Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, welcome to the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Well Tim, rough week, certainly
Speaker 1: for markets, they got off to a rocky start on Monday.
Speaker 1: We saw the SMP having its biggest drop since May.
Speaker 1: Much of that initial volatility due to fears over the
Speaker 1: federal reserves plans for tapering asset purchases, as well as
Speaker 1: the Evergranddad crisis in China. We're gonna get to that
Speaker 1: in just a moment. That's a story we talked about
Speaker 1: throughout the week because the news kept coming in on it.
Speaker 1: Ahead of it. Though a close look at America's pandemic
Speaker 1: response and how we can prevent the next one because
Speaker 1: there is another one coming. That's according to FDA's former commissioner, Dr.
Speaker 1: Scott Gottlieb. He's got a new book out. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk to him all about that. Plus we're talking
Speaker 1: Cisco because the company lines it's sustainability commitments and the
Speaker 1: CEO of rocket Lab talks to us about a new
Speaker 1: era of space travel. Plus, it's our Sooner than You
Speaker 1: Think issue, and it explores breakthroughs on the horizon and
Speaker 1: everything from broadband to batteries, with our domestic cover story
Speaker 1: detailing the importance of cobalt to powering our future. It's
Speaker 1: all the cool stuff that's happening. It is a lot
Speaker 1: of cool stuff. Let's get those let's get those batteries
Speaker 1: here sooner than later. Yeah, exactly, but we need some
Speaker 1: key components to make it all happen. All of that
Speaker 1: to come. We begin though with our international cover story
Speaker 1: on what's been the world's largest property developer and how
Speaker 1: it's creating a financial stress test that no one wanted.
Speaker 1: A takeover from our finance team and the editor of
Speaker 1: the section, Pat Ragneer, who joins us now. Pat Ever
Speaker 1: grands massive liabilities. We saw that play out through the
Speaker 1: global markets. How come so evergrand owes massive three billion
Speaker 1: dollars in liabilities, which sort of the sheer scale of
Speaker 1: that has people nervous um and the sheer number of
Speaker 1: people and entities that evergrand Owes money too. So there's
Speaker 1: just this kind of like you know, large pile of
Speaker 1: bills that people are waiting to get paid, and if
Speaker 1: they don't get paid, if they get paid, it paid
Speaker 1: back slowly and in a disorderly way. There's just a
Speaker 1: fear of the kinds of effects you can have really
Speaker 1: through the Chinese economy. And of course we we saw
Speaker 1: it hit global markets earlier this week. But let's take
Speaker 1: a step back, pad and and and I think because
Speaker 1: a lot of people perhaps aren't familiar with whatever Grant
Speaker 1: is despite its size. Um, I feel like it wasn't
Speaker 1: a household word right this week until this week. I
Speaker 1: completely agree with that. So so what is this Because
Speaker 1: this is a company that is not only in property,
Speaker 1: but it's in media, theme park take us into it.
Speaker 1: So it's a property developer, you know. I kind of
Speaker 1: joked that, like, you know, this is what would happen
Speaker 1: if you had, um a you know, a financial company
Speaker 1: in trouble, but you also had a giant uh new
Speaker 1: estate company or a builder of homes in trouble plus
Speaker 1: plus the New York Yankees, plus to Disney. Right, so
Speaker 1: you know it's got all of these different businesses. Uh,
Speaker 1: perspective for you. Yeah, but the really key part of
Speaker 1: the business is that it's a property developer. It builds housing.
Speaker 1: And when you're talking about a home builder in China,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a company that has been riding the
Speaker 1: waves of probably one of the most important transformations in history.
Speaker 1: From uh, the the urban population of China has grown
Speaker 1: by and I had to double check this when I
Speaker 1: saw it, something like four d and a million people. Right, so,
Speaker 1: just in in a very short period of time of population,
Speaker 1: the size of the United States has gone from the
Speaker 1: countryside to living in cities, and they've needed housing, and
Speaker 1: there's been a whole apparatus of policy designed to encourage
Speaker 1: housing to get that housing built. And evergreend rode that
Speaker 1: wave and became heavily indebted in the process. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: policymakers in China UM has begun to kind of ask
Speaker 1: themselves if real estate led growth is more risky than
Speaker 1: it's worth. And now that are trying to you know,
Speaker 1: they've they've set in place policies that have been meant
Speaker 1: to kind of who off this change. But you know
Speaker 1: that's kind of a hard target hit, right You're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: real estate is risky. We want everybody to take less
Speaker 1: ards who We're going to start to discourage all of
Speaker 1: this activity. But what can happen is what we're looking
Speaker 1: at now, which is this company is kind of cratering,
Speaker 1: and the question is will this be you know, controlled creating.
Speaker 1: So where do policymakers come in in terms of that
Speaker 1: controlled creating? Do we know at this point what policymakers
Speaker 1: are going to allow happen to to ever? Grant is it?
Speaker 1: Is it going to fail? And by policymakers we mean Beijing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the communist right, I mean so, I you know, I
Speaker 1: think like one of the thing you have to remember
Speaker 1: is that the banking sector is stay controlled in China
Speaker 1: and that just gives them more levers then, uh than
Speaker 1: authorities in other countries have. I mean, they really have
Speaker 1: some power to uh, you know, order how how debts
Speaker 1: get disposed um. And plus I mean you know they
Speaker 1: have they have the power that every country that princes
Speaker 1: its own money, does you know. I mean, so they
Speaker 1: can create liquidity and and they can, but they can
Speaker 1: also interview very directly in the banking system, right whether
Speaker 1: or not like what you call a failure of ever
Speaker 1: grand sort of depends on a question of definition. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, because if you have the state intervening to
Speaker 1: sort of quietly fold the company up, you know, like,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you may prevent kind of a systemic risk.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, there may not be
Speaker 1: a company that's recognizable ever Grand at the end of
Speaker 1: that process. But you know, sort of more importantly, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's just always a question of a very
Speaker 1: big thing is happening. They have a lot of power
Speaker 1: to try to control it, but you just don't know
Speaker 1: if they're going to be able to do it. This
Speaker 1: isn't just you know, debt in money markets. It's depth
Speaker 1: are owed to you know. Investor Pat a great UH
Speaker 1: cover story, a great take on Evergrand, which was really
Speaker 1: no doubt about it, UH, one of our big stories
Speaker 1: of the week. That's Business Week Finance editor Pat Ragnar
Speaker 1: and Pat talked about that broader impact of China and
Speaker 1: what it's doing in the impact on the global economy.
Speaker 1: For more on that and China's pushed for common prosperity
Speaker 1: and what it means for private business, be sure to
Speaker 1: check out to our Monday interview with Bloomberg New Economy
Speaker 1: editorial director Andy Brown. You can find that on our
Speaker 1: podcast feed at Bloomberg dot com. Yeah, a fascinating story.
Speaker 1: A story mainly takes place in China, but with serious
Speaker 1: global implications, as we saw a play out this week.
Speaker 1: Well coming up, a longtime Cisco executive, franct Suitis, maps
Speaker 1: out her company's ongoing sustainability goals. They've been working on
Speaker 1: this for years and they continue to ramp it up.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week, and this is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio Cisco Systems to him.
Speaker 1: They set the company's first greenhouse emissions reduction goal, Wait
Speaker 1: back and do thousand six. They've been doing this for
Speaker 1: a long time. Since then, the tech giant has continued
Speaker 1: to grow its sustainability initiatives and impact year after year
Speaker 1: after year, and earlier this month, the company announced a
Speaker 1: new commitment to achieve net zero emissions by and more.
Speaker 1: Brand ken Suitis is a longtime Cisco executive whose executive
Speaker 1: vice president and Chief People, Policy and Purpose Officer. She
Speaker 1: stopped by this week to discuss this latest round of objectives.
Speaker 1: First of all, before we get into sustainability, I do
Speaker 1: want to ask you about the visibility you see when
Speaker 1: it comes to your business and the company and hiring.
Speaker 1: What does it look like right now? So we see
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of opportunity. What's so fascinating is throughout
Speaker 1: the pandemic, we saw so many of our customers wanting
Speaker 1: to move a little bit more quickly. From a trans
Speaker 1: formation perspective, we saw that the issues I had been
Speaker 1: thinking about, they were ready to move. So what that
Speaker 1: means for us is we see a lot of investment
Speaker 1: in how they securely connect their thinking about having employees
Speaker 1: both on site but also working from home, and that's
Speaker 1: a different technology play. From a people perspective, this has
Speaker 1: been one of the most remarkable times. Right now. People
Speaker 1: are talking about this period as the Great Resignation, and
Speaker 1: what they mean by that is we see a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of people movement as well. Yeah, really important question
Speaker 1: when we think about the way that people are changing jobs,
Speaker 1: the way that people are potentially leaving the workforce. I
Speaker 1: want to go back to something that you said about
Speaker 1: the transformation that you saw throughout the pandemic. Do you
Speaker 1: see this as a permanent shift, with a lot of
Speaker 1: your customers that their employees could be working from home forever.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of our customers are figuring that out.
