about $333 per share, still ~40% above the May 31 close. (digrin.com)
• By late November 2025, the stock has round‑tripped back near its May 2024 level (around $230.54 vs. ~$232–234 then), meaning a buy‑and‑hold investor from May 2024 to now would be roughly flat and would have underperformed the broader market. (statmuse.com)

However, Sacks did not specify a holding period—only that the drop would prove to be a buying opportunity. In the 6–12 months after the call, buyers had multiple chances to realize very substantial gains (40–60% at year‑end 2024 and even more at the December 4 peak). In common investing language, that qualifies the May 2024 plunge as having been a buying opportunity, even if the stock later gave back those gains.

2. Did Benioff pivot Salesforce to AI instead of missing the trend?

Evidence strongly supports that Salesforce leaned into AI rather than missing it:

• Salesforce launched Einstein Copilot, a conversational generative‑AI assistant embedded across its CRM, first announced in February 2024 and made generally available in April 2024; it’s grounded in customer data via Data Cloud and marketed as part of the “Einstein 1 Platform” (now Salesforce Platform). (salesforce.com)
• Salesforce then introduced Agentforce, positioning itself as the “#1 AI CRM” and emphasizing autonomous AI agents that automate customer‑facing workflows. Earnings commentary highlighted hundreds of early Agentforce deals and a large AI deal pipeline. (cnbc.com)
• By mid‑2025, management and analysts were pointing to fast‑growing AI and data‑related annual recurring revenue (hundreds of millions to over $1 billion in ARR) and to AI as a central driver of Salesforce’s long‑term growth plan, including guidance to exceed $60 billion in revenue by 2030 with AI‑driven products like Agentforce 360 at the core. (reuters.com)
• Internally, Benioff has said AI “digital employees” now do roughly 30–50% of Salesforce’s own work, underlining how aggressively the company has adopted AI in its operations. (sfchronicle.com)

There is ongoing debate about how quickly Salesforce can monetize these AI offerings, and some recent commentary notes investor concern that AI could be more disruptive than accretive until monetization catches up. (barrons.com) But the factual record is clear: Salesforce did not sit out the AI wave—it rebranded itself as an AI‑first CRM platform, launched multiple AI products, built a substantial AI deal pipeline, and tied its long‑term financial guidance directly to AI.

Overall assessment

• Stock call: The May 2024 plunge was a buying opportunity over the subsequent year, with 40–60% gains available to investors who bought near the lows and exited during the 2024–early‑2025 rally.
• Strategic/AI call: Benioff did pivot Salesforce aggressively toward AI, with Einstein Copilot, Agentforce, and AI‑driven revenue and internal usage becoming central to the company’s narrative and product roadmap.

Given that both key elements of Sacks’ prediction largely materialized, despite later volatility and lingering questions about AI monetization, the prediction is best classified as right overall.

Sacks predicted that Donald Trump’s New York hush‑money/business‑records conviction would eventually be overturned on appeal, but only after the November 5, 2024 election.

What has actually happened so far:

• Trump was convicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to the Stormy Daniels hush‑money payments on May 30, 2024, and later received an unconditional discharge at sentencing on January 10, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Trump has appealed the conviction in New York’s state courts (notice of appeal filed January 29, 2025; a formal appeal seeking to overturn the conviction filed in October 2025). (en.wikipedia.org)
• Separately, a federal appeals court in November 2025 gave him another chance to try to move the case to federal court, where he would then argue for dismissal on presidential‑immunity grounds, but that ruling only ordered further consideration—it did not vacate the conviction. (washingtonpost.com)
• Major overviews of Trump’s legal status as of late November 2025 still describe him as convicted in the New York hush‑money case and “seeking to overturn that conviction,” indicating no court has yet set the verdict aside. (apnews.com)

Because the conviction remains in place and the appeals (both in state court and via the attempted federal removal route) are still unresolved as of November 30, 2025, we don’t yet know whether it will “get tossed on appeal.” It has remained in effect through and beyond the November 5, 2024 election, matching his timing claim so far, but the core question—whether it will ultimately be overturned—has not been decided. Therefore the prediction’s accuracy is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 felony counts in the New York hush‑money case, making him a legally defined felon during the 2024 campaign.(apnews.com) After the verdict, Democrats explicitly incorporated his felony status into their messaging: the DNC and Biden/Harris campaigns ran paid ads and billboards labeling him a convicted felon and framing the race as prosecutor versus felon, including the Phoenix billboard, the Character Matters ad, and the Law & Order–style convention spot, as well as broader strategy pieces describing this contrast as a key weapon.(cbsnews.com) Despite this, Trump won the 2024 presidential election with 312 electoral votes and a popular‑vote plurality, and Republicans captured the presidency and control of Congress, indicating that the felon‑focused line of attack did not prevent his political success or keep him from remaining highly competitive and ultimately victorious.(en.wikipedia.org) Given that the strategy was clearly used and Trump still prevailed, Sacks’s prediction that it was probably not going to work is borne out by the eventual results.

Available reporting shows that the Scarlett Johansson–OpenAI dispute over the ChatGPT "Sky" voice ended with OpenAI taking down the voice and issuing explanations/apologies, not with any transfer of ownership or equity to Johansson. Articles describing the incident through 2024–2025 say she hired lawyers, sent letters, and that OpenAI "reluctantly agreed" to remove Sky, but explicitly note she has not filed a lawsuit and mention no settlement involving equity or economic participation in OpenAI.(cnbc.com)

On Sam Altman’s side, OpenAI’s unusual structure and later restructuring into a public benefit corporation have been heavily covered. Reuters’ report on the October 2025 restructuring states that Microsoft holds 27% and the OpenAI Foundation 26%, and that Altman will not receive equity in the restructured company.(reuters.com) Business Insider (October 2025) further notes that although a 7% stake for Altman was at one point discussed, it "has not materialized" and he still has no direct equity in OpenAI.(businessinsider.com) TechCrunch and related coverage clarify that any exposure he had was a negligible indirect interest via venture funds (YC/Sequoia), not a personal direct ownership stake in OpenAI, and that even that exposure has been reduced or sold.(techcrunch.com)

Crucially, across major business and technology outlets and detailed discussions of OpenAI’s cap table and governance, there is no indication at all that Scarlett Johansson has any equity or economic ownership stake in OpenAI, let alone one granted as part of a legal settlement. Profiles and later pieces that revisit the controversy simply say she forced OpenAI to withdraw the Sky voice; none mention her as an investor or shareholder.(nypost.com)

Given that (1) Johansson appears to have 0% ownership, with no reported equity or profit participation arising from the dispute, and (2) Altman has no direct equity stake in OpenAI and only ever had at most a tiny, indirect fund exposure, Johansson does not "end up owning more of this company than Sam Altman" in any meaningful, reported sense. At best, both have zero direct equity; zero is not greater than zero. Therefore, on the evidence available by November 30, 2025, Sacks’s prediction is wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, the Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI dispute over the ChatGPT “Sky” voice has not been litigated to a substantive court outcome, nor has it produced specific legislation clearly traceable to a Johansson–OpenAI case.

What has happened:

• In May 2024 Johansson publicly accused OpenAI of using a voice “eerily similar” to hers, said she had hired legal counsel, and that her lawyers sent letters to Sam Altman and OpenAI demanding details on how the Sky voice was created. OpenAI then paused/removed the Sky voice and apologized, while denying that it was intended to imitate her. (cnbc.com)
• Multiple later reports explicitly note that Johansson has not filed a lawsuit against OpenAI; her action has remained at the demand‑letter/PR‑pressure stage rather than becoming a docketed case (e.g., no “Johansson v. OpenAI” in reported litigation). (techtimes.com)
• AI‑related fair‑use and likeness law has evolved since 2024, but via other cases and policy moves (e.g., Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta on fair use for AI training; proposed or enacted likeness/AI‑disclosure legislation in the U.S. and U.K.), none of which arise from a litigated Johansson–OpenAI lawsuit. Some of these decisions are actually relatively favorable to AI firms on fair use for training data. (apnews.com)

The prediction, as normalized, was conditional: if the Johansson–OpenAI dispute were litigated to a substantive outcome, it would produce more restrictive, unfavorable fair‑use standards for AI/content companies. Because that antecedent (“is litigated to a substantive legal outcome”) has not occurred yet, we have no way to observe whether the predicted consequence about bad precedents would have followed.

It is also still possible (though increasingly less likely with time) that Johansson could file suit in the future, which might then influence precedent or legislation. Until such a case actually exists and is resolved, the prediction cannot be definitively scored as right or wrong.

Given that the key triggering event has not happened, the correct classification is inconclusive rather than right or wrong.

As of 30 November 2025, OpenAI’s current revenue mix still appears to be dominated by subscriptions to ChatGPT rather than by a B2B app‑platform model, but the company is clearly pushing harder into B2B, so it’s too early to judge the long‑term claim.

Key evidence:

• Multiple analyses report that the majority of OpenAI’s revenue comes from ChatGPT subscriptions (Plus, Team, Enterprise). One strategy analysis notes that product subscriptions (ChatGPT Plus/Team/Enterprise) make up the bulk of revenue, while API usage is a smaller portion. (deepstarstrategic.com) An essay summarizing reporting from The Information similarly estimates that over 70% of OpenAI’s revenue comes from premium ChatGPT access. (johncandeto.com) A Financial Times piece from mid‑2025 says OpenAI’s ARR nearly doubled to $10B, driven largely by demand for ChatGPT subscriptions, again underscoring subscription‑centric economics. (ft.com) Reuters, citing The Information, also frames OpenAI’s long‑term projections in terms of hundreds of millions of paying ChatGPT subscribers by 2030, positioning ChatGPT as one of the world’s largest subscription services. (reuters.com) Collectively, this suggests that, so far, the primary business model has not moved away from subscription access to ChatGPT.
• At the same time, OpenAI is clearly intensifying its B2B focus: it has a dedicated "Growth & GTM Strategy – B2B Monetization" team tasked with shaping commercial strategy across B2B channels, including pricing, packaging, and enterprise GTM. (openai.com) There are also large‑scale enterprise and platform deals (e.g., PwC‑sold enterprise offerings, Intuit’s multiyear strategic partnership, and a $100M+ agents/AI‑services partnership with Databricks) that are explicitly about monetizing business use and embedding OpenAI models into other companies’ products. (johncandeto.com) These moves support the directional part of the prediction (“move in more of a B2B direction”).
• Regarding “monetizing all the apps that are built on top of it”: OpenAI launched the GPT Store in January 2024, allowing third parties to create and publish custom GPTs and introducing a builder revenue program where creators are paid based on engagement. (openai.com) This is indeed a platform for apps built on top of OpenAI models, but available reporting focuses on it as an additional ecosystem and creator‑payout mechanism; there is no strong evidence that OpenAI’s main revenue now comes from taking a cut of third‑party apps, as opposed to continuing to monetize via ChatGPT subscriptions (consumer and business tiers) and direct API/enterprise contracts.

Putting this together:

• Parts that are directionally supported: OpenAI has moved more into B2B (enterprise tiers, big corporate partnerships, dedicated B2B monetization org). That aligns with the prediction’s general direction of a stronger B2B focus.
• Parts not yet observed: Available data indicates that ChatGPT subscriptions (a mix of B2C and seat‑based B2B) still account for the majority of revenue, so we do not yet see a clear shift of the primary business model away from subscription access. Nor is there evidence that revenue from monetizing third‑party apps built on top of OpenAI (via the GPT Store, etc.) has become the main business model.
• Time horizon: The prediction is explicitly framed as a long‑term, “over time” shift. Given that only ~18 months have passed since the May 2024 podcast and OpenAI is still rapidly evolving, the current evidence doesn’t conclusively validate or falsify a long‑run business‑model change.

Because (1) the core business is still subscription‑centric today, but (2) OpenAI is clearly moving more deeply into B2B and platform plays, and (3) the prediction is explicitly long‑term, the fairest judgment as of late 2025 is that it’s too early to tell whether Sacks’s full prediction will ultimately be correct.

Evidence since GPT‑4o’s May 2024 launch shows that frontier foundation models have rapidly become the core of many new and existing customer‑support agents, but there isn’t clear, measurable proof that most of the R&D from the previous 2–5 years is now obsolete or that new 2024‑era startups have a durable structural advantage.

What clearly did happen

• GPT‑4o and GPT‑4o mini were explicitly positioned and priced for high‑volume automation use cases like customer‑service agents; OpenAI and industry coverage highlight customer‑support automation as a prime application, with lower costs and better latency than earlier models. (en.wikipedia.org) Case‑study style pieces describe GPT‑4o cutting support costs and handling large fractions of customer inquiries for companies like Octopus Energy or Lunar Bank, reinforcing that these models are now central to modern support stacks. (ptolemay.com)
• Major CX platforms such as Zendesk quickly rolled GPT‑4o into production. Zendesk announced in May 2024 that it rolled out GPT‑4o across its AI offering within 24 hours to improve speed and quality for bots and agents. (zendesk.com) By March 2025, Zendesk was piloting a new class of agentic AI agents powered by OpenAI models (including GPT‑4o), explicitly moving away from older intent‑based bots toward generative, reasoning‑based agents. (openai.com) This supports the direction of Sacks’s claim: older, rule/intent‑driven conversational tech is being superseded by LLM‑centric agents.
• Many new tools and indie products for “AI support teams” launched in 2024–2025 are built directly on GPT‑4o, Claude, Gemini, etc., without proprietary base models, and claim high automation rates (e.g., founders reporting ~80% of tickets auto‑handled using GPT‑4o‑plus‑other‑LLMs pipelines). (reddit.com) This shows that new entrants can reach strong performance quickly by standing on top of the latest foundation models, consistent with the idea that the bar for proprietary conversational tech has been raised.

