Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Karl Masser and I'm
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stanobek. We're here every day bringing
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Speaker 1: You can also listen to our radio show at two
Speaker 1: pm Eastern Time on the Bloomberg Radio or watch us
Speaker 1: on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Uh. Do you want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about Apple? We talked about
Speaker 1: it yesterday, hitting or going beyond the two and a
Speaker 1: half trillion dollar market cap range. At rallied about three
Speaker 1: percent yesterday. It's down a little bit, just pulling back
Speaker 1: about half a percent. And Uh. On the Bloomber Journal,
Speaker 1: you might have noticed a Bloomberg exclusive about Apple adding
Speaker 1: satellite features to iPhones for emergencies. We talked about that
Speaker 1: yesterday as well. Getting to that story, Bloomberg News technology
Speaker 1: reporter Mark German covers Apple for us with us now
Speaker 1: on the phone in l A. So, Mark, what's up
Speaker 1: with this? Thanks for having me. I mean, the end
Speaker 1: of August also means that we're getting pretty close to
Speaker 1: the lung to the next iPhones and lawn to the
Speaker 1: next Apple products. And what I was discussing yesterday is
Speaker 1: a slate of new features for emergencies and crisis and
Speaker 1: s OS calls that Apple is planning to add to
Speaker 1: the iPhone next year. These features would allow you if
Speaker 1: you're in eight plane crash, god forbid, or a boating accident,
Speaker 1: or a car crash or a wildfire in areas without
Speaker 1: selling other connectivity, you'd be able to reach out to
Speaker 1: emergency services over satellite infrastructure. UH. This would also allow
Speaker 1: you to text emergency contexts as well as emergency services
Speaker 1: over the satellite network through the messages app. And this
Speaker 1: is a bit less involved. It's not as big of
Speaker 1: a deal, I would say, as some of the dreams
Speaker 1: people had about the iPhone turning to, you know, a
Speaker 1: sat phone like you've seen in the classic Michael Douglas movie.
Speaker 1: This is Uh, this is more about emergencies I was
Speaker 1: thinking about. And I have to say in the newsroom,
Speaker 1: we well, like, wait a minute, you're talking about like
Speaker 1: those big phones used by the military that we always
Speaker 1: see up on the big screen, or the mobile phones
Speaker 1: we saw the movie Wall Street. You know, coming back
Speaker 1: to we're not talking about that. We're not talking about that.
Speaker 1: We're talking about if you're in a plane crash or
Speaker 1: you fall off a mountain. Basically, there's this device called
Speaker 1: the garment in reach and a lot of times people
Speaker 1: who do extreme sports or hikers and such, they buy
Speaker 1: this device because if something God forbid happens to them,
Speaker 1: this is how they save their lives. You can reach
Speaker 1: emergency services via text or call through this device that
Speaker 1: connect to Global Star satellite network. This is what Apple
Speaker 1: wants to integrate into the phone. Obviously, there are a
Speaker 1: lot there's a lot at stake when you integrate this
Speaker 1: tech into a phone, meaning Apple can't really turn this
Speaker 1: into a satphone. They can't afford to basically kill the
Speaker 1: carriers right now the technology in order to make a
Speaker 1: true statphone, like you said in the movie Wall Street.
Speaker 1: In the military, there's a reason the phones are ethic.
Speaker 1: They require special intent as a special infrastructure that is
Speaker 1: just not feasible to fit into an iPhone. At this
Speaker 1: point that the battery life necessary. Something with that type
Speaker 1: of functionality is likely five to ten years away, but
Speaker 1: at this point we're talking about emergencies, and of course
Speaker 1: it's it's a very handy feature and it will make
Speaker 1: the iPhone more useful to additional sets of people. First
Speaker 1: of all, what you said something, Uh, Apple can't afford
Speaker 1: to kill the carriers at this point. If they could,
Speaker 1: and if they could offer something that wasn't gigantic in
Speaker 1: your hand, um, it sounds like they would, and that
Speaker 1: that's where eventually this is all going. Is that fair? Eventually? Right,
Speaker 1: But that's gonna be well well down the road. Right.
Speaker 1: What Apple wants to do is they want to own
Speaker 1: the entire stack. They want to own the phone, they
Speaker 1: want to own the network, and they want to own
Speaker 1: as much as possible. But there's a lot of stake here.