Speaker 1: So I would say that there's a subset of our
Speaker 1: customers that absolutely have found greater productivity, they see better
Speaker 1: employee engagement, and they're going to continue to work hybrid.
Speaker 1: I don't see as many absolutes where people are either
Speaker 1: going to be all in the office or at home.
Speaker 1: I think they're figuring out the balance. And then there's
Speaker 1: a subset of our customers that want to go back,
Speaker 1: and that's something that we really questioned around can we
Speaker 1: go back? And the reason I put that forward is
Speaker 1: that employees around the globe are telling us that they
Speaker 1: want to work in a very different way. I mean,
Speaker 1: the horse has left the barn right when it comes
Speaker 1: to hybrid work. I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: there's probably been tons of focus groups pre pandemic. Can
Speaker 1: it work? And it not? Maybe we're not ready. I
Speaker 1: mean the pandemic, we had no choice and it worked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's why we refer to this last period as not
Speaker 1: only challenging from a human perspective, but an experiment around
Speaker 1: work where we've learned a lot, and I think for
Speaker 1: some companies this question that they had has now been
Speaker 1: answered and that they can work, they can innovate, they
Speaker 1: can collaborate, and in some cases they can be even
Speaker 1: better with this hybrid because they can get to talent
Speaker 1: that in the past they couldn't before. Well, how has
Speaker 1: the talent acquisition process been, how has talent retention been
Speaker 1: at Cisco? Syste time, you said that some people are
Speaker 1: referring to this as the great resignation. We hear about
Speaker 1: the labor struggle that employers are facing right now. Um,
Speaker 1: tell us what it's been like for you and FED
Speaker 1: Chief J. Powell talking about it's a really tight labor force.
Speaker 1: It is, so we experienced that as well. What was
Speaker 1: so fascinating was when when we first went into the pandemic,
Speaker 1: we paused for a few weeks just from a hiring perspective,
Speaker 1: and we were just kind of getting our legs under
Speaker 1: us and understanding what this was going to be. And
Speaker 1: then we had this realization that we were in this
Speaker 1: for quite some time, and we started the hiring process
Speaker 1: and what we found was leveraging video, leveraging the interview
Speaker 1: processes that we have. We hired like never before. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I would tell you that last year was
Speaker 1: probably one of the biggest hiring years that we've had
Speaker 1: as a company. Amazing, and so many employees have never
Speaker 1: met any of their colleagues face to face. It's a position.
Speaker 1: And then I started in October last year here, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and there's people that he's now meeting. He's like, I've
Speaker 1: been talking to you, you know, via remote, and now
Speaker 1: I'm finally meeting you. It's it's a very different world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a really funny experience last week where two
Speaker 1: colleagues were meeting. I happened to be there, and one
Speaker 1: of the colleagues that we're friends though, even though I'm
Speaker 1: meeting you for the first time. And so what I
Speaker 1: would say is for all companies, we do see that
Speaker 1: there is a reduced labor pool. We're working incredibly hard
Speaker 1: to differentiate ourselves, to talk about what we stand for,
Speaker 1: and to attract the talent that really wants to be
Speaker 1: with us as well. You were reminding us that's just
Speaker 1: get a pretty big presence here in New York specifically,
Speaker 1: we do. It's such an important market for us, so
Speaker 1: so many of our customers are based here. It's a
Speaker 1: great place for talent, a lot of the technology as well.
Speaker 1: We're actually in the process at the moment of remodeling
Speaker 1: our presence here in New York, and a big part
Speaker 1: of that is hybrid work and so we're thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about when you come into the office, how will
Speaker 1: you work? And so I think you'll see our presence
Speaker 1: in New York look very different from what it's been
Speaker 1: in the past. What do you mean by that? How
Speaker 1: how is it going to be different? So the biggest
Speaker 1: differences fewer people will come into the office to work
Speaker 1: on email or to be in video call. So when
Speaker 1: you come in now, you're coming in to be with
Speaker 1: your team. You're coming in to be with customers, and
Speaker 1: so the site has to be so much more team
Speaker 1: centric than ever before. And so you're going to see
Speaker 1: a lot fewer of the cubes and the individual offices
Speaker 1: and a lot of huddle space. How are you thinking
Speaker 1: about your presence in New York in the future in
Speaker 1: terms of headcount? Yeah, I would say it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: a really important growth area for us, and so we
Speaker 1: look at about five key areas across the US, New
Speaker 1: York is one of them, and so we will continue
Speaker 1: to to hire and really attract and recruit the best.
Speaker 1: You talked about it being a tight labor market. What's
Speaker 1: the New York labor market right now for the type
Speaker 1: of workers you're looking for. It just got about fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly competitive, and uh so this is a place
Speaker 1: where the wonderful thing is you see the skills that
Speaker 1: we're looking for, but you see that the talent has
Speaker 1: a lot of different options. So talk to us about
Speaker 1: the new commitments. Earlier this month, you guys laid it
Speaker 1: out planning to achieve net zero emissions by twenty achieve
Speaker 1: carbon neutrality for Scope one and scope to um and
Speaker 1: that I believe is by so go into it because
Speaker 1: you guys have been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 1: What's the difference. What's the new new stuff that we
Speaker 1: need to know about. Yeah, so I would say we
Speaker 1: we have been doing this for a long time. And
Speaker 1: here's the most important part for companies to achieve these goals,
Speaker 1: which are really big and even bigger if you're a
Speaker 1: hardware and software company. Uh it takes every part of
Speaker 1: the organization to be focused here, and it has to
Speaker 1: feel like a key part of running your business and
Speaker 1: not something that sits on the side, because these goals
Speaker 1: are pretty significant, and so we've been doing this for
Speaker 1: a long time. The four big areas that we're focused
Speaker 1: on right now. The first is hybrid work. As we
Speaker 1: talked about, we believe that will be incredibly positive for us.
Speaker 1: The second thing that we're doing is really focus on
Speaker 1: the reduction of carbon emissions and uh, we're investing in
Speaker 1: technologies that I think will give us all optimism. Uh
Speaker 1: there's a company that we invested in called Rama. They
Speaker 1: actually won a prize with us, and they're doing carbon
Speaker 1: capture for large semi trucks and that is so important.
Speaker 1: The third area that we're focused on is all about
Speaker 1: renewables and so as an example in the US were
Speaker 1: renewable electricity several countries across Europe as well, and we'll
Speaker 1: just keep on pushing. And then I think another element,
Speaker 1: and this is the most exciting, is we're looking at
Speaker 1: the way in which we're developing our products which really
Speaker 1: power the Internet. And one of our new products, Silicon one,
Speaker 1: is a chip set and what it does is it
Speaker 1: reduces the amount of energy that our customers use by
Speaker 1: twenty six times. And in addition to that, it's much
Speaker 1: smaller than previous products, so it doesn't take as much packaging.
Speaker 1: And so when you have this type of breakthrough across
Speaker 1: your portfolio, it's going to be incredibly meaningful. That was
Speaker 1: Cisco's executive VP in Chief, People, Policy and Purpose Officer
Speaker 1: Frand cut suitists still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, civilian
Speaker 1: space travel is now a reality. You know that, but
Speaker 1: our next guest says there is plenty of work left
Speaker 1: to do when it comes to the final frontier. The
Speaker 1: CEO of rocket Lab USA joins us. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg e
Speaker 1: Love in Frio in New York to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one does San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one
Speaker 1: nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. So
Speaker 1: there's been a lot going on when it comes to
Speaker 1: space tourism. I mean, Tim, you've been on the ground
Speaker 1: seeing it firsthand. Is like the year of private space travel.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have Bezos, you have SpaceX with the
Speaker 1: recent civilian mission. Then of course earlier this year you
Speaker 1: you also had Virgin Galactic exactly. It's definitely feeling like
Speaker 1: it's taken several steps forward. One company watching this year's
Speaker 1: spade of recent commercial space missions and the billionaires along
Speaker 1: for the ride is the launch provider and space systems company.
Speaker 1: It's called rocket Lab USA. Well, its founder, president and
Speaker 1: CEO Peter Beck, joined Carroll and Shannali Bassk to outline
Speaker 1: his company's plans for customer growth, as well as the
Speaker 1: risks and rewards of civilian space travel. Check it out.
Speaker 1: It's super exciting to see kind of this new era
Speaker 1: of space exploration, especially by civilians. But I think it's
Speaker 1: also important to remember, you know, it's still requires a
Speaker 1: bit eire to to go to go to orbit. Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm looking forward to the day where that those
Speaker 1: barriers are broken a little bit more and in space
Speaker 1: traveled by by humans is a little bit more frequent
Speaker 1: and achievable. Peter, maybe you're going to explain the significance
Speaker 1: as well of what this particular mission means with SpaceX
Speaker 1: and the people that they are traveling with Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean it's an incredible achievement by by friends over
Speaker 1: its space X and you know, you know, an all
Speaker 1: civilian crew is you know, is a wonderful next step.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're we're focused kind of on you know,
Speaker 1: the next the next step is actually providing resources and
Speaker 1: services from all that down down to Earth. So well,
Speaker 1: human space travelers is incredibly exciting and inspirational for us.