Why the prediction can’t be cleanly scored as right or wrong

• Zendesk and similar incumbents are not being structurally displaced by 2024‑born startups; they are themselves integrating GPT‑4o and newer models, leveraging extensive pre‑existing R&D in routing, workflows, data infrastructure, UI, and distribution. Their own case study emphasizes that they can benchmark and deploy new models (including OpenAI’s reasoning models) in under 24 hours, specifically to reuse their existing platform rather than scrap it. (openai.com) That’s very different from “your work is obsolete” in the sense of wasted R&D.
• Industry‑level data still show that end‑to‑end AI agents handle a minority of total customer‑service volume; human agents and traditional systems remain the backbone. For example, Gartner’s projection that only about 10% of customer‑service interactions will be fully automated by AI by 2026 implies that earlier investments in knowledge bases, workflows, and tooling continue to matter significantly alongside new LLM agents. (linkedin.com)
• There is no public, quantitative evidence that “hundreds of millions of dollars” of R&D from 2019–2022 virtual‑agent startups has literally “gone out the window.” Many such companies have simply swapped or layered in GPT‑4/4o (or competitors) under the hood rather than discarding their products entirely; public announcements tend to frame this as an upgrade, not a write‑off.
• Some large enterprises have moved away from proprietary access to OpenAI’s models toward custom or open‑source stacks for cost, latency, or privacy reasons. A prominent example is AT&T, which initially used ChatGPT/GPT‑4 to analyze customer‑service call summaries, then replaced it with a hybrid system of distilled and open‑source models (including Llama 70B), cutting costs to about 35% of the ChatGPT‑based solution while retaining most of the accuracy. (businessinsider.com) This suggests that, even post‑GPT‑4o, there is still strategic value in investing in custom modeling rather than that R&D being per se obsolete.

Net assessment

• Directionally, Sacks’s intuition—that frontier models like GPT‑4o would make it much easier for new teams to build high‑quality, fast conversational agents and would undermine older, intent‑based/hand‑rolled conversational tech—has been borne out in practice.
• However, the strong form of the claim (“most” 2–5‑year R&D in virtual agents is now obsolete; new GPT‑4o‑era startups have a structural advantage over earlier efforts) is not something we can confirm or falsify from available data: incumbents have generally adapted by integrating the same models, and there’s no systematic evidence that earlier R&D has been rendered worthless or that pre‑2022 startups are being displaced en masse.

Because the observable facts support the general trend but do not let us decisively judge the extent (“most,” “hundreds of millions… out the window,” “structural advantage”), the prediction is best classified as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Evidence since mid‑2024 supports sacks’s conditional claim that app features which closely overlap with frontier models tend to be wiped out within months of major upgrades.

Even before GPT‑4o, this pattern was visible: when ChatGPT added native PDF upload and Q&A in late 2023, TechCrunch reported that a single feature change made the core offering of multiple PDF‑wrapper startups redundant, sharply undercutting businesses like PDF.ai, ChatPDF, AskYourPDF and similar tools almost overnight. Later analysis of these events describes how those wrappers saw significant usage drops once ChatGPT could do the same job natively. (techcrunch.com)

After GPT‑4o’s May 2024 release and its follow‑on upgrades, OpenAI rapidly folded more capabilities directly into the base models: real‑time multimodal chat, advanced voice agents, cheaper small models like GPT‑4o‑mini, and then native image generation that replaced DALL‑E 3 inside ChatGPT. Each wave reduced the gap between what a generic model could do out‑of‑the‑box and what many specialized “AI apps” were selling as standalone products. (en.wikipedia.org)

Market analyses now describe almost exactly what sacks warned about. A 2025 review from Market Clarity estimates that for thin “wrapper” startups, the next GPT iteration creates a high (70–80%) chance of serious impact, with the startup’s differentiating features typically absorbed into the platform within 6–12 months of a major model release. (mktclarity.com) Another Market Clarity piece documents how previous OpenAI launches immediately threatened successful wrappers, and notes Sam Altman’s explicit warning that companies which merely wrap GPT‑4 will be “steamrolled” once those features are shipped natively. (mktclarity.com)

Founder and investor commentary in 2024–25 ties this directly to GPT‑4o and its peers. A widely shared LinkedIn analysis notes that each time a major LLM update lands—specifically naming GPT‑4o, Claude 3.5, and Gemini 2—dozens of niche products like generic summarizers, copilots, and research helpers become unnecessary because the base models now perform those tasks better and more cheaply. (linkedin.com) Another investor piece describes many “ChatGPT wrapper” founders openly telling VCs they must raise funding before OpenAI ships their entire product as a first‑party feature, underscoring that platform obsolescence is already a lived risk, not just a theoretical one. (linkedin.com)

Plenty of application‑layer companies are still alive—but the ones surviving are those that add proprietary data, deep workflow integration, or distribution advantages that go beyond what the raw models provide. That is precisely the boundary sacks highlighted between model innovation and app‑layer innovation. Given the documented cases where overlapping wrappers were effectively made obsolete within a few months of new GPT‑4o‑class or similar releases, his prediction is borne out by what has actually happened in the market.

By late 2025, several enterprise chat/assistant products are doing essentially what Sacks predicted: models automatically route to the relevant internal data sources without users having to name a specific repository each time.

1. Glue itself has moved in this direction. Glue AI now:

   • Sits in every conversation and "leverages context from your workspace" (threads, attachments) and web data when you simply @‑mention it and ask a question, rather than you pointing it to a particular thread or file each time.
   • Is described as using context from "threads, attachments, and connected apps (with permission)" to answer questions, implying it can pull from whatever connected sources are relevant rather than requiring the user to specify which one on each query. (docs.glue.ai)

2. Glue added MCP-based integrations that let the model pick the right external tool. In 2025 Glue shipped MCP support and a curated directory of MCP servers for apps like Linear, Asana, Notion, Sentry, Stripe, Vercel, etc. In use, you can just ask Glue AI in a thread to do things like "create a Linear issue" or "look up data from an internal system," and the system invokes the appropriate MCP server/tool behind the scenes rather than you manually choosing an API endpoint. (docs.glue.ai)

3. Anthropic’s Claude Enterprise Search is a clear realization of the prediction in a “similar enterprise chat tool.” Claude’s 2025 Microsoft 365 connector and Enterprise Search feature are explicitly designed so that one question to Claude can search across a company’s connected data sources–SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Teams, and other apps–in a single shot. Anthropic’s own example: ask about your company’s remote‑work policy and Claude automatically pulls from HR documents in SharePoint, email discussions in Outlook, and team guidelines from various sources into one answer. Users no longer have to say "now search SharePoint" vs. "now search Outlook"—the model infers which repositories to query based on the question. (anthropic.com)

4. Broader ecosystem trend confirms the direction. Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher agent similarly leans on Microsoft Graph to draw from meetings, emails, chats, and SharePoint files, with users mainly expressing what they want rather than formulating per‑repository queries—evidence that mainstream enterprise assistants are converging on automatic source selection. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)

Given these shipped capabilities in Glue and closely related enterprise assistants like Claude for Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Copilot, the world has clearly moved toward exactly what Sacks described: AI models in enterprise chat that mostly “figure out on their own” which internal data sources to hit, making assistance more seamless than it was in May 2024. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as right.

GPT‑5, a “GPT‑5‑class” multimodal foundation model from OpenAI, was released on August 7, 2025 and is now widely available via ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, satisfying the timeline condition “by the time a GPT‑5‑class model is available.”(en.wikipedia.org)

By that point, at least some enterprise chat environments do support effectively “promptless” AI behavior very close to what Sacks described:

• Doti Autopilot for Slack is an AI assistant specifically designed to sit in Slack channels and listen in the background. Its documentation states that Autopilot:

  • “monitors messages in enabled channels,”
  • “detects valid questions,”
  • “replies automatically when it can confidently help,” and
  • does so “without requiring the user to tag @doti,” adding that “users might not even know Doti is there – and yet their questions get answered within seconds.”(help.doti.ai)
    This matches the prediction’s idea of an AI that “just [chimes] in” with relevant, helpful information in a team chat without being explicitly summoned.

• Slack’s own AI/agent framework describes AI agents in Slack as “autonomous, proactive applications” that can operate inside channels and DMs, analyze conversational context, and take actions or respond based on automated triggers rather than only direct prompts.(docs.slack.dev) This supports the claim that the enterprise chat stack is moving toward embedded, always‑on agents.

Glue itself, the product Sacks co‑founded, has shipped extensive agentic AI features—MCP integration so Glue AI can act across external tools, multi‑step tool use, and AI Rules/Suggestion Rules that let it propose thread names and recipients and run complex actions once a user asks for help.(docs.glue.ai) However, the publicly documented behavior still appears to be user‑initiated (via @‑mentions, AI sessions, or explicit actions) rather than a fully autonomous “chime‑in on any conversation” mode.

Taken literally as a prediction about Glue’s own feature set, the claim is not yet clearly fulfilled. But as normalized—“enterprise chat tools like Glue will be able to support effectively promptless AI behavior by the GPT‑5 era”—the ecosystem now includes Slack‑based tools (e.g., Doti Autopilot) that deliver exactly this: background agents in enterprise chat that autonomously interject when they detect they can help, by or before the GPT‑5 timeframe. On that broader reading, the prediction has effectively come true.

As of the latest available data (close of trading on 2025-11-28), Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) has a market capitalization of about $2.94 trillion, well below the $5 trillion level mentioned in the prediction.

However, the prediction is explicitly open-ended: Alphabet/Google will become "a $5 trillion company" "at some point" in the future, with no time horizon specified. Since there is still ample time for Alphabet’s market cap to potentially reach ~$5T, the prediction cannot yet be judged as definitively right or wrong. We only know that it has not come true yet by 2025-11-30, not that it will never come true.

Therefore, the appropriate status is inconclusive (too early) rather than right or wrong.

As of November 2025, Gemini-powered AI Overviews are clearly a major part of Google Search, but it’s not yet possible to say they have definitively displaced the traditional “10 blue links” as the primary way users consume results, and the prediction had no explicit time horizon.

Evidence that AI Overviews are becoming central:

• Google’s own posts and earnings calls describe AI Overviews as a major new layer in Search, rolled out to over 100 countries and reaching more than 1–2 billion users monthly by early–mid 2025. (blog.google)
• Multiple independent studies show AI Overviews now appear in a substantial share of queries. Semrush/Datos found they appeared in ~13% of U.S. desktop searches as of March 2025, up from 6.5% in January. (searchengineland.com) Ahrefs data from June 2025 estimated AI Overviews on about 12.8% of all Google searches, and a later Ahrefs-based analysis in late 2025 put their presence at roughly 20–21% of all queries across 146 million results, especially for long, informational, question-style searches. (ahrefs.com)
• One smaller 8,000-keyword study (Advanced Web Ranking, summarized by an agency blog) reported AI Overviews on ~60% of U.S. queries and called them the “dominant experience in Google’s interface,” showing how, at least in some sampled keyword sets, the AI box now visually dominates the SERP. (xponent21.com)

Evidence that the “10 blue links” paradigm has not been fully displaced:

• Even in the more aggressive studies, AI Overviews appear above traditional results; they do not fully remove organic listings from the default “All” tab. For a large fraction—and likely a majority—of total search volume, users still see and can scroll through standard link lists, especially on commercial, navigational, local, and news queries where AI Overviews are relatively rare. (digitalinformationworld.com)
• Google’s experimental AI-only “AI Mode,” which truly replaces the link list with an AI summary, is opt-in and paywalled for Google One AI Premium subscribers, not the default interface for the mass user base. (reuters.com)
• A Google public-policy VP explicitly stated in September 2025 that “we’re not going to abandon” the 10-blue-links model and framed AI summaries as an additional, not replacement, experience—even while acknowledging that users are increasingly asking for contextual AI answers. (edexlive.com)
• Other analyses note that, as of 2025, the main Google Search experience is still a familiar list of links with AI Overviews added on top, and that AI Mode remains a separate, optional tab. (paadiatech.com)

Interpretation:

• Sacks’ directional claim—that Gemini-powered one-box/AI answers are the future of Google Search and will take a large bite out of traditional link-based behavior—is strongly supported by current trends: AI Overviews are widely deployed, visually dominant on many informational SERPs, and associated with declining organic click-through rates.
• But his stronger version—that this experience will "eat the rest of Google’s search" and become the clearly dominant, primary interface displacing the 10 blue links paradigm—has not yet fully materialized as of late 2025. Traditional results remain core, AI-only mode is niche, and measured AI Overview coverage (especially in large-scale datasets) is still well below 100% of queries.

Because the prediction is framed about the long-term “future” of Google Search rather than by a specific date, and current evidence shows a strong but incomplete shift rather than a clear, completed displacement, the fairest assessment as of November 30, 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than definitively right or wrong.

Evidence since May 2024 shows Perplexity has grown rapidly and remained independent despite Google rolling out AI Overviews, rather than being “kind of screwed” or pushed into an acquisition.

Key points:

• Strong funding and soaring valuation: Perplexity was valued just over $1 billion in April 2024, but after Google’s AI Overviews launch it went on to raise a $500 million round in June 2025 at a $14 billion valuation, and by September 2025 its valuation was reported around $20 billion—hardly the profile of a company failing competitively. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Rapid user and usage growth: Analyses report Perplexity handling around 30 million queries per day (780 million in May 2025) with more than 20% month‑over‑month growth and over 22 million active users, giving it about a 6.2% share of the AI search segment. (en.wikipedia.org) This is growth after Google’s AI Overviews became a mainstream feature in search.