Speaker 1: Apple can't just go around killing carriers that have helped
Speaker 1: them build the iPhone. This this long, right, Getting this
Speaker 1: infrastructure in place could take decades if you want to
Speaker 1: hit this globally, right, They can't just knock out one
Speaker 1: carrier in the US and expect all the other carriers
Speaker 1: internationally play ball with them, right. It's something that really
Speaker 1: would require threading the needle. It might never completely happen,
Speaker 1: It might be an option in some circumstances, But I
Speaker 1: think this emergency functionality is a very happy medium because
Speaker 1: you're doing something that the wireless carriers don't have coverage for.
Speaker 1: This is basically mitigating the lost space on the planet
Speaker 1: without cellular connection. Hey, Mark. So then I am curious
Speaker 1: for our audience because I actually talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit yesterday because there was some satellite companies moving
Speaker 1: on this news, and there was a lot of not
Speaker 1: a lot of, but there were alice weighing in and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, a Ridium might be the likely you know,
Speaker 1: satellite company that partners partners up anything like this, as
Speaker 1: you said, five to ten years approximately away. So if
Speaker 1: someone is trying to make an investment play on this
Speaker 1: in terms of the satellite play, it's probably too early.
Speaker 1: I spoke to people who would know, and uh, this
Speaker 1: report from an analyst at William Blair would said Apple
Speaker 1: is likely to work with a Ridium is simply not
Speaker 1: true my understanding. If they're not talking to a Ridium
Speaker 1: about this, they held brief discussions with them just to gauge,
Speaker 1: you know, knowledge about the satellite networks maybe a year
Speaker 1: or two or three ago, but since then there hasn't
Speaker 1: been any talks with them. Global Star put on an
Speaker 1: sec Finally in February indicated that another company paid them
Speaker 1: I believe around sixty million dollars to develop some infrastructure
Speaker 1: for some sort of product or service they can't talk about.
Speaker 1: To me. That screams Apple, but it's hard to know
Speaker 1: for sure. If anyone's network was able to do this,
Speaker 1: it would be Global Star. But I will tell you
Speaker 1: that from my understanding, Global Star's network is not great.
Speaker 1: I have words to describe it that I can't say
Speaker 1: on the radio. Um, it's not really suitable for anything
Speaker 1: other than emergency text and such. And again this is
Speaker 1: going to be in very limited areas. You need to
Speaker 1: call emergency services from the phone. You're gonna get a
Speaker 1: prompt on the iPhone. It tells you you need to
Speaker 1: walk around until you find a proper satellite. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get air messages. Right, this is no perfect technology. Global
Speaker 1: Star has not nailed it. And that takes me to
Speaker 1: something I wrote a out a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: where Apple's Ultimate bowls his deploy its own infrastructure. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be five to ten years away, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: something to working on. I love talking with you. Global
Speaker 1: Star was the one I was thinking about because it
Speaker 1: was up sixty yesterday. Dropped back another sevent though, uh today,
Speaker 1: but great to get the clarification thirty seconds left. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a story to Apple's new Watch likely to be
Speaker 1: delayed over production snags. What do we need to know?
Speaker 1: Just quickly? Yeah, so we're hearing the Apple is facing
Speaker 1: some last minute, eleven hour production issues on the Watch
Speaker 1: series seven because the new larger screen. It's unclear if
Speaker 1: this means a delayed release date or supply constraints. I
Speaker 1: still say that a new Watch will be announced in
Speaker 1: the next six weeks. Alright, good stuff is always Thank
Speaker 1: you so much covered it all that is, of course
Speaker 1: our Markerman. He's a must read here at Bloomberg. He's
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg News technology reporter, uh, and he covers all
Speaker 1: things Apple. Check him out at Bloomberg dot com, also
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal, and always on his Twitter feed
Speaker 1: at Mark German Crick. Check on Apples shares. We know
Speaker 1: hitting two and after tally and market cap just yesterday,
Speaker 1: stop giving back just about a half a percent, one
Speaker 1: fifty two thirty five the last trade. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week right here on Bloomberg Radio. This is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes
Speaker 1: Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, a lot of headlines,
Speaker 1: of course, when it comes to COVID and the vaccine.