Speaker 1: All um, you know, we actually rely on space for
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of their everyday life activities. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: feel like you're the practical side of it in terms
Speaker 1: of space, right, And there's no Business Week has done
Speaker 1: stories about there's a ton of tiny satellites that are
Speaker 1: already up there in air, up there into space. I
Speaker 1: guess I should say, tell us about the work that
Speaker 1: you do, who you're working with, and I am curious
Speaker 1: about how much of your contracts and work you do
Speaker 1: is military versus kind of commercial. Yeah. Absolutely, so. I
Speaker 1: mean we're an end Win space company. So you know,
Speaker 1: we operate a launch vie call called Electron. It's the
Speaker 1: the second most frequently launched rocket in the United States
Speaker 1: behind space X, and we deliver all kinds of customers.
Speaker 1: It's about fifty percent government fifty commercial. So we're flying
Speaker 1: missions obviously NASA for the Row through to We flew
Speaker 1: a small satellite for a series of high schools in Irvine, California,
Speaker 1: So just about every customer and you know you satellite,
Speaker 1: you could you could imagine really what's what's the future
Speaker 1: in terms of spaces role as it pertains to Earth,
Speaker 1: because I think there's still a lot of mysticism and
Speaker 1: and and a lot of questions out there about you know,
Speaker 1: what space ultimately means for Earth going forward. Human space
Speaker 1: flight is one important element, as we've mentioned, but I
Speaker 1: think little people realize how reliant they are in the
Speaker 1: everyday lives today on space infrastructure. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: call up a pizza and the pizza gets delivered to
Speaker 1: your house, well, actually, if it wasn't for GPS, your
Speaker 1: pizza might not get delivered to your house. It might
Speaker 1: be called the most basic things are enabled by a
Speaker 1: lot of space infrastructure, whether it be communications or weather
Speaker 1: and as we mentioned GPS, but it's kind of like
Speaker 1: that hidden infrastructure. You know, it's infrastructure that you can't
Speaker 1: go and physical and touch or even see. So it's
Speaker 1: just kind of magic. It's just always there and just
Speaker 1: using it in your everyday lives. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the focus for us really is, you know, how can
Speaker 1: we build that infrastructure in orbit and use that to
Speaker 1: really provide services to all of us down here on Earth.
Speaker 1: I think with the space industry, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: some really great applications that everybody is familiar with, like
Speaker 1: communications and GPS, but you know, the access to space
Speaker 1: into orbits has really only been broken down relatively recently
Speaker 1: with SpaceX and rocket lad So we're really just at
Speaker 1: the beginning of what you can do in space and
Speaker 1: how that's going to improve and change everybody's lives down here. Well,
Speaker 1: where do you see the industry going in the next
Speaker 1: ten years then? Yeah. So my AURBUE is kind of
Speaker 1: um UH an intervien space company. So you know, we
Speaker 1: do launch, we also build spacecraft. You know, we have
Speaker 1: contracts with NASA to go to the Moon. We've got
Speaker 1: a couple of Mars missions um and of course a
Speaker 1: number of commercial missions on all butit and I think
Speaker 1: continuous time, the really large space companies are not going
Speaker 1: to be just launch company NES or just satellite companies.
Speaker 1: They're going to be into in companies where you are
Speaker 1: you own the launch showing the spacecraft, and you may
Speaker 1: even own the applications on all ward as well. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that that's what it's going to look like
Speaker 1: in the future. Hey, twenty seconds left? Is it Elon Musk?
Speaker 1: Is it Bezos? Is it Branson? That continue to dominate?
Speaker 1: In your view? Just quickly from your vantage point, just
Speaker 1: got about twenty seconds. Well, I mean, certainly Ellen is
Speaker 1: supposed to be written with, but don't don't count down
Speaker 1: the underdog rocket Lab detsil I say, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: investors certainly aren't because your stock has been on a
Speaker 1: tear up more than fifty so far this year. Great
Speaker 1: to check in with you, and I hope we can
Speaker 1: get some more time with you in the future because
Speaker 1: this is certainly an area I know we like to
Speaker 1: talk about. That's rocket Lab USA founder president and CEO, Peterback.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up next, Former
Speaker 1: FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on lessons learned from the ongoing
Speaker 1: COVID crisis and his new book, Uncontrolled Spread. Why COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic,
Speaker 1: because folks, there's going to be a next pandemic, according
Speaker 1: to Dr Gottlieb and so many more. That interview coming up.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Dr Scott Gottlieb he is, no doubt about it, one
Speaker 1: of the constant and consistent go to voices throughout the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic. He's had a front row seat to
Speaker 1: the health crisis. He's former commissioner of the f d A.
Speaker 1: He's on the boards of Alumina, Tempest Visor, and more.
Speaker 1: He's also Resident Fellow at the Conservative Thing Tank, American
Speaker 1: Enterprise Institute, and a healthcare investor at New Enterprise Associates.
Speaker 1: He's got a new book out, Uncontrolled Spread, Why COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen crushed US and how we can defeat the next pandemic.
Speaker 1: We began by asking if the US could have done
Speaker 1: things differently when the crisis first began nearly two years ago.
Speaker 1: One thing we wanted to know if the nation had
Speaker 1: shut down early on in the pan Emmick, Let's say,
Speaker 1: for three months, really shut down, federal mandatory shutdown. Would
Speaker 1: we be in a better position today, And I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about the US for a moment. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know that. UM, if we had implemented the stay at
Speaker 1: home order a lot earlier would have made an appreciable difference,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it would have been warranted. Certainly,
Speaker 1: once we knew that there was very dense spread in
Speaker 1: cities like New York, we should have implemented the mitigation
Speaker 1: they stay at home recommendations earlier than we did. So
Speaker 1: we were a week or too late doing that in
Speaker 1: cities like New York. But the bigger problem was that
Speaker 1: we didn't have the ability to actually diagnose the inspection.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a diagnostic test employed at scale. It
Speaker 1: was it was something we could have done if we
Speaker 1: had proper planning. UM And because we didn't have a
Speaker 1: diagnostic test, not only did we not know how much
Speaker 1: spread was underway, So we were lying to the scope
Speaker 1: of the spread and we didn't know the true nature
Speaker 1: of the threat, and that's partly why we shut down late.
Speaker 1: But we didn't know where the virus wasn't there were
Speaker 1: parts of the country where COVID wasn't spreading yet, where
Speaker 1: we didn't have to implement the population wide mitigation, where
Speaker 1: we could still use test and tracing if we had
Speaker 1: a test employ to try to contain the spread, rather
Speaker 1: than telling everyone they had to stay in their homes. UM.
Speaker 1: So that the lack of the ability to actually figure
Speaker 1: out where the virus was but also where it wasn't
Speaker 1: led to the wrong policy decisions. Who made the right
Speaker 1: policy decisions at the time. What countries led the way,
Speaker 1: what countries are still leading the way. What's a good
Speaker 1: example of what we should have done. Yeah, at the time,
Speaker 1: South Korea, I think UM had probably the best initial response.
Speaker 1: I mean every country has gone through waves of infection
Speaker 1: and made mistakes along the way. UM. The US has
Speaker 1: been disproportionately impacted by this. This has been an asymmetric
Speaker 1: risk the United States. I think we've made a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of mistakes along the way. But South Korea,
Speaker 1: early on when the virus was first identified in China
Speaker 1: got together their private industry, their their diagnostic manufacturers and
Speaker 1: promised them in a very efficient process that they got
Speaker 1: into the market, started to manufacture diagnostic kids at scale.
Speaker 1: They promised that they would be purchased by the government UH,
Speaker 1: and they also stood up testing sites. They started to
Speaker 1: lay the foundations testing sites, and they actually put pioneered
Speaker 1: the use of drive through test sites. The first draw
Speaker 1: through testing sites were in South Korea. Because they were
Speaker 1: able to deploy diagnostic testing at a massive scale, they
Speaker 1: were able to identify their early infections, get people isolated,
Speaker 1: get people in quarantine UH and keep the country from
Speaker 1: becoming epidemic. The the epidemic really never took off in
Speaker 1: South Korea. I mean, they had subsequent waves of infection
Speaker 1: one D one seven and eventually a delta variants started
Speaker 1: to spread later on. But South Korea was on a
Speaker 1: similar trajectory of Italy and was able to contain it.
Speaker 1: Dr Gottley, why didn't we treat the warnings of a
Speaker 1: global pandemic that have been out there for years, so
Speaker 1: much so that there was a pandemic playbook conceived of
Speaker 1: during the Bush administration. Why wasn't that already in place.
Speaker 1: You've been on the inside, You've been involved in government
Speaker 1: on and off, I think since roughly two thousand three.