• Still independent; acquisition only speculative: Multiple reports in mid‑2025 describe Apple internally discussing a potential bid for Perplexity, but both Apple and Perplexity declined to confirm any deal, and coverage characterizes talks as early and uncertain. Perplexity’s CEO has explicitly said he does not want to sell to Big Tech and wants the company to remain independent. (macrumors.com) As of late 2025, there is no credible report that Perplexity has been acquired.

• Behavior of a confident competitor, not a distressed target: Perplexity has launched major new products (e.g., the Comet AI browser) and even made bold proposals to merge with TikTok U.S. and to buy Google Chrome, positioning itself as an acquirer or strategic partner rather than a company forced into a sale. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Google competition did not wipe it out: Google’s AI Overviews now reaches over 1.5 billion monthly users worldwide, embedding generative AI deeply into Google Search. (mlq.ai) Despite this, Perplexity has continued to raise large rounds, sign major partnerships, and grow usage, contradicting the idea that Google copying its approach would effectively kill its prospects.

Given that (1) Perplexity has not been acquired, (2) it is expanding and highly valued, and (3) it remains a notable independent competitor in AI search, the prediction that it was “screwed” and that acquisition was its main viable outcome has not come true as of November 30, 2025.

Based on public information as of November 30, 2025, this prediction did not come true in the way it was framed.

1. No public, clearly branded “GPT‑5” release in the predicted window

   • The prediction (made April 26, 2024) said GPT‑5 would come out “any day, week or month” after that. That implies a release in the following few weeks to at most a few months (i.e., roughly by late summer 2024) as a distinct next‑generation model.
   • OpenAI publicly launched GPT‑4o in May 2024 as an improved GPT‑4‑class model, but they did not describe it as GPT‑5 or as a new generation beyond the GPT‑4 family. OpenAI’s own materials consistently frame GPT‑4o as part of the GPT‑4 generation (optimized for speed, cost, and multimodal usage), not as “GPT‑5.”
   • As of late 2025, there is no widely documented, clearly named GPT‑5 release matching the "any day, week or month" timeline after April 26, 2024.

2. Quality jump and full‑cycle lead over open source not demonstrably realized as predicted

   • While OpenAI models (e.g., GPT‑4o and subsequent iterative improvements) remain at or near the frontier, open‑source models have also advanced rapidly, with many competitive or specialized systems narrowing the gap rather than obviously falling a full cycle behind.
   • Because there is no clear, acknowledged GPT‑5 release in that timeframe to evaluate, the claim that it would “knock our socks off” and prove OpenAI is “a cycle ahead of the open source community” cannot be validated as stated.

Given that:

• The timing condition (release of GPT‑5 within a few weeks to a few months after April 26, 2024) was not met, and
• The substantive content of the prediction (a clearly labeled GPT‑5 with a large, obvious quality jump that establishes a full‑cycle lead) has not materialized in the way described,

the appropriate classification for this prediction is:

result: "wrong" — the key event (a timely, publicly released GPT‑5 with the described impact) did not occur within the predicted window, and more than enough time has passed to judge it.

• What the law required: The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), signed April 24, 2024, required TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to divest U.S. operations within 270 days (deadline January 19, 2025), with up to a 90‑day presidential extension, or face a ban via app‑store and hosting prohibitions. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Court outcome: TikTok challenged the law; the D.C. Circuit in December 2024 and the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2025 upheld PAFACA’s constitutionality, confirming that TikTok would either need a “qualified divestiture” or be effectively banned in the U.S. after the deadline. (law.justia.com)
• What actually happened to the deadline: Instead of allowing TikTok to be shut down, the President repeatedly used (and arguably stretched) statutory authority to delay enforcement of the ban: enforcement that was to apply January 19, 2025 was pushed to April 5, then June 19, then September 17, and then December 16, 2025, while the White House endorsed a divestiture framework intended to let Americans keep using TikTok. (whitehouse.gov)
• Further extensions and ongoing sale: In September 2025, President Trump approved a divestiture plan and further extended the effective ban date to January 20, 2026, drawing criticism from Senator Ed Markey for repeatedly extending deadlines rather than letting the ban take effect. (reuters.com)
• Status as of late November 2025: TikTok remains available in the United States. ByteDance is in the process of selling roughly 80% of TikTok’s U.S. assets to a consortium led by Oracle and Silver Lake, with ByteDance expected to retain under a 20% stake, but neither a completed divestiture nor a U.S. shutdown has occurred yet. (reuters.com)

Because TikTok has not been shut down in the U.S. under the April 2024 divest‑or‑ban law—and instead continues to operate while working toward a sale—the prediction that TikTok would fail to divest and “just get shut down” is wrong as of November 30, 2025.

As of November 30, 2025, the timeframe implied by 'within the next few years' after the April 24, 2024 TikTok law has not fully elapsed, so it is too early to say definitively whether Sacks’s forecast will play out.

Evidence so far:

• The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (the April 2024 TikTok law) explicitly targets TikTok/ByteDance; it has not been applied to Telegram, and no new federal law or executive action has been adopted that would ban or broadly restrict Telegram in the U.S. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Some U.S. political messaging now explicitly groups Telegram with TikTok as a platform exploited by terrorists. For example, an August 2024 Homeland Security subcommittee press release on a bipartisan bill warns about foreign‑controlled apps like TikTok and encrypted messaging platforms like Telegram being used by terrorist organizations, but it only mandates DHS threat assessments rather than proposing a ban. (homeland.house.gov)
• U.S. and international media have for years reported that Hamas and other extremist groups use Telegram; this continued after April 2024, with investigations describing Hamas‑aligned propaganda channels and possible radicalization of U.S. users. (nypost.com) However, this is not yet a broad, coordinated U.S. media campaign uniquely focused on Telegram.
• Claims that Telegram is effectively compromised or backdoored by Russian intelligence are being pushed mainly by Ukrainian officials (who banned Telegram on official devices over spying concerns) and by investigative outlets such as IStories (amplified in English by smaller sites), not as a central talking point of major U.S. media or top U.S. officials. (tbsnews.net)
• U.S. government action has so far targeted specific extremist networks that use Telegram, such as designating the far‑right Terrorgram collective as a terrorist group, rather than Telegram itself as a platform. (en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, there are some elements of the dynamic Sacks described (messaging about terrorists’ use of Telegram and some discussion of Russian‑linked risks), but there is not yet clear evidence of the kind of sustained, coordinated U.S. media‑plus‑industry campaign to justify a nationwide Telegram ban that he portrayed as a 'foregone' conclusion. Because both the horizon ('next few years') and key causal steps he described are still unfolding, the prediction is best classified as inconclusive at this time.

1. Telegram has not been targeted under the new “foreign‑adversary app” authority.
   The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) was enacted in April 2024 and explicitly targets ByteDance/TikTok and its subsidiaries as “foreign adversary controlled applications,” while creating a process to designate other apps in the future. As of late 2025, public descriptions of the law and its enforcement still identify only TikTok/ByteDance as covered by the statute; there is no record of Telegram being designated or restricted under PAFACA or a similar federal foreign‑app authority. (en.wikipedia.org)

   There have been other actions involving Telegram—e.g., France’s criminal investigation of CEO Pavel Durov, Ukraine and some U.S. states (like Montana) restricting Telegram on government devices—but these are unrelated to PAFACA and do not amount to a U.S. federal ban or material nationwide restriction of Telegram under the new foreign‑controlled‑app framework sacks was discussing. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. The conditional part of the forecast (“if Biden wins a second term…they will set their gunsights on X”) cannot occur, because Biden did not win a second term.
   The 2024 U.S. presidential election was won by Donald Trump, who was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) Since Biden is no longer president and does not hold a 2025–2029 term, the specific scenario sacks described—Biden using this authority in a second term to pressure Elon Musk to divest or curtail X—has been precluded by events.

3. No evidence of U.S. authorities using this authority to pressure Musk to divest X.
   Public reporting through November 30, 2025 shows no instance of the U.S. government invoking PAFACA or a similar “foreign adversary controlled applications” power against X (Twitter) or Elon Musk. Legal and regulatory actions involving Musk in this period—such as the SEC’s securities‑disclosure lawsuit about his 2022 Twitter acquisition—concern securities law and data‑access issues, not foreign‑controlled‑app national‑security powers or forced divestiture of X. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because: (a) Telegram has not been the first major target of the new foreign‑controlled‑app authority, and (b) the Biden‑second‑term condition for the later X‑related enforcement never materialized—and there is no sign of such enforcement against X under that authority—the prediction about the sequence of enforcement is best evaluated as wrong in light of actual developments to date.

• Joe Biden did not win a second term. The 2024 U.S. presidential election was won by Donald Trump, with Trump/Vance defeating the Harris/Walz ticket, so there is no “second Biden term” in which the described conduct by Biden’s attorney general could occur. (en.wikipedia.org)

• The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) was signed by Biden in April 2024 and gives the president and attorney general powers over “foreign‑adversary‑controlled applications,” explicitly targeting TikTok/ByteDance and allowing similar designations for other apps under specified conditions. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Under President Trump, use of these powers has focused on TikTok (including multiple executive orders delaying and shaping enforcement) rather than on X, and there is no public record of X being designated or investigated under PAFACA by federal authorities. (whitehouse.gov)

Because Biden never obtained a second term, the conditional scenario (“if Biden wins a second term, then his administration will open a PAFACA‑style investigation into X to pressure Musk to divest”) never arose. We therefore cannot know from real‑world events whether that hypothetical would have occurred. The prediction is about a counterfactual world rather than the world that actually unfolded, so its correctness cannot be determined from observed outcomes.

The prediction was explicitly conditional: Sacks said that if Democrats held the presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2024, and did so without Manchin and Sinema, one should “price in the strong possibility” that a wealth‑tax‑style measure on unrealized gains would pass.

In reality, the condition did not occur:

• In the 2024 elections, Republicans won the presidency and gained control of both the Senate and the House, producing a Republican rather than Democratic trifecta for the 119th Congress.(en.wikipedia.org)

In the actual 119th Congress under this GOP trifecta:

• Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which largely extends and expands Republican-style tax cuts; it does not create any federal tax on unrealized gains or a wealth tax.(en.wikipedia.org)
• As of October 2025, there is still no federal wealth tax in the United States; wealth-tax or unrealized-gains proposals (such as Biden’s “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” and H.R. 6498) have been introduced but have not been enacted into law.(taxrep.us)

However, Sacks’s statement was not that such a tax would pass in the real world unconditionally; it was that if Democrats held a Biden-led trifecta without Manchin/Sinema, there would be a high likelihood ("strong possibility") of passage. Because that underlying political scenario never materialized, we have no way to observe whether his conditional probability assessment was accurate.

Therefore, the prediction cannot be scored as right or wrong based on actual outcomes and is best classified as ambiguous rather than correct, incorrect, or merely “too early.”

As of November 30, 2025 (about 19 months after the April 26, 2024 episode), there is no U.S. federal law that creates a new, special tax or levy directly on assets held inside 401(k)s, IRAs, or similar private retirement accounts. These accounts remain tax-advantaged under federal law: contributions are generally tax-deferred or deductible, withdrawals are taxed as income, and required minimum distributions continue under long‑standing rules, but there is no new asset-based charge on retirement balances themselves.(en.wikipedia.org)

Recent federal changes since the prediction have mostly expanded or adjusted incentives for retirement saving, not targeted the accounts as a new revenue source. The IRS has increased 401(k) contribution limits for 2025–2026, and retirement-related legislation (including SECURE 2.0’s implementation) emphasizes higher contribution and catch‑up limits and later RMD ages, rather than imposing new wealth-style taxes on retirement accounts.(apnews.com) Major 2025 tax legislation (the so‑called One Big Beautiful Bill Act) focuses on extending or modifying income-tax rates, SALT caps, remittance taxes, and various credits and deductions; public summaries do not show any provision that specifically imposes a new tax on 401(k) or IRA account balances.(en.wikipedia.org)

Although there has been active debate about wealth taxes at both federal and state levels, notable proposals either have not been enacted or explicitly exclude pensions and retirement accounts from their tax base.(nasdaq.com) Because Sacks’s prediction was explicitly about what would happen over the coming decades as federal liabilities grow, and only a short period has passed with no such policy adopted, there is not yet enough elapsed time to conclude that the prediction is either clearly right or clearly wrong. Therefore, the status is inconclusive (too early).

Evidence since April 2024 shows no U.S. federal move comparable to the TikTok divest‑or‑ban law that specifically targets Telegram for a nationwide restriction or ban.

Key points:

• The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, signed April 24, 2024, is written to explicitly and uniquely target TikTok and other ByteDance‑controlled apps, not Telegram. Its designation language and enforcement provisions are tailored to ByteDance and its subsidiaries, with no similar statutory designation of Telegram as a foreign‑adversary app. (en.wikipedia.org)

• As of late 2025, Telegram remains freely available in U.S. app stores and widely used. Overviews of Telegram’s legal status and global censorship list multiple countries that have blocked or restricted Telegram (Iran, Russia historically, China, Vietnam, Nepal, etc.), but do not list the United States as having imposed an operational ban or broad nationwide restriction on the service. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Post‑2024 U.S. legislative and policy activity that mentions Telegram has focused on threat assessments and research, not bans. For example, Homeland Security Subcommittee legislation requires DHS to conduct annual terrorism‑threat assessments of terrorist organizations’ use of “foreign cloud‑based mobile and desktop messaging applications like Telegram,” and related press releases explicitly group Telegram with other platforms (TikTok, etc.) in the context of studying online radicalization. These measures do not restrict user access to Telegram or order app‑store removal. (homeland.house.gov)

• Some state‑level and government‑device policies classify Telegram as a “high‑risk app” and ban it on state networks or devices (e.g., Montana’s 2023 ban on Telegram, WeChat, and Temu on government devices; North Carolina’s SB 83 proposal likewise listing TikTok, WeChat, and Telegram as high‑risk for public networks and devices). Those are limited, pre‑ and post‑2024 device/network rules, not a new, nationwide effort to ban or severely limit Telegram’s operation for the general public after the TikTok law. (itechpost.com)

• After the April 2024 TikTok law, the most aggressive actual restrictions in the U.S. have continued to fall on ByteDance products (TikTok and related apps) and, separately, on some newer Chinese apps like DeepSeek, RedNote/Xiaohongshu, and Lemon8, which have been targeted for bans on government devices in states like Texas. There is no comparable post‑law action singling out Telegram as “next on the hit list.” (en.wikipedia.org)

Together, this shows that while Telegram has drawn political and security scrutiny in U.S. discourse, the prediction that it would be the next major foreign‑owned communication app to face U.S. government efforts to significantly restrict or ban its operation—in a way analogous to TikTok’s divest‑or‑ban regime—has not materialized as of November 30, 2025.