Speaker 1: Today we had the European Union coming out reaching a
Speaker 1: goal of fully vaccinating sevent its adult population. Israel reported
Speaker 1: a record number of daily infections, and some news from
Speaker 1: Maderna about its vaccine being more effective in terms of immunity,
Speaker 1: potentially against FISER. So a lot to get through, uh,
Speaker 1: and I believe that's pertaining to a booster shop specifically.
Speaker 1: Back with us as Dr Mario Ramirez, he's managing director
Speaker 1: at the national nonprofit organization Opportunity Lab. They work with healthcare, education, housing,
Speaker 1: it's all about improving outcomes for low income Americans. He
Speaker 1: also served as the Acting Director for the Office of
Speaker 1: Pandemic and Emergency Threats at h h S during the administration.
Speaker 1: Great void for a great voice, I should say, for us.
Speaker 1: He joins us on the phone from Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Dr Ramire is good to have you back. Um. There
Speaker 1: is a debate over booster shots, whether or not we
Speaker 1: should get it doesn't make sense, how do you see it?
Speaker 1: And why so? I am fully in favor of vaccine
Speaker 1: boosters for all Americans at this point, Carol Um, And
Speaker 1: I think this may stand in contrast a little bit
Speaker 1: to what the CDC's Advisory Committee issued yesterday. But the
Speaker 1: reason that I think it's a good idea for us
Speaker 1: to roll boosters out to everyone here in the United
Speaker 1: States is primarily based on what we're seeing in data
Speaker 1: coming out of Israel, where they had a significant surge
Speaker 1: related to DELTA. They coincided with a significant drop in
Speaker 1: the immunity provided by the visor vaccine in that country
Speaker 1: between the six and eight month mark. In the United
Speaker 1: States is at a position right now where we can
Speaker 1: sort of blunt the ongoing surge that we have here
Speaker 1: and prevent a worsening surge similar to what they experienced
Speaker 1: in Israel. And there's enough evidence, there's enough medical evidence
Speaker 1: out there that the booster makes sense to have. Well,
Speaker 1: doesn't agree ongoing debate, And unfortunately, one of the things
Speaker 1: that we know during the pandemic right is that the
Speaker 1: speed of information that we can get from our gold
Speaker 1: standard randomized controlled trial, for instance, oftentimes takes too long
Speaker 1: relative to the speed of an outbreak. And in this instance,
Speaker 1: I think we need to depend on what we're seeing
Speaker 1: from other countries around the world that have served as
Speaker 1: good indicators for what we should expect here in the
Speaker 1: United States. We saw what happened in the UK, We've
Speaker 1: seen what happened in Israel over the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: and I think, unfortunately we're unlikely to get that level
Speaker 1: of data here in the United States in time to
Speaker 1: blunt this worsening surge. I've also never seen in situation
Speaker 1: like this, of course, we haven't lived for most of
Speaker 1: us during a health pandemic where it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: what vaccine did you get? Oh? Well, I got this one.
Speaker 1: And I say that because today we had news that
Speaker 1: murder Maderna's COVID vaccine generated more than double the antibodies
Speaker 1: of a similar shot made by Fiser and by in Tech. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is in those initial two doses, not a booster,
Speaker 1: which I think I said incorrectly before. So in that
Speaker 1: initial two doses, how are we as a general public
Speaker 1: supposed to kind of interpret that. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: think this is really interesting from the basic science perspective, Carroll, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what we saw from both BISER
Speaker 1: and majournals at the five to six month mark was
Speaker 1: that these vaccines were between the two of them between
Speaker 1: nine effective at present preventing significant enough illness to put
Speaker 1: someone in the hospital, which is really ultimately what matters
Speaker 1: in terms of the number of antibodies that are produced
Speaker 1: with either one of these vaccines. The more important determinant
Speaker 1: would be how long lasting that immunity is, and that
Speaker 1: might make or impart some ability to sort of make
Speaker 1: a relative quality judgment between those two. But at this point,
Speaker 1: we have seen evidence that shows that the efficacy for
Speaker 1: each of those vaccines is dropping off between the six
Speaker 1: and eight month mark, and so that's really what's more
Speaker 1: important here, rather than the number of antibodies to get produced.
Speaker 1: So it's a question I've often put to our medical community,
Speaker 1: what should I be marking on my calendar as a
Speaker 1: date to get my booster shot? Is it six months?