Speaker 1: Why didn't we have the follow through? And I'm curious
Speaker 1: the conversations that you had about this look, we had
Speaker 1: a pandemic playbook, right, We had prepped a pandemic contingency.
Speaker 1: In fact, the government had run a stimulation called Crimson
Speaker 1: Contagion just before COVID struck, which was a simulated pandemic.
Speaker 1: The problem is we had always prepped for a pandemic
Speaker 1: involving a flu. We never envisioned that a pandemic could
Speaker 1: be caused, certainly by a coronavirus. We never envisioned anything
Speaker 1: but influenza. And the playbook that we had written for
Speaker 1: flu wasn't fully applicable to a coronaus coronavirus or many
Speaker 1: things that were different about this virus and about any
Speaker 1: coronavirus that don't make the kinds of continguencies that you
Speaker 1: developed for flu um widely applicable for So for example,
Speaker 1: flu has a short incubation period, meaning that when you're
Speaker 1: exposed to it, you get sick from it pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: and typically you're not compagious until you develop symptoms. So
Speaker 1: trying to diagnose people who are asymptomatic carriers of the
Speaker 1: flu isn't a sufficient First of all, they're gonna, once
Speaker 1: they're exposed, are gonna become sick very quickly, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna be all identify them because they're going to have
Speaker 1: symptoms when they're contagious. They have symptoms with a coronavirus
Speaker 1: with a long incubation period, there's more of an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get someone diagnosed before they go on to spread
Speaker 1: the virus. And we also know that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of asymptomatic transmission with with the coronavirus with COVID, so
Speaker 1: it's more important to have a diagnostic test employ we
Speaker 1: are screening the population. So a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that we thought about that we're planned for flu weren't applicable.
Speaker 1: They do want to push you a little bit, Dr
Speaker 1: Gottlieb about what were the internal conversations you were having
Speaker 1: at your time uh in in the government when it
Speaker 1: comes to hey, folks, we gotta do something more serious.
Speaker 1: We gotta make sure we've got the right things in place. Yea.
Speaker 1: At the time that I was in government, we really
Speaker 1: didn't have our eye on anything but influenza. So how
Speaker 1: did we miss it? How did we miss it? Especially
Speaker 1: that since there's a lot of vaccine hunters that are
Speaker 1: out there that we've talked to a bunch here at Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: They've been looking at this and seeing things that are
Speaker 1: out there that could be significant problems. Yeah. Certainly, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, when the pandemic planning first began,
Speaker 1: that's when I was involved with it, we were really
Speaker 1: worried about a bird fill each five and one. At
Speaker 1: that point, coronavirus has really hadn't emerged. But after Stars
Speaker 1: and mirrors both emerged, we should have had the awareness
Speaker 1: that the coronaviruses were on the march, they were becoming
Speaker 1: more pathogenic, they were starting to threaten humans, and that
Speaker 1: a more contagious variation of stars could come along and
Speaker 1: threatened the entire globe. Really, what we should have been
Speaker 1: focused on is a broad category of viruses. Viruses that
Speaker 1: replicate through urna because the virus that replicates through RNA
Speaker 1: means that it can undergo rapid mutation, and viruses that
Speaker 1: could spread through respiratory droplets or aerosols. So those two features,
Speaker 1: viruses that replicate through ourn a and spread through aerosols
Speaker 1: or what make of give a virus the qualities that
Speaker 1: could create global contagion, And if you're looking at it
Speaker 1: through that lens, you're looking at that broad category that
Speaker 1: includes inpuenza for sure, but it also includes coronaviruses include nippovirus.
Speaker 1: It broadens the universe of the potential threats that could
Speaker 1: be the next pandemic. Dr Ghalib, you dedicate this book
Speaker 1: to your three daughters. Uh, you're a dad, and I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of parents listening right now want
Speaker 1: to know about risk tolerance and about the way that
Speaker 1: you are behaving and the way that you want your
Speaker 1: family to behave during a pandemic when perhaps some of
Speaker 1: kids are not vaccinated and some kids are old enough
Speaker 1: to be vaccinated. Uh, what is what are you doing
Speaker 1: with your family right now? What is safe to you?
Speaker 1: It's not safe to you. Yeah, Look, my kids are
Speaker 1: not vaccinated yet. They're not old enough to be vaccinated,
Speaker 1: are under the age of eleven. They will be vaccinated
Speaker 1: once they turn twelve and they're eligible. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the residual anxiety that people feel, people who
Speaker 1: are vaccinated feel right now around COVID is the risk
Speaker 1: that they're going to bring an asymptomatical modlely symtomatic infection
Speaker 1: back into the home, put their children at risk, or
Speaker 1: an elderly um parent at risk. Someone that they might
Speaker 1: be caring for who is a more significant risk of
Speaker 1: having a bad outcome from COVID. I think once the
Speaker 1: vaccine can be extended to children, a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are vaccinated themselves and don't feel personally at risk
Speaker 1: and COVID, that they feel reasonably confident that they were
Speaker 1: to get infected, that they're going to be protected from
Speaker 1: a severe outcome. I think they feel more confident about
Speaker 1: going out and about, and that's why I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are still cautious. People who are vaccinated
Speaker 1: probably overestimate their risk. In some cases, they're probably more
Speaker 1: protected than what they perceived. People are unvaccinated, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: I think are underestimating their risk. They're probably a much
Speaker 1: more risk and COVID than they perceive. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the residual anxiety people feel around the
Speaker 1: virus is around kids, and hopefully we'll have a vaccine
Speaker 1: for children very soon. And I have to be quite
Speaker 1: honest with you, Tim, and I talked about this every
Speaker 1: day with doctors, UH and the medical community. I think
Speaker 1: there is a feeling like I got the Visor vaccine,
Speaker 1: I got the Madura vaccine, like there is a feeling
Speaker 1: that one is better than another. You've got a huge
Speaker 1: audience right now, a global audience. I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you say to them, how do we understand especially as
Speaker 1: we continue to see studies out there, officials, regulations you know,
Speaker 1: come in about these, uh, these vaccines. Yes, it's not
Speaker 1: what the data shows when you can pull any one
Speaker 1: study and try to make a claim that one vaccine
Speaker 1: might be slightly more beneficial than another vaccine in terms
Speaker 1: of its long term efficacy or the absolute potency of
Speaker 1: what of the effective says delivering. But the totality of
Speaker 1: data really shows that these vaccines are interchangeable and and
Speaker 1: all of providing durable protection and they're all doing their job.
Speaker 1: They're fulfilling the original premise. Remember the original premise of
Speaker 1: these vaccines, with that they would protect you against severe
Speaker 1: disease and hospitalization. And all the vaccines are proving very
Speaker 1: effective at that. I think something really frustrating to a
Speaker 1: lot of people right now. Dr Gottlieb is, uh, there's
Speaker 1: still you know, you write about the lack of real
Speaker 1: time testing and available testing. Even almost two years into
Speaker 1: when we first discovered this, I still walk into a
Speaker 1: drug store and I cannot get a Binance test right
Speaker 1: one of those from Elliott Labs, and I can't order
Speaker 1: them online this the availability is still not there. So
Speaker 1: you write about it in your book How to Prepare
Speaker 1: for the Next Pandemic. We're still not getting through through
Speaker 1: this one right now. We're still not learning the lessons
Speaker 1: that we should have learned almost two years ago. Now.
Speaker 1: The problem is that we didn't. We didn't scale the
Speaker 1: production of the tests that consumers prefer. What consumers want
Speaker 1: are at home tests that they can deploy themselves that
Speaker 1: are easy to use where they can get a readable
Speaker 1: result right in the privacy of their home. A lot
Speaker 1: of the tests that are available in the market that
Speaker 1: aren't selling out are the ones that either require you
Speaker 1: to send the swab off overnight so you don't get
Speaker 1: an inscontinuous result, or you have to upload some data
Speaker 1: that the test reads out to get a result on
Speaker 1: your iPhone and therefore you're boding the result to an authority.
Speaker 1: People want to be able to test themselves within the
Speaker 1: private theory of their own home and make a determination
Speaker 1: what they do with that result. And those are the
Speaker 1: binets now tests to your point, which is selling out,
Speaker 1: the Luomera tests, which isn't available, So the test that
Speaker 1: consumers want are the ones that aren't available. I think
Speaker 1: companies probably miscalculated and didn't fully appreciate what consumer preferences
Speaker 1: would be. But the reality is that this is a
Speaker 1: completely new category. The whole idea of making at home
Speaker 1: tests available to diagnose patients for infectious diseases, that's a
Speaker 1: new category. That's former FDA commissioner and board member at
Speaker 1: the gene sequencing company Alumina, also the big farmer company Fiser.
Speaker 1: He's also a healthcare investor, and of course his new
Speaker 1: book it's out now. It's called Uncontrolled Spread, Why COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic.