The prediction is explicitly framed as a long‑term, historical judgment (“in the fullness of time… Israel’s Vietnam”), i.e., years to decades after the 2023–24 Gaza war. As of the evaluation date (30 Nov 2025), only about a year and a half has passed since the war began and the podcast aired, and the war itself is still ongoing with major uncertainty over its end state and political consequences. Current writing and polling therefore reflect contemporary opinion, not the eventual “historical consensus” the predictor is talking about.

On the "Israel’s Vietnam" analogy: a number of commentators and activists have used that framing or asked whether Gaza could become “Israel’s Vietnam,” but these are individual opinions and polemics, not any kind of settled consensus among historians or the broader public.(revolucion.org.es) The main encyclopedic treatments of the conflict still describe it in more neutral, descriptive terms and emphasize that it remains ongoing with evolving regional and international repercussions, which by definition means a stable retrospective judgment has not yet formed.(en.wikipedia.org)

On public sympathy for anti‑war protesters (e.g., students, tech workers): available polling during and shortly after the first big protest waves shows a sharply divided public, not an overwhelming or settled sympathy. For example, U.S. polls around the 2024 university Gaza encampments found roughly 28–40% of Americans supporting the protests and 42–47% opposing them; college students were more supportive (around 45% support), but the country as a whole was mixed and polarized.(en.wikipedia.org) That tells us how they’re seen now, not how they’ll be seen “in the fullness of time.”

Because:

• the predictor’s own time horizon is multi‑year to multi‑decade;
• the war and its political aftermath are still in flux; and
• existing data only speaks to short‑term, contested public opinion,

there is not yet enough information to say whether the Gaza war will ultimately be remembered as “Israel’s Vietnam” or whether today’s protesters will be broadly and historically re‑cast as sympathetic figures. The correct assessment at this point is therefore “inconclusive (too early)” rather than right or wrong.

• In mid‑2025, federal support for public broadcasting was effectively eliminated: the Rescissions Act of 2025 rescinded $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the main federal funding conduit for NPR and PBS, and was signed into law on July 24, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) CPB then announced it would wind down and shut its doors because its federal budget had been zeroed out. (arstechnica.com) This satisfies the prediction’s condition that U.S. government funding for NPR be (for all practical purposes) eliminated.

• Despite that loss of federal funding, NPR has continued to operate as a national news organization. Coverage asking whether NPR would “go away” after CPB’s shutdown explicitly concludes that NPR “will still continue to operate,” while warning that the real damage will fall on smaller and rural member stations. (forbes.com) NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher similarly frames the crisis as forcing budget cuts and restructuring, not closure of NPR itself. (washingtonpost.com)

• Post‑cut reporting emphasizes that NPR and PBS are responding by ramping up private funding mechanisms—member donations, pledge drives, and other non‑government support—to compensate for the loss of CPB money. (forbes.com) That is precisely the dynamic the prediction described (subscriptions/donations sustaining the organization rather than it shutting down).

Given that (1) federal public‑media appropriations have been effectively removed and CPB is shutting down, yet (2) NPR has not “gone away” and is instead trying to sustain itself through private revenue and intensified fundraising, the prediction that NPR would continue to operate even if U.S. government funding were eliminated has, so far, proven right.

The prediction explicitly concerns a multi-decade horizon and claims the trend toward tighter human–computer integration (wearables, AR, brain–computer interfaces, etc.) is irreversible and will not reverse "over the long term." As of late 2025, only ~1.5 years have passed since the statement, far too short to determine whether a claimed irreversible, multi-decade trend will never reverse.

Current evidence does show continued growth in several relevant categories—e.g., global smartwatch and wearable shipments have generally risen year‑over‑year, major firms are still investing heavily in AR/VR platforms, and research and early products in brain–computer interfaces are ongoing—but these are still early in their adoption curves and subject to future technological, social, regulatory, or economic shifts that could alter or reverse the long‑term trajectory. Because the claim is about permanence of the trend over decades, and we have not yet observed anything close to that timeframe, it cannot be definitively judged right or wrong at this point.

Parts of the prediction track reality, but the central Apple‑glasses element has not come true and now effectively cannot.

What came true:

• Humane’s AI Pin was marketed as a phone-replacement wearable and launched in April 2024, but it was panned for poor performance, short battery life, and usability problems, and never came close to replacing smartphones in practice.(cnbc.com) By early 2025, Humane sold most of its assets to HP, halted sales of the Pin, and announced that cloud features (calling, messaging, AI queries) would shut off on February 28, 2025, effectively killing the product.(theverge.com) So its “prospects as a standalone replacement for the phone” were indeed very limited.
• During the Pin’s short life, multiple other computer‑vision wearables emerged or scaled up. Meta’s Ray‑Ban smart glasses line (with cameras and Meta AI) launched in 2023 and, by 2025, had sold over 2 million units and expanded into multiple models, with further display-equipped “Ray‑Ban Display” and Oakley Meta glasses announced and shipping in 2025.(fr.wikipedia.org) Other AI smart glasses (e.g., from Alibaba) also entered the market.(theverge.com) That matches the idea that pendant-style devices would face competition from many vision‑based wearables “sucking in” real‑world visual information.

What did not come true:

• As of November 30, 2025, Apple has not released consumer smart glasses. Its only shipping head‑worn device is the Apple Vision Pro mixed‑reality headset (launched February 2024), which is bulky and positioned as a spatial computer, not everyday glasses.(apple.com) Apple’s true AR/smart‑glasses projects (“Apple Glasses” / N107, etc.) have been repeatedly postponed or cancelled, with reports that development was put on hold due to technical challenges and that any smart‑glasses launch is pushed to around 2027 at the earliest.(macrumors.com)
• Humane’s AI Pin, meanwhile, is being shut down in early 2025, well before any Apple smart glasses are expected to reach market.(theverge.com) That means the Pin never actually competed with Apple’s glasses in the marketplace and, given its discontinuation, never will.

Because:

• The prediction correctly foresaw that other computer‑vision wearables would emerge and that this category (along with the Pin’s flaws) would undercut the Pin’s chances as a phone replacement, but
• It specifically framed this in terms of direct competition with “Apple glasses,” which did not materialize within the Pin’s lifespan and are still not on the market,

…the overall outcome is mixed. Important elements are accurate, but the Apple‑glasses centerpiece is not, so the fairest evaluation is ambiguous, rather than cleanly right or wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, no brain–computer interface (BCI) or ocular-neural system exists that can record and later upload a person’s full, first-person, memory-like visual record of their experiences as a persistent, searchable life log.

Current state of the field:

• Elon Musk’s Neuralink and similar invasive BCIs are in very early human trials aimed at restoring function (e.g., helping paralyzed patients control cursors or prosthetics), not recording or replaying naturalistic memories or continuous first-person video of life experiences.
• Research BCIs can decode limited aspects of visual perception or imagined speech in constrained lab settings, typically using fMRI or implanted electrodes, and only over short time windows with heavy preprocessing. They do not approximate a full-life DVR of experiences or conversations.

The predictor explicitly framed this as “pretty far off” and effectively multi-decade. Since only ~1.5 years have elapsed since the prediction (April 2024 → November 2025) and the claimed long-term horizon has clearly not arrived, there is not yet a fair test of whether such a mature, memory-upload BCI will exist.

Therefore, the correct status today is “inconclusive (too early)”: the prediction has definitely not come true yet, but the timeframe the predictor implied has not expired, so it cannot be judged definitively right or wrong.

Evidence from Federal Reserve meeting records shows that the federal funds target range stayed at 5.25%–5.50% at every FOMC meeting from January through June 2024, with no interest rate cuts implemented before July 2024. The January 31 and March 20, 2024 meetings both left the benchmark rate unchanged at 5.25%–5.50%. (pcbb.com)

The April/May 1, 2024 and June 12, 2024 FOMC meetings likewise held the rate steady at 5.25%–5.50%, explicitly choosing not to cut despite earlier market expectations for reductions. (federalreserve.gov) A consolidated calendar of FOMC decisions confirms that from January 31 through June 12, 2024, every meeting result was “Held Steady” at 5.25%–5.50%. (proinvestnews.com)

At the July 31, 2024 meeting, the Fed again maintained the federal funds rate in the same 5.25%–5.50% range, meaning there was still no cut as of that date. (federalreserve.gov) Subsequent commentary around the June decision noted that most forecasters were ruling out a July cut and looking instead to later in 2024, which is consistent with the idea that any eventual cut would come in July or later, not earlier in the year. (cbsnews.com)

Since (1) there were no interest rate cuts before July 2024, and (2) when cuts were discussed, they were framed as happening in July or later rather than earlier in 2024, Sacks’s prediction that the Fed would not implement cuts before July and would delay them until July 2024 or later is borne out by the actual policy path.

• Condition of the prediction was not met. Sacks’ prediction was explicitly conditional: “if we see a rate hike before the election, I think Biden is toast.” In reality, the Federal Reserve did not raise the federal funds rate at any meeting between the podcast date (April 12, 2024) and the November 5, 2024 election. The Fed held the target range at 5.25%–5.50% through mid‑2024 and then cut rates to 4.75%–5.00% on September 18, 2024, rather than hiking.(federalreserve.gov) Because the rate‑hike condition never occurred, the prediction concerns a counterfactual scenario.

• Election outcome: In the actual 2024 U.S. presidential election on November 5, 2024, Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee (and sitting vice president) Kamala Harris; the presidency shifted from Democrat Joe Biden’s administration to Trump, a Republican.(en.wikipedia.org) So Biden and his party did lose control of the White House—but this happened without the antecedent (a pre‑election Fed rate hike) ever taking place.

• Why this is labeled ambiguous rather than right or wrong: The forecast was about what would happen if the Fed hiked before the election. Since that condition never materialized, we have no empirical way to test whether a rate hike would, in fact, have doomed Biden’s reelection prospects. Treating the statement as true or false would require interpreting it as an unconditional claim about the election, which is not what was actually said. Therefore, even though the Democrats ultimately lost the presidency, the specific conditional prediction can’t be definitively judged as correct or incorrect and is best classified as ambiguous.

As of December 1, 2025, the key end‑states in Sacks’s prediction have not happened yet, but the process he described is clearly underway.

What has happened:

• Multiple major lawsuits over AI training on copyrighted content have been filed against AI companies (e.g., Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence; Bartz v. Anthropic; Kadrey v. Meta; New York Times v. OpenAI). (reuters.com)
• U.S. district courts have issued conflicting decisions on fair use in the AI‑training context:
  • In Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence (D. Del.), the court held that using Westlaw headnotes to develop an AI legal‑research tool was not fair use and granted summary judgment for Thomson Reuters. (reuters.com)
  • In Bartz v. Anthropic (N.D. Cal.) and Kadrey v. Meta (N.D. Cal.), judges held that using lawfully obtained books to train large language models is highly transformative and can qualify as fair use on the records before them, even while distinguishing or condemning uses of pirated copies. (theguardian.com)
    These are exactly the kind of “messy” fair‑use fights Sacks foresaw, but they are still at the trial‑court level.
• Appeals are pending (for example, Thomson Reuters v. Ross is now before the Third Circuit as case 25‑2153, and Bartz v. Anthropic has spawned a Rule 23(f) petition and Ninth Circuit amicus briefs), but no U.S. court of appeals has yet issued a definitive generative‑AI‑training fair‑use ruling that creates a clear circuit split. (mishcon.com)

What has not happened yet (and is central to the prediction):

• No U.S. Supreme Court decision has resolved whether training generative‑AI models on copyrighted works is fair use. Current Supreme Court copyright jurisprudence (e.g., Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith in 2023) addresses transformative use generally, not AI training, and recent coverage of the Anthropic ruling explicitly notes that legal experts still expect the Supreme Court may eventually have to address AI training. (en.wikipedia.org)
• No AI‑training‑specific federal copyright statute has been enacted. Bills such as the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act and the bipartisan TRAIN Act have been introduced and referred to committee, but as of late 2025 they have not passed Congress. Other enacted laws (like the TAKE IT DOWN Act and proposed NO FAKES Act) focus on deepfakes and likeness rights, not on whether AI training itself is fair use. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because Sacks’s full sequence—circuit‑level split → Supreme Court fair‑use ruling on AI training → follow‑on act of Congress—has not yet occurred, but the timeline (“in the coming years”) still allows for it and the litigation/legislative machinery is clearly in motion, the prediction cannot yet be judged right or wrong. It is therefore too early to call, i.e., inconclusive rather than clearly correct or clearly false.