Speaker 1: That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser
Speaker 1: and I'm tamst Out. Of that coming up in our
Speaker 1: next hour, our next wave of critical technological advancements well
Speaker 1: there within reach. We're going to explore some of them,
Speaker 1: including the race to mind more cobalt so we can
Speaker 1: produce better batteries to power us into the future. That's
Speaker 1: our domestic cover story. It's all part of the Sooner
Speaker 1: than You Think issue, plus Peter Teel's singular legacy in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley it definitely continues to grow. A new book
Speaker 1: by our own Max Chaffkin explores the tech entrepreneurs vast
Speaker 1: influence in California and Washington, d C. As well. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the
Speaker 1: reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine,
Speaker 1: plus global business, finance and tech news. As it happened,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes
Speaker 1: Tim Stinovin on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, I'm Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Stanova. Plenny Head in our second hour of
Speaker 1: the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including our own
Speaker 1: Max Chafkin on his just released book, The Contrarian, Peter
Speaker 1: Teel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. Plus how Amazon's
Speaker 1: most prolific fulfillment center is using robots and algorithms to
Speaker 1: ship out more than one million packages a day. Also,
Speaker 1: the White House has planned to bring high speed and
Speaker 1: access to rural America. First up this hour, our domestic
Speaker 1: cover story. It's about the search for a better battery.
Speaker 1: It's part of our sooner than you think issue. When
Speaker 1: we look at the latest achievements in technology that are
Speaker 1: changing the way we live across the globe. Change is
Speaker 1: already happening to do that. Let's bring in at Jeff Muscus.
Speaker 1: He's a features editor at Bloomberg business Week. Lots to
Speaker 1: discuss with him this cover story about Drake Bennett. Jeff,
Speaker 1: let's talk about batteries and specifically what goes into them, cobalt.
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people think about that
Speaker 1: when they plug their phones in, or if they have
Speaker 1: an electric car, plug their car into charge it. Why
Speaker 1: is cobalt so important to battery production and where are
Speaker 1: we're finding it? Thanks guys, Yeah, I'm proud of this
Speaker 1: one by Drake. Cobalt is one of the most critical elements,
Speaker 1: along with nicol and lethium and and full of other
Speaker 1: rare metals that go into our phones. And we'll go
Speaker 1: into the next one point to billion electric batteries that
Speaker 1: we need to replace the world's internal combustion vehicles. But
Speaker 1: it's also one of the more conflicted medals on the planet.
Speaker 1: Most of the known reserves flying under Congo countries, you know,
Speaker 1: plagued by corruption and frequent wars, and we're mining often
Speaker 1: occurs in dangerous, deadly conditions and not infrequently is done
Speaker 1: by kids. You get into um or Drake, I should say,
Speaker 1: gets into this story and says, you know, there's kind
Speaker 1: of two ways of looking at this. We need more cobalts.
Speaker 1: So there's either finding more cobalt, most of which, as
Speaker 1: you said, is in the Congo, or figuring out how
Speaker 1: to use less. That's kind of the two ways of
Speaker 1: looking at it. That's right. And uh. For this storage
Speaker 1: Rake went both to the lab at University of Texas
Speaker 1: at Austin, where the team of people, some of whom
Speaker 1: have been working on this problem for decades or I
Speaker 1: feel like they're they're getting close to cobalt out of
Speaker 1: the batteries to some degree or or perhaps entirely. And
Speaker 1: he also jetted up to the far Arctic North where
Speaker 1: people are trying to figure out how to find cobalt
Speaker 1: smarter and without having to rely on exploitative labor. So
Speaker 1: what happens. First, do do we figure out a way
Speaker 1: to to develop high quality batteries without cobalt, or or
Speaker 1: do we figure out a way to mine cobalt in
Speaker 1: a in a in a way that is sustainable and
Speaker 1: and and doesn't involve conflicted areas. We kind of got
Speaker 1: to do everything at once. The problem is so urgent
Speaker 1: because solving the climate crisis require requires solving the battery problem,
Speaker 1: which requires a large degree solving the cobalt problem. UM.
Speaker 1: People are sort of trying these two tax and a
Speaker 1: few others simultaneously. Some people are trying to recycle cobalt
Speaker 1: out and spend batteries at a better rate than we
Speaker 1: properly can right now. Other people are rethinking or processing
Speaker 1: to try to make that more cost effective. UM. And
Speaker 1: some people are trying to u do deep sea mining
Speaker 1: on the on the ocean floor, which has its son
Speaker 1: environmental consequences. But UM, these two approaches finding you know,
Speaker 1: a smarter way to find cobalt in the ground, in
Speaker 1: ways to build batteries so that you you don't need
Speaker 1: the cobalt so much, and it seems like the most promising. Hey, Jeff,
Speaker 1: I do feel like there's a theme, at least for
Speaker 1: some of the stories that are in the sooner than
Speaker 1: you think issues, and that has to do with scarcity.
Speaker 1: You're talking about scarcity when it comes to cobalt for batteries,
Speaker 1: um also increasingly scarce. And I want to get to
Speaker 1: another story in the issue by Liz Done is water.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about we learned a lot about water arrogation
Speaker 1: as a result of this story. LOSES piece focused on
Speaker 1: micro drip irrigation from a company in in Israel that
Speaker 1: now is making its way into the parched American Southwest.
Speaker 1: There's also, you know, like this battery story is based
Speaker 1: on a technology that we've sort of, you know, known
Speaker 1: for decades, We've we've needed some version of and that
Speaker 1: now you know, now that every summer is the hottest
Speaker 1: on record, and California's experiencing record wildfires every year or
Speaker 1: two is becoming much more urgent. Um And so this piece,
Speaker 1: which focuses on a kind of trip irrigation that has
Speaker 1: been largely theoretical for most of the past century until
Speaker 1: the addition of this tiny plastic widget, it seems to
Speaker 1: make it all much more cost effective. Carol mentioned the
Speaker 1: theme of scarcity. You touched on it, and we're also
Speaker 1: talking about the scarcity. I think this is going to
Speaker 1: be surprising to a lot of people listening. It certainly
Speaker 1: was to me, but more than a hundred million Americans. Jeff.
Speaker 1: As Austin Carr points out and in his feature about
Speaker 1: broadband Internet access, million Americans do not have access to
Speaker 1: high speed internet, and I'm curious what what the US
Speaker 1: government is doing or finally doing, in order to try
Speaker 1: to get these people connected. Well, the good news for
Speaker 1: the those hundred and twenty millionaires so Americans is that
Speaker 1: there are tens of billions of dollars in the biden
Speaker 1: omymous spending bills on the table right now that would
Speaker 1: go to finally closing the digital divide and bringing these
Speaker 1: um people into a meaningful version of the twenty one
Speaker 1: century digital world. Problem that Austin found is he towards
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Delta, is that, you know, that's still a
Speaker 1: price tag that might fall short if we're talking just
Speaker 1: about extending, you know, fiber optic cables from the telecom
Speaker 1: companies to everybody's house, and so what some small telecoms
Speaker 1: are doing throughout the the Americans, South and elsewhere. As
Speaker 1: Austin writes in the piece, UH taking more of a
Speaker 1: kitchen sync approach to UM plant relays on the top
Speaker 1: of tall radio towers, or UH use wireless networks that
Speaker 1: can extend um the equivalent of cabled people who I
Speaker 1: can't get it. There's a lot of moving parts to
Speaker 1: all of this, and as you said, Austin gets into
Speaker 1: all of it. Hey, listen, Thank you so much. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week Features editor Jeff Muscus. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week coming up. Machines are running the show at
Speaker 1: Amazon's flagship fulfilment center, and they're forever impacting the jobs
Speaker 1: of humans in the process taking care of it all
Speaker 1: robots and algorithms. We go inside the e commerce giants
Speaker 1: test lab that chips more than a million packages a day.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Robots and algorithms they are taking over, Tim. They're probably
Speaker 1: coming for our job as well. I hope, I certainly
Speaker 1: hope not because I don't bosses, please don't listen. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but are they as delightful as you? Carol? Probably not.
Speaker 1: Definitely start talking about the bf I for facility where
Speaker 1: machines are literally running the show. Bloomberg News Technology reporter
Speaker 1: Matt day takes us inside the massive facility along with
Speaker 1: Bloomberg business Week editor Joel Weber. The significance of this
Speaker 1: is that this was the first fulfillment center that was
Speaker 1: able to process more than a million packages a day,
Speaker 1: and so obviously that, you know, once they optimized that,
Speaker 1: it was like what else can we take it? Um
Speaker 1: and And the secret to that, though, as Matt has revealed,
Speaker 1: is that there's a lot of algorithms. There's a few robots,
Speaker 1: and the humans work for all of them, right, Matt, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Honestly, the starting point for this story, I
Speaker 1: met a guy who used to work at Amazon, went
Speaker 1: and jump somewhere else. He said, Man, I'm doing so
Speaker 1: many things that I never had to do back when
Speaker 1: I was at an Amazon warehouse. It just automated all
Speaker 1: of that for me. Well, tell us more as you
Speaker 1: walk um BF I four, which is this massive fulfillment
Speaker 1: center outside uh Seattle, tell us about it. Did you
Speaker 1: go visit it? Yeah, it's the place I've been a
Speaker 1: couple of times over over the years writing about Amazon.
Speaker 1: You know, as Joel said, they'd love to have folks
Speaker 1: in the tours. They're really proud of the facility. It's
Speaker 1: just a big exurban rectangle side the fifteen football field
Speaker 1: to go in, and there's this kind of low hum.
Speaker 1: But the weird thing for me is it's kind of quiet.
Speaker 1: Everybody's sort of in their own station. You know, most people,
Speaker 1: probably by number, are are putting something in a shelf
Speaker 1: um that's brought to them by a robot, or recreating
Speaker 1: something from a shelf and sending on down the line. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, a couple of thousand people a day just
Speaker 1: you know, doing roughly most of them the same task
Speaker 1: over and over again, whether it's picking something off the shelf,
Speaker 1: putting in a package, and taking orders from from a
Speaker 1: smartphone app all time. What does your instinct tell you
Speaker 1: about a facility like this when you walk inside it
Speaker 1: and you see it, does it seem like, given the
Speaker 1: number of packages it's able to process a day, does
Speaker 1: it seem like more people should be there? You know,
Speaker 1: it really does. Um that the places is a there's
Speaker 1: a low hum, but it is kind of, you really quiet,
Speaker 1: like you would you would assume, hearing figures like a
Speaker 1: million packages the day, that there'll be more more frenzy.
Speaker 1: But Amazon's just got it down to such a science
Speaker 1: that everyone's just sort of, you know, quietly going about
Speaker 1: their business that at their station, um, quietly working for
Speaker 1: algorithms and robots. So what is the human toll of
Speaker 1: that they even told that, Well, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: working in an Amazon warehouses often an unpleasant place and
Speaker 1: has been been widely reported. Um. Amazon's productivity tracking systems
Speaker 1: are a real precise right. They can tell when you're working,
Speaker 1: They can tell when you put down the scanner, you know.
Speaker 1: So if you're in one of these frontline jobs, there's
Speaker 1: always this voice you know sometimes that it's just literally
Speaker 1: account countdown clock on your workstation telling you, um, you know,
Speaker 1: exactly what they expect you to be able to do.
Speaker 1: And Amazon, the very aggressive company, sets that target real high. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the life for the front line. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that interested me, especially given that
Speaker 1: that story is so well known, as so, what the
Speaker 1: heck to managers do in this construct? Right? If if
Speaker 1: these people are working kind of self directed, what what
Speaker 1: are the people you know, at the top of the
Speaker 1: pyramid in a building like this, what do they all
Speaker 1: do all day? Well, they need to manage a lot
Speaker 1: more people, right do um? And and a lot of
Speaker 1: what they do is HR essentially. You know, they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to take it the best out of people. They're
Speaker 1: trying to troubleshoot when something goes wrong, you know, just
Speaker 1: because again all of the software whizzes that Amazon have
Speaker 1: taken taken things out of their hands. Right, they don't
Speaker 1: do um staffing planning at a at a granular way.
Speaker 1: A lot of you know, warehouses in any company will
Speaker 1: do right. Most places you go to work and you
Speaker 1: know the boss or the schedule tells you where to
Speaker 1: go here, the schedules gripped up by by algorithm. Right,
Speaker 1: there's just so much that's been taken off their shoulders
Speaker 1: kind of with the aim of getting getting this this
Speaker 1: thin line of managers to effectively manage thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of people. Just real basic question. What's b F I
Speaker 1: four stand for? What? What is that? So it is
Speaker 1: a reference to uh an airport in Seattle called Boeing Field.
Speaker 1: Every every Amazon building across the country takes its name
Speaker 1: from from whatever the regional airport is. There was a
Speaker 1: big question I forgot to ask during the edit confessional.
Speaker 1: But you get to know how the sausage is made.
Speaker 1: The other thing is you know, obviously this is somewhat
Speaker 1: of the secret weapon for Amazon and allowed them to
Speaker 1: really become such a dominant company. But how does this
Speaker 1: automation compare with you know, the Walmarts and the targets
Speaker 1: of the world that that compete with them. Folks are
Speaker 1: definitely closing the gap. Um. Amazon has you know, built
Speaker 1: a lot of its technology, It's bought a lot of
Speaker 1: its technology. We read about their their similar acquisition of
Speaker 1: a little robot maker called Kiva back in twelve that
Speaker 1: gave him a real big head start. Um. But companies,
Speaker 1: you know are imitating what Amazon does and they are
Speaker 1: closing that gap. Right. Amazon's biggest advantage a few years
Speaker 1: ago was getting things out of these buildings as fast
Speaker 1: as they can. You know, today they're looking for for
Speaker 1: secrets also so well, just because you know, the targets
Speaker 1: of the world, the Walmarts of the world are are
Speaker 1: kind of taking their cues from Amazon's roboti sized fulfillment
Speaker 1: and imputment in their own operations. Not from a financial perspective,
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal for for any company that has this
Speaker 1: many employees is to reduce the number of employees because
Speaker 1: they're so expensive. Help us see into the future and
Speaker 1: Amazon's ability to actually automate nearly everything. Amazon has a
Speaker 1: set aside. Full automation has a long term goal. Um,
Speaker 1: it's something there their technology teams and their robotists are
Speaker 1: working towards. I think realistically they don't see that as
Speaker 1: practical for a long long time. Um, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they can't get savings along the way, right. We
Speaker 1: we talked to some folks who had entied into their
Speaker 1: key acquisition and said they saved something like on labor
Speaker 1: costs in the first implementations of their their robots come
Speaker 1: to people, um operating methods. So there's there's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot of costs that that Amazon can look to reduce,
Speaker 1: you know, without going kind of that that dream of
Speaker 1: of a fully automated to samably that doesn't require any
Speaker 1: any humans at all. So how much better has this
Speaker 1: stuff gotten with with practice in time? Is there any
Speaker 1: sense of that? We do know that how to call it?
Speaker 1: In an a five or six year period, they were
Speaker 1: maybe three times as fast. Right, it's date of the
Speaker 1: art warehouse. Um, you know, roughly a decade ago was
Speaker 1: doing something like three hundred thousand items a day. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned, kicking us off. This facility can do them
Speaker 1: billion plus that that stat though, I put an afterston
Speaker 1: that's getting a couple of years old now, so it
Speaker 1: would not surprise me at all of Amazon is setting
Speaker 1: a new threshold and just just isn't quite ready to
Speaker 1: brack about it yet, all right, So to be feared
Speaker 1: or imitated or both, it's certainly both depending on depending
Speaker 1: on your line of work. But yeah, they've definitely reshaped
Speaker 1: warehousing in their image with this kind of technology. That's
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News tech reporter Matt Day along with the editor
Speaker 1: of the magazine, Joel Weber. Check out Matt story. It's
Speaker 1: featured in the Sooner Than You Think issue still to
Speaker 1: come on Bloomberg Business Weeks um startling data on the
Speaker 1: number of Americans who lack high speed internet access. You
Speaker 1: heard Jeff Muscus talk about this a little bit. What
Speaker 1: some small telecoms are doing throughout the the American South
Speaker 1: and elsewhere is taking more of occasion sync approach to
Speaker 1: plant relays on the top of tall radio towers or
Speaker 1: uh use wireless networks that can extend um the equivalent
Speaker 1: of cabled people who We're going to get more of
Speaker 1: that story and what the Biden administration is doing to
Speaker 1: change all of that. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the
Speaker 1: financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Frio in New
Speaker 1: York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one
Speaker 1: oh six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to
Speaker 1: the country Sirius XM Chado one nine team, and around
Speaker 1: the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week and so as your Heart.
Speaker 1: Earlier from our features editor Jeff Muskist, one of your
Speaker 1: twenty million Americans are currently without access to high speed
Speaker 1: internet in the United States. It's a number that the
Speaker 1: Biden administration is really trying to bring down with some
Speaker 1: help from the private sector. Tim The story is featured
Speaker 1: in the Business Week Sooner Than You Think issue, and
Speaker 1: the man who wrote the story is Bloomberg News tech
Speaker 1: reporter Austin Carr. He joined us to help us understand
Speaker 1: the country's digital divide. It's just a different world than
Speaker 1: uh the Internet have have experienced versus the Internet have
Speaker 1: not you Where I went to in the Arkansas Delta,
Speaker 1: which is about you know, a couple hours outside of
Speaker 1: Little Rock, very remote, very rural parts, high poverty rates,
Speaker 1: low density population. And you know, only recently one of
Speaker 1: the internet providers I talked with had just turned off
Speaker 1: their dial up internet which they had been, you know,
Speaker 1: charging fifty cents per hours. It's just a different world.