Sacks’ claim was conditional and medium‑ to long‑term: if cheap drones/missiles kept being used against U.S./allied ships while the U.S. remained stuck using very expensive interceptors and lacked a cheaper counter, then over the coming years the cost asymmetry would “really change the balance of power.”

What has happened so far (through late 2025):

• Houthi and other Iran‑backed forces have continued using relatively cheap drones and missiles to harass commercial shipping and U.S./allied naval assets in the Red Sea, forcing sustained air and missile defense operations by U.S. carrier strike groups and destroyers. Naval News’ detailed account of early Red Sea operations describes U.S. destroyers and carrier air wings expending large numbers of missiles and other munitions to defend against Houthi drones and anti‑ship ballistic missiles, validating the basic cost‑exchange problem Sacks described. (navalnews.com)
• Senior U.S. Navy leadership has publicly warned that the current heavy reliance on high‑end interceptors like SM‑3 and SM‑6 against such low‑cost threats is financially and logistically unsustainable in more intense or prolonged fights, again underscoring the cost asymmetry Sacks worried about. (businessinsider.com)
• Analysts estimate that defending against Houthi attacks has cost the U.S. several billion dollars, while the economic damage from the attacks themselves and the cost of the Houthis’ own munitions remain far lower, explicitly noting that "the cost‑exchange ratio of the campaign favors the Houthis" even though the conventional military balance still overwhelmingly favors the United States. (realclearworld.com)

However, the stronger claim that this cost asymmetry has already “really change[d] the balance of power” in favor of actors like the Houthis is not borne out:

• Expert assessments continue to emphasize that despite the favorable cost‑exchange ratio for the Houthis, the conventional military balance and broader regional balance of power still strongly favor the U.S. and its allies. The Houthis have become a serious asymmetric nuisance that can impose costs and disrupt shipping, but not a peer force capable of overturning U.S. naval dominance. (realclearworld.com)
• At the same time, the condition that “we don’t have a good response” is beginning to erode. The U.S. Navy has fielded and tested directed‑energy systems such as the HELIOS laser on USS Preble as a low‑cost counter to drones and potentially some missiles; only one destroyer is currently equipped, but it shows movement toward exactly the kind of cheaper defensive layer Sacks said was missing. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Other states are also investing heavily in similar low‑cost air and drone defenses (e.g., the U.K.’s DragonFire naval laser contract, Israel’s Iron Beam, and U.S. high‑power microwave systems like Epirus Leonidas), indicating a broader push to close the cost gap rather than passively accepting a permanent asymmetric advantage for cheap‑drone users. (reuters.com)

Netting this out: Sacks’ intermediate observation—that the Houthis are exploiting a dangerous cost asymmetry and that the U.S. has been using very expensive interceptors against cheap threats—has been validated. But his full prediction was about a substantial, longer‑term shift in the overall balance of power “over the coming years” if nothing changed. As of December 2025, the U.S. and allies still retain clear military superiority, and significant efforts are underway to develop cheaper counters. The time horizon he invoked has not fully elapsed, and the drastic balance‑of‑power shift he warned about has not clearly occurred.

Given that, the fairest assessment today is that the prediction’s ultimate outcome is still unresolved, so it is inconclusive (too early) rather than clearly right or wrong.

The prediction’s timeframe is “over the next decade” from the podcast date (April 12, 2024), i.e., roughly through 2034. As of now (December 1, 2025), only about 1.5 years have elapsed.

There is evidence that:

• Small attack and reconnaissance drones are proliferating and being used extensively in conflicts like Ukraine–Russia and in the Middle East, including loitering munitions and FPV drones.
• A variety of automated and semi‑automated counter‑UAS systems using sensors and computer vision exist, including gun‑based and turret‑like solutions (e.g., C-UAS remote weapon stations, vehicle‑mounted systems, and fixed-site defenses), and some are being trialed or fielded at bases and on vehicles.

However, the specific claim is that automated gun‑turret systems using computer vision to detect and shoot down drones—like the Bullfrog concept—will become a common and practical method deployed on vehicles and around installations. Whether such systems become widely common and standardized across militaries, critical infrastructure, and VIP protection by 2034 cannot yet be assessed in 2025.

Because:

• The end of the stated time horizon (2034) has not been reached.
• Current adoption levels and doctrine are still evolving rapidly, and it is too early to say whether these systems will end up as a niche, transitional, or truly ubiquitous solution.

the correct assessment at this time is that the prediction’s truth value is too early to call, hence inconclusive rather than right or wrong.

The prediction window is from early April 2024 to early April 2029. As of 30 November 2025, we are only ~1.5 years into that 5‑year period, so it is too early to know if general‑purpose humanoid domestic robots will fail to become widely available by April 2029.

Current market status:

• 1X’s NEO “Home Robot” opened pre‑orders in October 2025, with deliveries planned for 2026. It targets private homes but is expensive (~$20,000 for early adopters) and initially relies heavily on teleoperation by remote humans, with the company explicitly positioning these early units as data‑gathering and training platforms rather than fully autonomous, general‑purpose home servants. This is not yet a mass‑market, widely adopted consumer product. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Tesla Optimus is in limited internal use and targeted first at factory tasks. Musk and coverage describe limited production in 2025, with availability to other businesses in 2026 and an eventual consumer version still several years away, with timelines often framed as 3–5+ years out from 2024–2025. As of late 2025, no consumer Optimus is on sale. (benzinga.com)
• Agility Robotics’ Digit and similar humanoids (e.g., from Agility, Apptronik) are being deployed commercially in logistics, warehousing, and manufacturing, not as general‑purpose home robots. (agilityrobotics.com)
• Industry coverage of leading humanoid‑robot firms (Tesla, Figure, 1X, Agility, Boston Dynamics, Apptronik) consistently emphasizes near‑term industrial and logistics use, with home use framed as a future step. (businessinsider.com)
• Existing and upcoming domestic robots like Samsung’s Ballie and ASUS Zenbo are either non‑humanoid companion/smart‑home devices or relatively limited in capability, not the kind of general‑purpose humanoid doing a broad range of household tasks autonomously. (en.wikipedia.org)

So far, reality does not contradict Sacks’ claim: there are still no widely available, general‑purpose humanoid domestic robots in typical homes as of late 2025. However, because the key part of the prediction is that such robots will not be widely available by April 2029, and we have not yet reached that date, the correctness of the prediction cannot be definitively judged. It remains plausible but unproven, hence the result is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than clearly right or wrong.

As of late 2025, the current pattern of AI‑enabled robot deployment is strongly consistent with Sacks’ prediction, but his stated horizon (“in the near term” / “over the next several years, into the late 2020s”) has not finished yet, so it’s too early to declare it definitively right or wrong.

What we see so far (2023–2025):

• Industrial robots massively dominate robot deployment: the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) reports a record 4.28 million robots operating on factory floors worldwide in 2023, with more than 540,000 new industrial units installed annually in 2023–2024.(linkedin.com) This is orders of magnitude larger than any other robot category.
• Professional service robots are growing, but they’re also mostly industrial or commercial, not domestic: in 2023 over 205,000 professional service robots were sold, and more than half were for transportation and logistics (warehouse/industrial handling), with other big segments in hospitality, cleaning, agriculture, and security.(ifr.org) These are deployed in workplaces, malls, hospitals, airports, etc., not as general‑purpose home helpers.
• Humanoid and “advanced” robots in 2024–2025 are primarily piloted in factories and logistics. An IDTechEx market study notes that, as of 2025, humanoid robots in the automotive sector are still in early pilot tests, doing basic material‑handling and inspection, and that general‑purpose humanoids in non‑industrial areas (like healthcare) are even further away; warehouse pilots number fewer than 100 humanoid units.(idtechex.com) A Wired piece similarly frames 2025 as the year of the humanoid robot factory worker, with Boston Dynamics’ Atlas going into a Hyundai plant.(wired.com) A deployment survey of humanoids shows they are working mainly in logistics, security, elder care, retail, and R&D pilots—again, institutional rather than home use.(mechonomics.co)
• Military use of robots and drones is substantial and growing: Ukraine is creating dedicated units of robotic ground vehicles; Russia has formed a large drone‑warfare unit (“Rubicon”); and the US and allies are developing collaborative combat drones like the XQ‑58 Valkyrie and long‑endurance UAVs such as ULTRA.(reuters.com) This supports the prediction’s mention of military applications.
• By contrast, general‑purpose robots in private homes are still rare and experimental. A notable example, 1X’s NEO “home robot,” only opened pre‑orders in October 2025, targets early adopters at about $20,000 (or $499/month), and currently relies heavily on remote human teleoperation rather than full autonomy—indicating an early, niche market rather than broad deployment.(en.wikipedia.org) Analysts also project that truly general‑purpose humanoid robots for non‑industrial domains will not begin to scale until later in the decade.(idtechex.com)

Why the verdict is “inconclusive”:

• Sacks’ directional claim—that in the near term most practical deployment of advanced AI robots would be industrial or military rather than as general‑purpose home robots—matches the evidence up to November 2025.
• However, the normalized prediction explicitly extends “through at least the late 2020s.” We have not yet reached that point, and rapid breakthroughs or unexpected consumer adoption (e.g., affordable, capable home humanoids post‑2026) could still change the balance.

So, while the world in 2024–2025 looks very much like what he described, the multi‑year horizon is still unfolding, making the overall prediction inconclusive (too early to fully score).

Antony Blinken’s April 4, 2024 remarks in Brussels clearly stated that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO” and that the goal of the Washington summit was to “help build a bridge to that membership and to create a clear pathway for Ukraine moving forward.”(en.interfax.com.ua) In the immediate aftermath (the next several days of coverage), U.S. and NATO messaging simply repeated this line about building a “bridge” to eventual membership, with no official correction or dilution from the administration.(euromaidanpress.com)

However, in a Time magazine interview conducted in late May and published on June 4, 2024, President Biden said that peace in Ukraine “doesn’t mean [they are] part of NATO” and added: “I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine,” explicitly presenting a vision of Ukraine’s future security that does not require NATO membership.(time.com) Ukrainian and European outlets highlighted this as Biden reiterating he had not been a supporter of Ukraine joining NATO.(pravda.com.ua) The Washington Post described the comment as “appearing to rule out the country’s membership altogether and contradicting the U.S. government’s official stance,” i.e., contradicting the earlier “Ukraine will become a member of NATO” formulation.(washingtonpost.com) A Kyiv Post analysis likewise treated Biden’s remark as directly at odds with Blinken’s April assurance.(kyivpost.com)

Because the head of the same administration later articulated a position that cast serious doubt on, and was widely read as contradicting, Blinken’s categorical “Ukraine will become a member of NATO” line, this does amount to a significant softening/partial walk-back of that commitment in subsequent public communications. Under the normalized prediction (“the Biden administration will not significantly walk back or formally clarify this position in a way that meaningfully softens or reverses the commitment”), that outcome makes Sacks’s prediction wrong.

Evidence from 2024 shows that the DNC and Democratic-aligned groups did, in fact, mount a coordinated legal campaign to limit RFK Jr.–Nicole Shanahan ballot access, including in key battleground states.

The DNC created a dedicated third‑party team and worked with Democratic strategists’ super PAC Clear Choice Action, which was explicitly founded to minimize third‑party impact and, together with the DNC, filed legal challenges to Kennedy’s ballot petitions in multiple states.(en.wikipedia.org)

By late June 2024, CBS reported that Kennedy was already facing ballot‑access lawsuits in five states—Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Delaware, and New Jersey—brought by Democratic state parties, DNC‑aligned PACs, and Democratic election lawyers, and noted that the DNC pledged to continue challenging his ballot access.(cbsnews.com) Nevada and North Carolina are widely treated as presidential battlegrounds; in Nevada, the state Democratic Party helped coordinate a lawsuit to keep him off the ballot, and in North Carolina, Clear Choice challenged his We The People party petition as unlawful.(cbsnews.com)

Separately, Democratic actors pursued ballot challenges in other swing states. In Georgia, “Democratic lawsuits” led the chief state administrative law judge to kick Kennedy and other independents off the ballot before the secretary of state later restored some candidates and deemed Kennedy’s case moot after his withdrawal, with Democrats considering an appeal.(en.wikipedia.org) In Pennsylvania, a closely watched swing state, voters represented by election lawyer Tim Ford filed a petition in Commonwealth Court seeking to keep Kennedy and Shanahan off the ballot, arguing signature and residency defects in their nomination papers.(wtae.com)

DNC‑backed plaintiffs also succeeded in New York, where two voters backed by the DNC and the Democratic‑affiliated Clear Choice Action challenged Kennedy’s petition on residency and signature grounds; state courts removed him from the ballot, and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately let that exclusion stand.(en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, these actions show a sustained, multi‑state legal strategy by the DNC, state Democratic parties, and Democratic election lawyers—including in major battlegrounds like Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania—to keep the RFK Jr.–Shanahan ticket off ballots or make access harder. Even if one quibbles over whether the final tally of such efforts in “5–6” specific swing states was exact, the substantive core of Sacks’s prediction—that Democratic/Biden‑aligned lawyers would mount an aggressive legal ‘full court press’ in key decisive states to block the Kennedy–Shanahan ticket from the ballot—was borne out by events.

Sacks made two linked claims: (1) federal interest expense, already around/above $1T per year, would keep rising as debt rolled into higher rates; and (2) entitlement spending driven by demographics would keep growing.

1. Interest expense has in fact kept rising and crossed $1T.

• Net interest outlays were about $658–659 billion in FY 2023. (ceicdata.com)
• CBO’s Monthly Budget Review for September 2024 reports that net interest on the public debt increased by about $240 billion in FY 2024, reaching roughly $950 billion—very close to the “over a trillion” figure he cited conversationally and a massive jump from 2023. (einpresswire.com)
• The next year, FY 2025, CBO estimates that net interest on the public debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, confirming that the interest burden continued to grow after 2024. (edwardconard.com)
• CBO’s 2025 and long‑term outlooks project net interest payments continuing to climb over the coming decade (roughly doubling again by the mid‑2030s), consistent with his “keep growing” / “foreseeable future” language. (crfb.org)

His exact statement that interest was already “over a trillion” in 2024 is a bit ahead of the finalized net‑interest data (~$950B), but by 2025 the run‑rate and official estimates do cross $1T, and the directional prediction (ongoing growth as higher‑rate debt rolls over) is borne out.

2. Demographically driven entitlement spending is also rising.

• Treasury’s own analysis of FY 2024 notes that the increase in total outlays was partly due to higher spending on Social Security and Medicare attributable to demographic aging. (fraser.stlouisfed.org)
• Estimated Social Security expenditures rose to about $1.5T in FY 2024 and are projected around $1.6T in FY 2025, reflecting more beneficiaries and COLAs—clear year‑over‑year growth. (x.com)
• Reuters and CBO reporting on FY 2025 confirm that spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid continued to increase in 2025. (reuters.com)
• CBO, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees, and multiple fiscal analyses all attribute the long‑run rise in these programs to population aging and health‑care cost growth, with Social Security and federal health programs projected to keep rising as a share of GDP over the coming decades. (crfb.org)

Given (a) the realized increases in net interest from 2023→2024→2025, culminating in >$1T by 2025, and (b) the continued and demographically driven growth in major entitlements over the same period (with projections showing further increases ahead), Sacks’s macro‑level prediction is substantially correct. Minor numerical imprecision on the exact timing of “over a trillion” in 2024 doesn’t change that the core forecast—that both interest expense and entitlement spending would keep rising from 2024 onward—has been validated by subsequent data and official projections as of late 2025.

As of November 30, 2025, the DOJ’s Sherman Act case against Apple (United States et al. v. Apple Inc., No. 2:24‑cv‑04055) is still in early-to-mid litigation with no final judgment, settlement, or remedies order. The court denied Apple’s motion to dismiss on June 30, 2025, allowing all major claims to proceed, but that is only a procedural win for the government, not a final merits victory or remedial order. (macrumors.com) Analyses at the time of filing expected a resolution timeline of roughly 3–5 years including appeals, which fits with the current posture where discovery and later trial/appeal phases still lie ahead. (techcrunch.com) Because the ultimate outcome (whether DOJ secures a clear court win forcing major structural/behavioral changes on Apple) has not yet been decided, Sacks’s prediction cannot currently be judged and remains too early to call.

The prediction is a conditional one: if U.S. home buyers are actually made to pay their own buyer’s-agent commissions out of pocket (rather than those fees being embedded on the seller’s side), then the total commission pool would fall by ~50%.

As of late 2025, that conditional world doesn’t really exist yet:

• After the March 2024 NAR settlement and the August 2024 rule changes, buyers must sign written agreements specifying how their agent will be paid, but the commission can still be funded by either the buyer or the seller (or via seller concessions). In practice, the traditional pattern of sellers covering much or all of the buyer’s agent commission remains common.(washingtonpost.com)
• Reports note that many agents and sellers effectively preserve the old structure by arranging off‑MLS commission splits or seller concessions, despite formal language that buyers are “responsible” for their agent’s pay.(investopedia.com) Direct, out‑of‑pocket payment by buyers is still relatively rare and uneven across markets.(washingtonpost.com)

Because the premise (“buyers are forced to pay their own broker’s commission” in a clear, universal, out‑of‑pocket way) has not been fully met, we can’t say whether the consequent (a ~50% drop in the total commission pool) is right or wrong.

What we can observe is that, under the current mixed/transition regime, total commissions have certainly not fallen by anything close to 50%:

• A 2025 survey by Clever Real Estate finds the average combined commission rose from about 5.32% to 5.44%, roughly back to 2023 levels, not half of them.(etxview.com)
• Redfin’s national data show buyer‑agent commissions around 2.4–2.55% before and after the settlement, with only small moves in either direction, and aggregate commission levels roughly unchanged through Q1–Q2 2025.(redfin.com)

However, since the prediction explicitly hinges on a stronger, cleaner version of buyer‑paid commissions than what we actually have now, the fair assessment is that it hasn’t really been tested yet, rather than proven correct or incorrect. Hence: inconclusive rather than wrong.

The condition in Sacks’s prediction (“rates stay higher for longer instead of the big 2024–25 cuts people expected”) broadly came true, and so did the consequence (significant CRE distress spilling into regional banks).

• Fed kept rates elevated vs. early‑2024 expectations. In early 2024, markets were pricing multiple cuts; consensus shifted from ~six cuts to “maybe three,” a shift widely described as a higher‑for‑longer path that would squeeze smaller banks and CRE borrowers. (cnbc.com) In reality, the Fed held the policy rate at 5.25–5.50% through mid‑2024 and its June 2024 projections reduced planned cuts to just one that year, with the funds rate still projected at ~4.1% in 2025. (gold-eagle.com) By early 2025 the target rate was still 4.25–4.50%, well above the Fed’s estimated long‑run level (~3%), and only in late 2025 had it been nudged down to around 4–4.25%. (reuters.com) That is a prolonged period of elevated policy rates relative to what markets and the Fed’s own March 2024 dots had anticipated.

• Commercial real estate experienced clear, quantifiable distress. U.S. commercial mortgage delinquencies jumped from 2.94% in January 2023 to 4.66% in January 2024, largely driven by office properties; office delinquencies more than tripled year‑over‑year to 6.3% and coincided with record office vacancy rates. (investopedia.com) Through 2024 and into 2025, CMBS data show a sustained and worsening stress regime: by December 2024 overall CMBS delinquency had risen to 6.57%, with office delinquency above 11%, the highest since Trepp began tracking in 2000. (commercialsearch.com) In 2025, distress intensified further: CRED iQ reported an overall CMBS distress rate of 11.5% in January 2025, with office distress at ~17.7%, (commercialobserver.com) and Trepp’s office CMBS delinquency rate later hit ~11.7%, surpassing even the worst of the Global Financial Crisis. (wolfstreet.com) These are historically high stress levels by any reasonable standard.

• That CRE stress did, in fact, extend into the regional banking system. Regulators closed Republic First Bank, a Philadelphia‑based regional lender with about $6 billion in assets, on April 26, 2024. The FDIC and AP described it as the first U.S. bank failure of 2024 and explicitly tied it to the ongoing strain on regional banks from rising interest rates and declining commercial real‑estate values, especially offices with high vacancies. (apnews.com) New York Community Bancorp, another regional bank with large CRE exposure, reported a $327 million Q1 2024 loss driven by sharply increased provisions for credit losses on its commercial real‑estate book, leading Fitch to downgrade it and cite elevated CRE‑related loan‑loss expectations. (reuters.com) NYCB subsequently required over $1 billion in new capital and embarked on major layoffs and asset sales to stabilize after CRE‑linked losses and integration pressures, a restructuring widely reported as a response to CRE stress. (apnews.com) Sector‑wide, PIMCO and others warned that high rates plus depressed CRE values were likely to cause more regional bank failures, specifically because regionals had concentrated CRE loan books. (moneycontrol.com) FDIC data through Q3 2025 show elevated past‑due rates in non‑owner‑occupied CRE loans relative to pre‑COVID norms and dozens of “problem banks,” even as headline industry profits recovered. (reuters.com) Alongside a few additional small bank failures in 2025 and a wave of regional‑bank M&A (for example, Fifth Third’s agreed acquisition of Comerica to bolster scale and stability after the 2023 crisis), this indicates ongoing, non‑trivial regional‑bank stress linked to asset‑quality and funding pressures. (reuters.com)

Taken together: (1) the Fed did keep policy rates elevated longer than early‑2024 expectations, and (2) commercial real estate has suffered historically high delinquency and distress rates that (3) have already produced at least one notable regional‑bank failure tied in part to CRE, plus heavy losses, capital raises, and consolidation pressure at other regionals. That matches Sacks’s qualitative claim that “if rates stay higher, longer” there would be “real distress” in CRE, “including in the regional banking system.” Hence the prediction is best scored as right rather than inconclusive or wrong, even though the damage has so far been significant but not fully systemic.

As of November 30, 2025, TikTok has not been shut down in the United States; its roughly 100 million U.S. users still have access to the app and use it at scale.

Key points:

• In April 2024, the U.S. enacted a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a potential ban after a set deadline, but this was a conditional future ban, not an immediate shutdown.
• Since then, TikTok has continued to operate in the U.S. while the law is challenged and implementation details are worked out. There has been no nationwide shutdown of user access comparable to what the prediction describes ("100 million people who used it every day" suddenly asking why it was shut down).
• Because the prediction was that TikTok would be shut down in the near future such that those users would lose access and question why it happened, and that outcome has not materialized by late 2025, the prediction is best classified as wrong, not merely inconclusive/too early.

If the user-visible condition (“TikTok is shut down in the U.S., and ~100M people lose access”) has not occurred by now, the prediction has failed in practice, even though there has been serious regulatory and legislative pressure around TikTok.

Evidence since mid‑2024 shows a clear wave of AI adoption specifically in phone-based customer support, matching Sacks’ prediction about where AI in support would “go next.”

• Numerous vendors now market AI phone agents / voicebots explicitly as IVR and call‑center replacements, offering natural, multi‑turn conversations over the phone (e.g., Air AI, Insighto.ai, Five9 IVA, Talkdesk AI, Callin.io, Phonecall.bot). These platforms emphasize handling inbound and outbound calls, appointment scheduling, order support, and triage—functions traditionally done by IVR trees and human call‑center agents. (siit.co)
• Industry and vendor blogs in 2024–2025 describe AI voice agents as a major new wave in contact centers: replacing rigid IVR menus with conversational agents and positioning AI receptionists/phone agents as a replacement for traditional call centers, especially for SMBs. Articles talk about AI voice receptionists “replacing traditional call centers” and AI phone calls becoming the “new normal” in 2025, with SMBs and enterprises deploying these agents at scale. (blog.peakflo.co)
• Contact‑center commentary notes that voice remains over half of all customer interactions, and AI is increasingly applied specifically to voice to make calls feel like natural conversations instead of menu trees—exactly the IVR‑to‑AI transition Sacks described. (techradar.com)
• On realism and whether callers realize they’re speaking to AI: AI‑phone vendors highlight hyper‑realistic, human‑sounding voices as a key feature, and at least one high‑profile case (Phonely’s AI agents, deployed in real contact‑center environments and used to replace hundreds of human agents) reports accuracy above 99% and explicitly claims that customers “can’t tell they’re not human.” (venturebeat.com)
• Research and product releases focused on low‑latency LLM‑based voice agents for telecom and call centers further confirm that significant R&D and deployment are now aimed squarely at real‑time phone support, not just text chat. (arxiv.org)

Adoption is not universal and many centers still use humans or hybrid human+AI. But by late 2025, there is a clear, industry‑recognized wave of AI phone agents replacing or front‑lining IVR/call‑center interactions, and several deployments show voices realistic enough that many callers do not realize they are speaking to AI. Directionally and qualitatively, Sacks’ prediction has come true.

This prediction is explicitly about Nvidia’s market share in AI GPUs five years after February 2024—i.e., around 2029. The current date is 2025-11-30, so we are only partway through the forecast horizon. There is no data yet on what Nvidia’s AI GPU market share will be in 2029, and current dominance or trends in 2024–2025 cannot definitively confirm or falsify a statement about 2029. Therefore, it is too early to judge whether this prediction is right or wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, we are less than two years into the 10‑year window (2024–2034) specified by the prediction, so it is not yet possible to determine whether the duration claim (“at least a decade”) is correct.

Empirically, the AI‑driven infrastructure and application boom is still very much underway:

• Global data center GPU and AI infrastructure spending is growing rapidly and is forecast to keep expanding through at least 2030, driven by AI/ML workloads, cloud services, and GPUs/accelerators. (globenewswire.com)
• Major cloud service providers (AWS, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Oracle, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu) are dramatically increasing CapEx, with projections of $420B+ in 2025 and $520B in 2026, largely to fund GPU servers and AI data centers. (iconnect007.com)
• Data center investments overall surged to about $455B in 2024 and are expected to continue rising, with hyperscalers’ CapEx heavily driven by AI infrastructure. (ciodive.com)
• Server and AI accelerator forecasts show strong growth at least into 2026, with high‑end GPU server volumes and ASIC accelerators both expanding to serve AI applications. (investing.com)

These data points support the near‑term part of the thesis that an AI‑driven GPU/cloud data center wave is underway and still expanding. However, the prediction is about this wave continuing through at least 2034. Long‑range market forecasts out to ~2030 are positive but inherently uncertain and do not conclusively validate a full decade‑long boom.

Because the end date (2034) is still almost nine years away and no clear evidence yet contradicts or confirms sustained growth over that whole period, the correct evaluation at this time is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Available evidence suggests Google did not remove Gemini’s underlying ideological lean but instead adjusted how it surfaces, aligning with Sacks’s prediction.