Speaker 1: You don't realize that they can't stream Netflix there, they
Speaker 1: can't do Zoom, they can't book a COVID appointment if
Speaker 1: they don't have internet access. And so what I want
Speaker 1: to show with the story is what it looks like
Speaker 1: on the ground as Washington considers tackling this digital divide
Speaker 1: with the Infrastructure or Spending bill, which is making its
Speaker 1: way through through Congress right now. It is through the
Speaker 1: House as well, and they're considering spending tens of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars on broadband deployment subsidies and giving us potentially
Speaker 1: the best shot in many years that a really narrowing
Speaker 1: the gap. And the big debate is how do we
Speaker 1: actually do that, what technologies do we invest in? Uh,
Speaker 1: what's the best bang for our buck? And a story
Speaker 1: shows what it's like, what the reality is like in
Speaker 1: places like rural Arkansas and what you saw in the
Speaker 1: cat Skills of how much it takes to actually close
Speaker 1: that divide with infrastructure on the ground, Well, how much
Speaker 1: does it take? Because in order for my friends, and
Speaker 1: I'd actually spent a lot of time on Saturday night
Speaker 1: talking to them about this because this is the first
Speaker 1: time I had visited them in the seven years that
Speaker 1: they've lived up there that they had high speed internet.
Speaker 1: Every other time they've relied on a satellite to actually
Speaker 1: get them internet access, and they were capped at fifteen
Speaker 1: gigs a month, which is really nothing. I mean, people
Speaker 1: use fifteen gigs a month, uh in a day if
Speaker 1: they're streaming something high definition or in a couple of days. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and I wonder about the way that technology has
Speaker 1: changed because they actually got cable laid down, which is
Speaker 1: very expensive. But you see companies like Starlink Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: satellite company being able to offer potentially lower cost solutions.
Speaker 1: So what's the technology needed here and how much has
Speaker 1: it cost? So if the Arkansas Delta, that the big
Speaker 1: debate is how much do you spend on fiber, which
Speaker 1: is the gold standard. That's what you have with every
Speaker 1: high speed internet pretty much and every your wealth or
Speaker 1: urban part of America at this point, um or do
Speaker 1: you invest in sort of a riskier technology like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's Starling satellites which orbit uh lower part over the
Speaker 1: Earth and zap coverage from space. There's five G home Internet,
Speaker 1: which is sort of a home based version of what
Speaker 1: you get from say T Mobile or a T n
Speaker 1: T or Verizon UM or their fixed wireless tools, which
Speaker 1: like Citizen Broadband Radio service, which is actually what a
Speaker 1: bunch of the local Internet providers in Arkansas are using
Speaker 1: these days. Uh. It's a wireless spectrum historically used by
Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy to to sort of beam radar transmissions,
Speaker 1: and the SEC has repurposed that spectrum for commercial use,
Speaker 1: allowing local players to sort of beam Internet coverage using
Speaker 1: radio antennas, which sounds kind of old school, but it
Speaker 1: works for up to six miles. It's not as fast
Speaker 1: or reliable as fiber, but it gives decent speeds and
Speaker 1: costs a fraction of physically wiring up every home in America.
Speaker 1: And so that that's really comes down to this cost
Speaker 1: benefit analysis of in rural In rural Arkansas, I'm told
Speaker 1: it can cost fifty thou are more to get a
Speaker 1: fiber optic cable uh laid into the ground, and that's
Speaker 1: not including trenching costs or construction, etcetera. Um, And so
Speaker 1: how much are you willing to invest in that versus
Speaker 1: a far cheaper but maybe less reliable technology that might
Speaker 1: not be relevant ten years, that might need to be
Speaker 1: eventually replaced in fiber. Hey, Austin, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: other side of this coin? Here? The the economic cost
Speaker 1: of not having these more than one million Americans connected
Speaker 1: with broadband internet? What is I mean? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a tragic cost. I'm not sure if it's it
Speaker 1: must be difficult to quantify, but it's something that the
Speaker 1: reason there's been more emphasis on this subject is because
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic um. You know, prior to
Speaker 1: to the pandemic um, you know a lot of folks
Speaker 1: that it said that any infrastructure bill that came up,
Speaker 1: it was always about investing in roads or bridges or railroads.
Speaker 1: And when I talked to the Rural Broadband Association, they
Speaker 1: just kept saying, Hey, it's also in addition to roads
Speaker 1: and bridges, it's also broadband. And that didn't change the
Speaker 1: Congress's perspective on that didn't really change until the COVID pandemic,
Speaker 1: when suddenly they realized employers couldn't have people working from
Speaker 1: home because they couldn't access zoom, or kids couldn't work
Speaker 1: from home and do their homework because they didn't have
Speaker 1: uh Internet access. But that that's why this is this
Speaker 1: debate is really coming to the forefront right now in
Speaker 1: the Infrastructure Bill of trying to solve that digital divide,
Speaker 1: because man, we saw that during the pandemic that the
Speaker 1: US is just not prepared for a remote society. That's
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Technology reporter Austin Carr. So many images at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic when kids went to remote learning,
Speaker 1: of kids, you know, outside of McDonald's or as Austin
Speaker 1: talked about, outside of community center because that's where high
Speaker 1: speed internet was. The image of kids having to have
Speaker 1: fans on them because they were outside in hot weather.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a stark reminder of where we
Speaker 1: are as a country when it comes to the digital
Speaker 1: divide exactly. It's definitely too a must read. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg business Week coming up, We're gonna welcome in
Speaker 1: Business Week Features editor Max Chafkin, who is at with
Speaker 1: a new book, The Contrarian Peter Tile and Silicon Valleys
Speaker 1: Pursuit of Power. It's all about the PayPal and Palentteer
Speaker 1: co founder and his rise to power to become one
Speaker 1: of Big TeX's most influential figures. This is Bloomberg. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Billionaire investor, technology
Speaker 1: innovator and disruptor and Trump supporter. These are always to
Speaker 1: describe Peter til You might recall last week's cover story.
Speaker 1: It focused on the Silicon Valley star, and it was
Speaker 1: an excerpt from a new book out by Business Week
Speaker 1: Features editor Max Chafkin. It's called The Contrarian Peter Teal
Speaker 1: and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power, An inside look at
Speaker 1: Teal's rise from successful entrepreneur to big tech power broker
Speaker 1: and Max joined on the day of the book's release.
Speaker 1: Check it out. You know, it's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: cool time to be having these conversations. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: last week there was this kind of series of stories
Speaker 1: about Facebook, you know, all these Blockbuster wall street journal stories,
Speaker 1: all the ways that Facebook is kind of and maybe
Speaker 1: to put it gently, maybe ignoring their responsibilities to society
Speaker 1: and UM And I think, you know, teal as this
Speaker 1: long time Facebook board member, longest serving board member, is
Speaker 1: a good sort of way into that. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: you bring that up, and you remind me of really
Speaker 1: the beginning of your book, which talks about the way
Speaker 1: that technology has changed, especially in the context of the
Speaker 1: way we think about it. I think you wrote the
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley was supposed to save us. Yeah, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: I think that that is kind of maybe the key
Speaker 1: to understanding a lot of these UM stories. So back
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen or twenty years ago when Facebook in particular,
Speaker 1: but a lot of these stuff, uh Silicon Valley companies
Speaker 1: were really small, kind of these insurgent, you know, troublemakers.
Speaker 1: You know, there was this attitude of like, you know,
Speaker 1: the rules don't matter, We're just gonna do our thing.
Speaker 1: And and you know, the face Facebook model famously puts this,
Speaker 1: um you know, uh whatever, it's it's all about disruption
Speaker 1: and and stuff. So so I think that that attitude
Speaker 1: has kind of been spun forward, and these companies now
Speaker 1: are are basically being held to account for for that attitude,
Speaker 1: that the embrace of disruption as an as an end
Speaker 1: for its own sake. So I want to go back
Speaker 1: to that. I remember when everybody it started coming out
Speaker 1: that Peter Teal was kind of buddy with Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and we started seeing the pictures of it, and it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of a wait, what moment for me, Like, wait,
Speaker 1: these two guys get along, what is the relationship. So there,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to know exactly what the relationship is.
Speaker 1: But but but let me give you a couple of of points.
Speaker 1: I mean, Teal was, um, you know, the first, you know,
Speaker 1: big deal business person to support Donald Trump. If you
Speaker 1: look down the list of you know, kind of speakers
Speaker 1: at the Republican National mentioned in T sixteen, there are
Speaker 1: some big business names, but they tended to be kind
Speaker 1: of from real estate or from kind of these marginal
Speaker 1: industries where Trump maybe had a relationship. So you had,
Speaker 1: you know, the UFC guy, you had Tom Barrick, you
Speaker 1: know whatever these are. The is are big, yeah, the
Speaker 1: pillow my pillow guy. Um, but Till kind of brings
Speaker 1: an added level of stature as this big deal venture capitalist.