• In Google’s own post‑mortem on the February 2024 image‑generation fiasco, leadership said the feature had “missed the mark” because tuning for diversity and caution overcorrected, and promised to improve it while explicitly reaffirming goals of broad representation and safety rather than abandoning those goals.(blog.google)
• When Google re‑enabled people image generation with Imagen 3 in August 2024, it emphasized new mitigations to make outputs more “fair,” training on captions to improve the variety and diversity of concepts and filtering data for “safety” and “fairness,” indicating continued value alignment rather than a neutrality reset.(techcrunch.com)
• Independent 2025 research measuring political orientation across languages finds Gemini still exhibits a clear liberal/left‑wing tendency, often stronger than ChatGPT’s, meaning the system remains ideologically non‑neutral well after the backlash.(arxiv.org)
• A separate 2025 case study on Gemini 2.0 Flash reports ongoing systematic moderation and gender/content biases (some reduced, some shifted), consistent with retuning guardrails rather than eliminating value‑laden behavior.(arxiv.org)
• External testing and user reports describe Gemini as one of the most heavily censored models—frequently refusing politically sensitive prompts and showing asymmetric treatment of different political targets—indicating that overtly skewed outputs were largely replaced by stricter, selectively applied refusals and subtler bias rather than a genuine removal of ideology.(twitter.com)

Because Gemini’s observable behavior after the controversy still reflects a consistent ideological tilt, but with more careful tuning and heavier use of safety filters instead of obviously skewed generations, Sacks’s forecast—that Google would “dial down” rather than remove the bias—is best characterized as right.

Evidence cuts both ways and doesn’t let us decisively say whether Google merely hid the prior ideological tilt or substantially changed it.

On the “prediction seems right” side:

• In Google’s first public response after the Gemini image backlash (Feb 22–23, 2024), leadership said the people‑image feature had been over‑calibrated toward diversity and historical “inaccuracies,” and they paused people‑generation while working on an “improved version.” They explicitly framed the problem as tuning and calibration, not as abandoning the underlying goal of diverse representation.(blog.google)
• Statements from Gemini product leads stressed that image generation was designed to “reflect our global user base” and that they would continue to do this for general prompts, while just “further tun[ing]” historical contexts. That is very close to what Sacks described: keeping the same normative objective but making the obviously biased behaviors less blatant.(cnbc.com)
• Early external criticism from former Googlers portrayed Gemini’s controversial outputs as a straightforward reflection of an internally “woke” culture, implying the ideological framing behind the model was intact even after the public outcry.(benzinga.com)

On the “prediction seems wrong” side:

• A July 2024 comparative preprint found that Gemini’s political answers tended to be more centrist overall than those of several competing models, which suggests at least some deliberate re‑balancing toward the middle rather than simply hiding an unchanged ideology.(preprints.org)
• Multiple 2025 academic audits measuring political slant across leading LLMs report that Gemini does exhibit liberal / left‑leaning tendencies, but often with a smaller or more mixed bias than some rivals, and that its behavior can be steered closer to neutrality with appropriate prompts.(news.stanford.edu)
• A 2025 benchmark based on Anthropic’s “evenhandedness” metric rated Gemini 2.5 Pro as the most even‑handed model tested (97% score), which strongly indicates Google has invested in more symmetric political handling rather than merely obscuring one side’s bias.(aionx.co)

Because we cannot see Google’s internal training objectives or value‑alignment instructions, and external tests give mixed but improving pictures (still some left‑leaning tendencies, yet increasingly neutral by formal metrics), we can’t definitively say whether the “underlying ideology” remained the same and was just made subtler, or whether Google materially shifted its alignment toward genuine neutrality. The core of Sacks’s prediction concerns Google’s intentions and ideology, which are not directly observable from public data. That makes the truth of the prediction fundamentally indeterminate, so the fairest verdict is ambiguous.

Available reporting shows that after the late‑February 2024 "congress of deputies" in Transnistria, local leaders appealed to Russia for “protection” from Moldovan economic and political pressure, but did not formally request annexation or announce a new referendum to join Russia. Multiple outlets note that such an annexation appeal had been widely rumored in advance, yet officials in Chișinău, Kyiv, and Tiraspol later explicitly denied that any annexation request was made; the adopted resolution instead asked Moscow for measures to protect Transnistria and complained of an “economic war” by Moldova. (regtrends.com)

Western governments did react warily to Transnistria’s February 2024 appeal—U.S. and European officials framed it as part of ongoing Russian pressure and hybrid tactics toward Moldova, not as a new, concrete step of territorial annexation. (theguardian.com) There is no clear evidence that this episode was treated as proof that Russia was about to “invade multiple countries in Europe,” nor that it directly triggered a discrete, major escalation in the Ukraine war distinct from the broader, already‑ongoing conflict dynamics.

Because the key trigger condition in the prediction—Transnistria formally seeking annexation and/or holding a new referendum to join Russia after the February 2024 discussions—has not occurred, the core claim about how the West would respond and how much the Ukraine war would escalate remains untested. We therefore cannot determine whether the predicted reaction would have been right or wrong, and the outcome is best classified as ambiguous.

Factual outcome:

• Joe Biden did secure enough delegates in the 2024 Democratic primaries and became the presumptive nominee, winning an overwhelming majority of pledged delegates. (en.wikipedia.org)
• After a widely criticized June 2024 debate and intense intra-party pressure, Biden withdrew from the 2024 race on July 21, 2024, becoming the first eligible incumbent since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to end a reelection bid after locking up the delegates. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Following his withdrawal, Biden endorsed Kamala Harris, who was then chosen by the delegates and became the official Democratic nominee on August 5, 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Harris, not Biden, was on the ballot as the Democratic nominee in November 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)

Interpretation vs. prediction:

• The normalized prediction: “Barring an extreme unforeseen event (e.g., major health crisis), Joe Biden will secure enough primary delegates and will be the official Democratic nominee for U.S. president in the 2024 election.”
• Reality: Biden did secure enough primary delegates, but he did not become the official nominee, because he later withdrew and declined the nomination.
• However, Sacks explicitly framed his forecast as conditional: “unless he changes his mind or there’s some act of God, he’s going to be the nominee.” Biden did change his mind and stepped aside in what contemporaneous coverage and later analysis treat as an unprecedented, extraordinary political event—an incumbent withdrawing after clinching the delegates under intense pressure from his own party. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the prediction was explicitly limited to the world “barring an extreme unforeseen event / unless he changes his mind,” and the actual world is precisely one in which he changed his mind amid an extraordinary, historically rare chain of events, we can’t cleanly score the statement as right or wrong. The outcome falls outside the scenario he was conditioning on.

Hence, the fairest evaluation is ambiguous rather than definitively right or wrong.

As of mid‑February 2024, the major declared presidential candidates included Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, Jill Stein, Dean Phillips and others—but not Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate. Biden was running for reelection with Harris as his vice‑presidential running mate, not as a separate presidential contender. (en.wikipedia.org)

On July 21, 2024, Biden announced he would not seek reelection and endorsed Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. This announcement triggered the launch of the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign and a rapid consolidation of party support around her. (reuters.com) Harris’s campaign is widely dated from this July 21 entry into the race and is noted for being only 107 days long, the shortest general‑election presidential campaign in modern history. (en.wikipedia.org)

Harris quickly became the Democratic presidential nominee, securing the nomination via a delegate roll call in early August 2024 and heading the party’s national ticket against Donald Trump. (en.wikipedia.org) In the November 5, 2024 general election, she won 48.3% of the popular vote and 226 electoral votes, losing narrowly to Trump (49.8% and 312 electoral votes). That level of vote share, Electoral College support, and national prominence clearly qualifies her as a serious contender in the 2024 election. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because Harris was not a presidential candidate as of mid‑February 2024, but later entered the race and became the Democratic nominee and a major general‑election contender, her candidacy is a direct counterexample to Sacks’s prediction that no such new major presidential candidate would successfully enter and become a serious contender in 2024.

As of November 30, 2025, parts of Sacks’s prediction are partially aligned with reality, but the forecast explicitly covers “the next several years,” so it’s too early to give a definitive verdict.

On performance and market leadership:

• OpenAI has continued to ship frontier proprietary models (GPT‑4.5, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑5, GPT‑5.1, o‑series reasoning models). Usage data from Langfuse for October 2024–September 2025 show that the majority of the top‑used models in real applications are OpenAI models (GPT‑4o mini, GPT‑4o, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, GPT‑5 variants, etc.), suggesting that OpenAI is still a dominant commercial provider on the application layer.【turn0search0】
• However, competitors have made substantial gains. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 is reported to beat Google Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAI’s GPT‑5.1 on some coding benchmarks (e.g., SWE‑Bench Verified) and to lead in enterprise AI adoption with about 32% share vs. ~25% for OpenAI.【turn0news13】 Open‑source and non‑OpenAI models (e.g., DeepSeek, Qwen, Llama) now top various academic and community leaderboards; ensembles of smaller open‑source models can outperform GPT‑4.1 on a majority of evaluated datasets in at least one published study.【turn0search1】【turn0academia29】 This makes the idea of a clear, uncontested performance “lead” more debatable.

On financial success:

• OpenAI’s financial metrics look strong on growth and valuation: it raised about $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation in April 2025 and reported annualized revenue of roughly $12 billion by July 2025, up from $3.7 billion in 2024.【turn0search23】 In July 2025 there were tens of millions of paying ChatGPT subscribers, with projections of continued rapid revenue growth.【turn0news12】
• At the same time, the company is still losing large amounts of money and is projected to require over $200 billion in additional capital by 2030 to fund compute and infrastructure, according to HSBC estimates.【turn0news14】 Whether this trajectory ultimately counts as long‑term “financial success” is uncertain and depends on outcomes well beyond 2025.

Because (a) the claim is about maintaining a lead “over the next several years,” a period that has not yet fully elapsed, and (b) both competitive performance and long‑run financial sustainability are actively in flux, the most accurate assessment today is that the prediction’s ultimate truth value is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Available data shows that OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently has a very large lead in direct consumer chatbot usage, but the prediction is conditional, vague in scope, and not time‑bounded, so it can’t be cleanly scored as fully right or wrong.

On the “market share” side:

• ChatGPT is by far the most visited AI chatbot site globally, with ~46.6B visits from Aug 2024–Jul 2025; the next ten chatbots combined are under 10B, implying ChatGPT has ~80%+ of traffic among the top players.【0search0】0search1】0search11】
• Similarweb-based reporting shows ChatGPT getting nearly 6B visits in Aug 2025, about 8× Gemini and far ahead of other rivals.【0search3】
• Some estimates put ChatGPT at ~60% of the U.S. AI‑chatbot market.【0search5】
• In October 2025, Sam Altman reported 800M weekly active ChatGPT users, roughly double the combined weekly users of Meta AI, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and Claude.【2news13】 This strongly supports the idea that OpenAI has captured a dominant share of consumer-facing GPT/chatbot usage, at least in the narrow sense of standalone assistants.

On the “quality lead over open source” and scope assumptions:

• Benchmarks generally still show GPT‑4o slightly ahead of open-source LLaMA 3.x models on broad reasoning/knowledge metrics such as MMLU and multimodal tasks, i.e., a modest average quality edge.【1search0】2search9】
• But top open-weight models (e.g., Llama 3.1 405B, DeepSeek V3/R1) now match or beat GPT‑4/4o on some benchmarks, including MMLU and certain reasoning tasks, indicating that the gap has narrowed and sometimes reverses depending on the test.【2search5】1search2】1search7】1news15】 That makes it unclear whether OpenAI still has the kind of clear, consistent “little bit of a lead” the quote assumes.
• The prediction also refers to the broad “consumer search / GPT market,” not just standalone chatbots. In that wider space, AI assistants embedded in other products are significant: Meta AI reported almost 500M monthly users by late 2024,【2search4】 ByteDance’s Doubao is the top chatbot in China with over 150M MAUs,【0news14】 and various regional or app‑integrated assistants (Gemini in Google Search, Doubao in Douyin, etc.) capture substantial consumer query volume that doesn’t pass through OpenAI at all.【0search2】0search8】

Because:

1. the statement is conditional and probabilistic ("if" and "could"),
2. key terms like “little bit of a lead” and “vast, vast majority” are not precisely defined, and
3. the relevant market (standalone chatbots vs all consumer AI query experiences) is contested, we can’t decisively say the prediction has clearly succeeded or failed as of late 2025. It is best classified as ambiguous rather than definitively right, wrong, or merely “too early.”

The prediction was that OpenAI’s custom GPT platform and its developer network effects would create a self‑reinforcing ecosystem that open‑source models would find hard to match, giving OpenAI a durable advantage in capabilities and applications.

1. OpenAI did build a large custom‑GPT ecosystem
OpenAI’s GPT Store launched in January 2024; by early 2024 more than 3 million custom GPTs had been created, with on the order of ~150–160k public GPTs in the store and hundreds to thousands of new GPTs added daily. Academic work (GPTZoo) cataloged over 700k GPT instances shortly after launch, indicating substantial real‑world experimentation and usage around the custom‑GPT platform. (openai.com)
This supports the first part of the claim: OpenAI did generate a sizable developer ecosystem and a broad catalog of applications on top of ChatGPT.

2. But open‑source ecosystems have grown larger and highly competitive
By late 2024, Hugging Face already hosted over 1 million AI models; by August 2025, an empirical study found ~1.86 million models on the platform, documenting extensive “family trees” of fine‑tuned derivatives. (arstechnica.com)
Hugging Face reports massive enterprise usage and positions itself explicitly as a way for businesses to rapidly find and deploy open‑source models, showing that open ecosystems are heavily used in production, not just research. (nutanix.com)
A joint MIT–Hugging Face study cited by the Financial Times found that by 2025 China alone accounted for a larger share of global open‑model downloads than the U.S., underscoring that open‑weight ecosystems are vibrant, global, and scaling quickly. (ft.com)

3. Open models now match or surpass OpenAI on key capabilities
Multiple open or open‑weight models rival or beat OpenAI’s frontier models on important benchmarks:

• DeepSeek‑R1, an open‑weight reasoning model, scores higher than GPT‑4o on several standardized tests: it achieves ~90.8% on MMLU and 97.3% on the MATH‑500 benchmark, beating GPT‑4o’s 88.7% MMLU and 76.6% MATH scores. (edenai.co)
• A July 2025 survey of live benchmarks ranks DeepSeek‑R1 as the top open‑source model and 4th overall on Chatbot Arena, with extremely strong reasoning and coding metrics (e.g., ~99% on MATH‑500 and >90% on AIME‑style tasks), explicitly noting that it matches or outperforms OpenAI’s o‑series on several reasoning benchmarks while being far cheaper. (champaignmagazine.com)
• Meta’s Llama 4 Maverick is reported to offer performance comparable to GPT‑4o on coding and reasoning, and Meta is rolling out Llama across major consumer surfaces like WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram—making these open models widely accessible to end‑users and developers. (theverge.com)
• Alibaba’s Qwen3 family (Apache‑2.0 open‑license) and related QwQ / Qwen2.5 models are released as open weights; Alibaba claims Qwen2.5‑Max outperforms GPT‑4o and leading open competitors on multiple benchmarks, and Qwen3 models provide reasoning and multimodal capabilities similar in spirit to OpenAI’s o‑series and GPT‑4o, with downloadable weights for developers. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Open‑source reasoning models like AM‑Thinking‑v1, built on open Qwen2.5‑32B, report surpassing DeepSeek‑R1 itself on AIME and LiveCodeBench, further pushing the open frontier. (arxiv.org)

Collectively, these results show that by mid‑to‑late 2025, open‑weight models are not lagging far behind ChatGPT; in several high‑value domains (math, coding, reasoning) they match or exceed OpenAI’s best generally available models.

4. Open ecosystems for applications rival custom GPTs
Open‑source platforms provide their own powerful “developer network effects”:

• Hugging Face’s Hub and Spaces support millions of models and thousands of hosted apps, with tooling (Transformers, Text‑Generation‑Inference, Spaces, etc.) designed to make deploying and sharing LLM‑based applications as easy as using a closed API. (arstechnica.com)
• Large ecosystems have formed around open models and agent frameworks (e.g., DeepSeek R1, Llama, Qwen) for fine‑tuned assistants, local deployments, and enterprise‑specific agents, often favored because they avoid vendor lock‑in and reduce inference cost—key considerations for businesses choosing platforms. (leanware.co)

Meanwhile, although OpenAI’s GPT Store has hundreds of thousands of GPTs and significant usage, its growth plateaued relatively quickly and it remains tied to ChatGPT’s paid tiers and OpenAI’s policies, limiting its reach compared with globally downloadable open‑weight models that can be deployed anywhere. (originality.ai)

5. Net assessment vs. the original claim
Two years after the prediction (Feb 2024 → late 2025):

• Yes, OpenAI retains one of the strongest proprietary consumer platforms, and custom GPTs meaningfully extend ChatGPT’s capabilities.
• But open‑source ecosystems have not been left behind. On benchmarks and in real‑world deployments, open‑weight models like DeepSeek‑R1, Llama 4, Qwen3 and successors have caught up to or surpassed OpenAI’s widely available models in several capability areas, while the open model/application ecosystem (Hugging Face and others) is at least comparable in scale and diversity to the GPT Store.

Because open‑source ecosystems have matched and, in some niches, exceeded OpenAI’s capabilities and application diversity—contradicting the idea that they would find it “difficult to catch up” and that OpenAI would enjoy a clear, durable moat from custom GPT network effects—the prediction is best judged as wrong.

Evidence since February 2024 shows that many U.S. regional banks with sizable office‑backed commercial real‑estate (CRE) portfolios have, in fact, taken meaningful write‑downs and faced notable financial stress, even though the system overall has remained resilient.

• Office values and fundamentals deteriorated further as forecast: Moody’s projected office values would fall roughly 26% peak‑to‑trough through 2025, and office‑loan delinquencies climbed to multi‑year highs while other CRE segments remained relatively stable, making office the clear weak spot and a concentrated risk for smaller and regional banks. (cfodive.com)

• New York Community Bancorp/Flagstar—an archetypal regional CRE lender—suffered exactly the kind of portfolio impairment and stress Sacks described: a surprise $252m quarterly loss driven largely by multifamily and office loans, a $552m jump in provisions and $185m in charge‑offs, and a 38% one‑day stock plunge that took shares to multi‑decade lows and sparked fears of failure, followed by management turnover and an emergency capital raise. (commercialobserver.com)

• Other CRE‑heavy regionals also showed material impairment and strain. Valley National and Flagstar/NYCB recorded large CRE charge‑offs and provisions; for example, Flagstar logged about $388m of office‑loan charge‑offs and a roughly $930m net loss over the first nine months of 2024, while Valley’s credit charges on CRE cut full‑year 2024 net income by almost a quarter and forced it to shrink CRE exposure and bolster reserves, keeping its stock at a deep discount. (ft.com) KeyCorp’s CRE non‑performing loan rate more than doubled to 5.1%, another sign of significant office‑loan stress at a regional lender. (credaily.com)

• Rating agencies explicitly flagged a broad cohort of regional banks as vulnerable because of CRE (especially office) portfolios. S&P and Moody’s placed multiple CRE‑heavy regionals—Old National, WaFd, Peapack‑Gladstone, F.N.B., First Merchants, Fulton Financial, Valley National and others—on negative outlook or downgrade review, citing high CRE concentrations and the risk that falling property values and refinancing difficulties would impair capital and earnings. In total, about 9 U.S. banks, or ~18% of those S&P rates, carried a negative outlook largely due to CRE exposure, which is a non‑trivial share. (investopedia.com)

• Market performance and analyst commentary show sector‑wide pressure tied to these CRE issues. The KBW Regional Banking Index has persistently lagged large‑bank and broad equity indices, with analysts and Moody’s pointing to regional banks’ outsized share of CRE lending and naming 27 regional/community banks whose CRE loans exceeded 2x tangible common equity; the article highlights Flagstar and Valley National as examples where CRE‑related credit charges drove major profit declines and stock underperformance. (ft.com)

• At the same time, regulators and data indicate the stress has been significant but not systemic: most banks’ overall credit metrics and capital remain solid, Q2 2024 provisions came in below expectations for many institutions, and by late 2025 Reuters characterizes regional banks as having largely “weathered” the CRE storm even as office loans remain a pronounced weak point and delinquency rates in office hit record levels. (spglobal.com)

Putting this together, office‑backed CRE downturn did lead to sizeable write‑downs, elevated reserves, ratings pressure, stock underperformance, and in at least one case near‑solvency concerns at multiple regional banks with concentrated exposure. That fits Sacks’ prediction of significant impairments and financial stress across a meaningful slice of the regional‑bank sector exposed to office loans, even though the impact stopped short of a full‑blown systemic crisis.

Sacks’ claim was about the shape of the US commercial and multifamily real estate downturn: not a single, short, 2008‑style crash centered in one year, but a drawn‑out, rolling crisis as loans and leases come due and have to be refinanced at higher rates.

Evidence since 2024 strongly matches that description:

• Data on loan maturities show a large multi‑year “maturity wall” rather than a one‑year cliff. S&P Global estimated about $950B of CRE mortgages maturing in 2024, rising to nearly $1T in 2025 and peaking around $1.26T in 2027, explicitly noting the refinancing challenge will not be resolved quickly. (spglobal.com) The St. Louis Fed similarly highlighted that roughly $1.7T (≈30% of CRE debt) matures in 2024–2026, emphasizing refinancing/repricing risk over those years rather than in a single period. (stlouisfed.org)
• Other institutional analyses reinforce this staggered, multi‑year timeline. Franklin Templeton, drawing on Trepp data, cites about $1.2T in CRE loans maturing in 2024–25 and another ~$1.8T in 2026–28, again framing it as a wall of maturities extending across several years. (franklintempleton.com) Industry and credit‑data firms (e.g., CRED iQ / Commercial Observer, GlobeSt) likewise show large securitized CRE maturities in 2025–26 and another wave in 2029, not a single‑year lump. (globest.com)
• Banks and regulators describe the problem as prolonged pressure rather than a short shock. The Financial Times reported U.S. banks facing about $2T of maturing property debt over three years, with office and multifamily singled out as especially troubled. (ft.com) Reuters’ review of regional banks in late 2024 stresses that CRE challenges from deteriorating office loans and refinancing risks are expected to “persist for years” as large volumes of debt roll over. (reuters.com)
• Distress has indeed been emerging in waves tied to maturities, not as a one‑off collapse. CMBS data show CRE delinquency rates rising through 2024–25, with multifamily delinquencies in particular jumping several percentage points year‑over‑year and office remaining the most stressed. (reddit.com) At the same time, lenders have repeatedly extended loans and pushed maturities out, which GlobeSt notes has literally moved the “maturity wall” from an expected peak in 2024 toward 2026—turning what could have been a single acute event into a drawn‑out refinancing squeeze. (globest.com)

By late 2025, we clearly see (1) a large block of CRE and multifamily debt coming due over multiple years, (2) refinancing at higher rates producing ongoing waves of distress and defaults, and (3) no single short, concentrated crisis year. That pattern is exactly what Sacks described as a “rolling crisis” driven by staggered debt rollovers, so his prediction is best judged right.

Evidence shows the prediction came true:

• The Tower 22 drone attack on a U.S. outpost in Jordan occurred on 28 January 2024, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding dozens.(en.wikipedia.org)
• On 2 February 2024, the U.S. launched large-scale retaliatory airstrikes explicitly described as a response to the Jordan/Tower 22 attack. These strikes hit more than 85 targets across seven facilities used by Iran-backed militias and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force in Iraq and Syria.(defense.gov)

This matches Sacks’s forecast on all key points:

1. Retaliatory strike occurs – The Biden administration did carry out military retaliation.
2. Timing – The strikes began on 2 February 2024, just five days after the 28 January attack, well within the “ensuing weeks” window.(en.wikipedia.org)
3. Targets – The operations focused on Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq and facilities associated with the IRGC Quds Force, i.e., Iranian-linked assets, exactly in line with his described options (“militias in Syria and Iraq” and/or “Iranian assets”).(defense.gov)

Given the direct retaliatory strikes within days against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, the prediction is accurate.

The prediction was explicitly conditional: if the U.S. chose to strike Iranian assets directly in response to the Tower 22 attack, then a wider regional war would quickly erupt across at least Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

What actually happened:

• The Tower 22 drone attack on a U.S. outpost in Jordan occurred on 28 January 2024 and killed three U.S. soldiers. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In retaliation, beginning 2 February 2024 the U.S. launched a series of at least 125 airstrikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elements and Iran‑backed militias in Iraq and Syria, not on Iranian territory itself. (en.wikipedia.org)
• U.S. officials at the time repeatedly stressed that there were no plans to bomb Iran directly and that Washington sought to avoid a wider war with Iran, despite pressure from some lawmakers to hit targets inside Iran. (theguardian.com)
• Separately, the U.S. and U.K. were already conducting and then continued airstrikes against Iran‑backed Houthi forces in Yemen over Red Sea shipping attacks, but this campaign predated Tower 22 and was framed as limited strikes against Houthis in Yemen, not a new multi‑front U.S.–Iran war. (en.wikipedia.org)

Within the months following Tower 22, there was no U.S. decision to strike Iranian territory itself in direct response to that attack, and there was also no clearly defined five‑front shooting war pitting U.S./allied forces directly against Iran or its forces simultaneously in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen as a result of such a decision.

Because the key antecedent in the prediction — a U.S. choice to hit Iranian assets directly (in practice, inside Iran) in response to Tower 22 — never occurred, the escalation scenario it described was never actually tested. Logically, that means we cannot say whether Sacks’s predicted outcome would have happened or not.

Therefore the prediction is best scored as inconclusive rather than right or wrong.

Evidence shows that Sacks’s prediction substantially matches what happened:

• IPO timing and valuation level: Reddit priced its IPO on March 20, 2024 at $34 per share, at the top of a $31–$34 range, implying roughly $6.4 billion in equity value (about $5.4 billion on a narrower share-count basis). This is close to the earlier ~$5 billion rumor, i.e., in the same valuation ballpark rather than far above it. (fortune.com)
• Deal execution (no withdrawal or major re-cut): The offering went ahead as planned, priced at the top of the indicated range (not down-sized or repriced lower) and was reported to be 4–5x oversubscribed, consistent with a strong book and a clean execution by the underwriters. (reuters.com)
• Initial trading and market reception: On March 21, 2024, Reddit began trading on the NYSE under ticker RDDT. The stock opened well above the IPO price, traded up as much as ~70% intraday, and closed around $50.4–$50.5, roughly 48% above the $34 IPO price, giving it a market cap near $9.5–10 billion. Major outlets described this as a strong / robust debut and a positive signal for the tech IPO market. (cnbc.com)
• No material break below IPO price in the first days: Historical price data show that on March 22, 2024 (the second trading day), Reddit closed at $46.00 with an intraday low of $45.34, still well above the $34 IPO price. Later in April 2024 the lowest recorded price was about $37.35, which is still above the IPO level. Thus in the initial days—and in fact for many months—the stock never traded below its IPO price. (financecharts.com)
• Longer-term context (doesn’t negate the call): Although Reddit later became quite volatile and at one point in March 2025 fell about 60% from a peak above $200 to roughly $110, coverage still notes it remained well above its IPO price (up roughly 200% from the offering). This later decline doesn’t contradict Sacks’s more limited claim about the IPO’s pricing and early trading. (ccn.com)

Given that the IPO was priced near the rumored $5B equity value, executed without being withdrawn or significantly re-cut, and traded strongly without breaking below the IPO price in its early days, Sacks’s prediction is best classified as right.