Speaker 1: Now that got him on the inside. You know, he
Speaker 1: is not characature logically, if that's a word, he is not.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot in common with Trump. He's
Speaker 1: very introverted, he's not boastful. On the other hand, the
Speaker 1: thing that was core to Trump's candidacy, I think, and
Speaker 1: to Trump's appeals this idea that he's going to say
Speaker 1: the things that the elites are afraid to say, and
Speaker 1: that that is something that Peter Teal has cared about
Speaker 1: all his life. And you see it in his sort
Speaker 1: of business dealings, um, you know, he he has embraced
Speaker 1: these companies that are all about disrupting the status quo,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of messing with existing institutions, and in
Speaker 1: his political dealings where he's kind of embraced these, you know,
Speaker 1: basically provocateurs. Max, I want to talk more about politics
Speaker 1: in just a second, but I want to get an
Speaker 1: understanding for how Peter til the Peter Teal that we
Speaker 1: see today, the Peter tell I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans met for the first time during the Republican
Speaker 1: National Convention and he spoke there in support of of
Speaker 1: of then Canada Trump. When what was that the point
Speaker 1: that he became that Peter Till. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: built over you know, a couple of decades, and it
Speaker 1: it kind of started. I mean, you know, you go
Speaker 1: all the way back to his childhood. I do in
Speaker 1: the book. I mean he was you know, smart, introverted guy,
Speaker 1: bullied as a kid and and kind of um basically
Speaker 1: pours a lot of that grievance, maybe you would call
Speaker 1: it into this kind of activist career at the Stanford Review,
Speaker 1: which was a right wing newspaper he started at Stanford
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Um, there's a lot of this going on. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, at the time, there were other it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty similar to like the Dartmouth Review and the and
Speaker 1: the Cornell Review. They're a bunch of these kind of
Speaker 1: conservative bomb throwers. And Til does something almost very odd,
Speaker 1: which is then sort of after bumping around um in
Speaker 1: law and banking, goes to Silicon Valley and and starts
Speaker 1: PayPal and then the pay and then these PayPal co founders,
Speaker 1: many of whom came from the Stanford Review, Um, basically
Speaker 1: you know, joined in with him and and they and
Speaker 1: they they become this kind of disruptive gang of of
Speaker 1: of troublemakers and and of and and of you know,
Speaker 1: world builders, people who are investing in the most interesting,
Speaker 1: most profitable, most powerful companies, um and and what and
Speaker 1: as he's as his profile raises, he you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's still involved in that kind of conservative, you know,
Speaker 1: political world. And I think that's what we saw, you know,
Speaker 1: at the Republican National Convention. Teel speech, you know, while
Speaker 1: not necessarily very polished, I think is a really important moment,
Speaker 1: you know, both for like the history of the Trump presidency,
Speaker 1: but also as like, you know, the first openly gay
Speaker 1: person to acknowledge that at Republican Convention. He got a
Speaker 1: round of applause um. And also his critique of Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton in support of Trump was kind of a very
Speaker 1: smart formulation that I think was useful to Trump, which
Speaker 1: is that Trump is somebody who's going to blow up
Speaker 1: the system. The government's not working. And and I think
Speaker 1: Teel you know, served a really valuable person per us
Speaker 1: both the Trump and to the Republican Party. Which is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting day where we talked to Bill Ferries
Speaker 1: covering Joe Biden at the u N where Biden is
Speaker 1: kind of disrupting some of those old relationships. We thought
Speaker 1: it we could get back to normal. We continue to
Speaker 1: kind of see that out there and force I wonder
Speaker 1: what Peter Tail's all about. What's his endgame here, especially
Speaker 1: as he you know, he's a disruptor, and yet he's
Speaker 1: back in political candidates. That feels like a much more
Speaker 1: traditional route for a leader. So I think he's got
Speaker 1: kind of two endgames. Tell um we're as we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, during the break. You know, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a hedge fund guy at heart, and he wants to
Speaker 1: find good investments and and you know, and optimize his
Speaker 1: portfolio and continue to grow his network. So he's continuing
Speaker 1: to invest. But but of course, unlike a lot of
Speaker 1: hedge fund guys, um Til also has a political project.
Speaker 1: And I think the political project is very much in
Speaker 1: line with his work as an investor, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of what makes him interesting. It's fairly unusual, although not
Speaker 1: of course unprecedented, because that's very similar to what like
Speaker 1: the Koch brothers did um for for at least for
Speaker 1: a long time. Now. What he's doing now is trying
Speaker 1: to cultivate what you might think of as the post
Speaker 1: Trump wing of the Republican Party. So so these are
Speaker 1: people who voted for Trump, who are really into Trump
Speaker 1: is um um and and who want to see it continue.
Speaker 1: And and Peter Teal is one of those people. I
Speaker 1: mean he he has, you know, embraced the ideological component
Speaker 1: of Trump is um if not totally. You know, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and the candidates he's backing. So they're two big
Speaker 1: ones right now. One is Ja d vance and who's
Speaker 1: running for senator Ohio, and the other is Blake Masters,
Speaker 1: who's running for Senate in Arizona. Teal has given ten
Speaker 1: million bucks to each of them for each each has
Speaker 1: a superpack and they are really running as kind of
Speaker 1: ideological extensions of Peter Teal's worldview, Like their their positions
Speaker 1: are very much in line with his ideas and also
Speaker 1: some of his business priorities. You know, it's j. D Vance, uh,
Speaker 1: not too long ago put out a statement, you know,
Speaker 1: in support of crypto and it's it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that in Ohio populist supports crypto um and yes Teal
Speaker 1: supported Trump, and yes, Trump kind of left the White House,
Speaker 1: you know, in not under the best circumstances, of course,
Speaker 1: a pandemic and insurrection. But Teal, in a weird way,
Speaker 1: I think is in an even better position now than
Speaker 1: he was in both Masters and Advance you know, kind
Speaker 1: of work for him. Masters is is still an executive
Speaker 1: at Teal's hedge fund, at the family office that that
Speaker 1: manages Teal's macro investments, and still works at the Teal Foundation.
Speaker 1: Jade Vance worked for Teal. They've invested alongside one another. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these men may or may not lose. But
Speaker 1: the sort of Peter Teal as a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: power player that is going to continue. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, he could play a really big role, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of shaping the direction of the country.
Speaker 1: And you know, potentially beyond that, is that his legacy
Speaker 1: beyond business, I mean from from Stanford to to pay
Speaker 1: Pal to palanteer uh to you know, before that suing gawker,
Speaker 1: Like what what what's next for him? What's his legacy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I think his legacy is this again,
Speaker 1: that this far right conservative project, which includes, um, you know,
Speaker 1: hawkishness on immigration, like that's that's a big part of it. Um.
Speaker 1: It also includes the kind of nationalism um, which again
Speaker 1: is very strange for somebody as a libertarian. UM. But
Speaker 1: and and and probably most importantly it includes you know,
Speaker 1: the elevation of these you know, disruptive companies. I mean
Speaker 1: you brought up Palentteer. That's a great one, and Palentteer
Speaker 1: has grown tremendously over the last um five years. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's on its way. If if it's not
Speaker 1: already becoming one of the main defense contractors. Got to
Speaker 1: ask you would Peter Till not be as interesting if
Speaker 1: Donald Trump hadn't come along and you hadn't seen that
Speaker 1: relationship in your view, no, yeah, percent, if he had
Speaker 1: just stayed a Silicon Valley guy and just continued to
Speaker 1: be you know, the investor in Silicon Valley. I mean,
Speaker 1: we talked about investors all the time. They're really interesting.
Speaker 1: But of course it's it's when you cross over into
Speaker 1: the economic into the cultural realms that I think and
Speaker 1: political realms that that it gets super interesting. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: what I will say though, is I think that that
Speaker 1: backing of Donald Trump was almost inevitable. I mean it
Speaker 1: Teal is not the only Silicon Vale guy we're seeing
Speaker 1: engage politically. You know, we're talking during the break about
Speaker 1: Reid Hoffman, Um, you know, huge Democratic donor and also
Speaker 1: of course, a good friend of Peter tells um and
Speaker 1: I think these companies, you know, we're seeing you know, Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon,
Speaker 1: they're all having to engage more with the US government.
Speaker 1: So I think in some ways Teal was just a
Speaker 1: little bit ahead of the curve. He wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: these guys are all going to be playing this role,
Speaker 1: and they're going to be forced into it, almost whether
Speaker 1: they like it or not. Because when you get this big,
Speaker 1: you know, regulators get interested and and then you know,
Speaker 1: companies will do what it takes to defend their interests.
Speaker 1: That's Business Week features editor Max Chafkin on his new book,
Speaker 1: just released this week. It's called The Contrariant, Peter Teal
Speaker 1: and Silicon Valleys Pursuit of Power. Catch the entire conversation
Speaker 1: with Max. You can find that on our podcast feed.
Speaker 1: That wraps up the weekend edition to Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks a lot for joining us. I'm
Speaker 1: Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovk. Be sure to tune
Speaker 1: into our Bloomberg Business Week Daily show. It's Monday through
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Speaker 1: your podcast. It's great for weekend listening. I'm just going
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Speaker 1: Have a great weekend. This is Bloomberg