Speaker 1: Is it eight months? I know we haven't gotten necessarily
Speaker 1: the final guidance on this, but what would you suggest?
Speaker 1: So it's an area of ongoing guidance. I suspect that
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden done, we're going to land
Speaker 1: closer to the six month mark. Um. You know, the
Speaker 1: Biden administrations put out the September twentieth date as their
Speaker 1: original sort of line in the sand, and that was
Speaker 1: at the eight month mark, uh, and then we heard
Speaker 1: from the President that maybe they were thinking about moving
Speaker 1: that back to five months. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that is based on data that we're seeing from overseas,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, somewhat uncertain and not being conducted
Speaker 1: to in the United States, which makes interpretation more difficult.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of a moving target. But
Speaker 1: in my own opinion, based on what I've seen from
Speaker 1: overseas data, I think the six month mark for this
Speaker 1: sort of third shot or booster is probably where we're
Speaker 1: gonna land. All right, Gonna leave it on that note.
Speaker 1: We really do always appreciate your time. Dr Mario Ramirez,
Speaker 1: Managing director of our Opportunity Labs. As I mentioned to
Speaker 1: he was uh former acting director at the Office of
Speaker 1: Pandemic and Emergency Threats. That was during the Obama administration.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, not
Speaker 1: sure if you've noticed with everything going on in our world,
Speaker 1: but jury's election underway. In the trial of Elizabeth Holmes,
Speaker 1: remember her, founder of the blood testing startup Theara Nos.
Speaker 1: She is facing charges that she defrauded investors and patients
Speaker 1: by making false claims about our company's blood tests, as
Speaker 1: well as about the Thoro Nos financial position. Tracking all
Speaker 1: of this for us here at Bloomberg Bloomberg News Legal
Speaker 1: Alice June grass So, she's also host of Bloomberg Law
Speaker 1: weeknights at ten pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: She's here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. Good to
Speaker 1: have you here. So tell us what's the timeline. I mean,
Speaker 1: this gonna be a long trial. It's going to be
Speaker 1: three to four months. So as they're sitting these jurors,
Speaker 1: that's a consideration that they're telling them it's gonna be
Speaker 1: three to four months. And also they asked them about
Speaker 1: COVID by the way, one of the questions whether they
Speaker 1: would sit in a courtroom for that long with COVID
Speaker 1: and what the have been vaccinated among a questionnaire of
Speaker 1: about twenty eight questions that went into their hobbies, how
Speaker 1: much they knew about this case, which has been all
Speaker 1: over and if you know, it's HBO documentaries the movies
Speaker 1: made about it, So they asked them that and they
Speaker 1: all there was a question about whether they were venture
Speaker 1: capitalism capitalists, what their experience with venture capitalists was. So
Speaker 1: it's going to be interesting. Well, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things I want to get to. I mean, the Charles
Speaker 1: and Silicon Valley, right, I mean, so in terms of
Speaker 1: getting a jury that hasn't heard a lot of information
Speaker 1: about her and the company, Uh, is that going to
Speaker 1: be difficult? And is that something that maybe weighs in
Speaker 1: her favor and argument that they can put out there. Well,
Speaker 1: so far there were about two hundred in the potential
Speaker 1: pool that filled out that jury questionnaire, and according to
Speaker 1: the lawyers, about half of them knew about the case.
Speaker 1: But the judge has said that that is not going
Speaker 1: to stop a person for being on the jury because,
Speaker 1: let's face it, in the George Floyd case, in the
Speaker 1: Marathon bomber case, people know about this. It's something that
Speaker 1: you're not going to find someone and you don't want
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't know anything about a case like this,
Speaker 1: But what they have to do is make sure that
Speaker 1: despite what they know, that they can be fair, that
Speaker 1: they can judge it on what they see and hear
Speaker 1: in the courtroom and not what they know from you know,
Speaker 1: from a movie that they saw, from an article that
Speaker 1: they read. Well, and I do wonder if having some
Speaker 1: understanding of kind of the VC world and understanding how
Speaker 1: startups go right, We cover it a lot here and
Speaker 1: there are often a lot of claims made. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of money that gets involved, even in the early
Speaker 1: stages that can go on for years, and then companies
Speaker 1: that just don't pan out here. How might that actually
Speaker 1: help her well? I think that one of the things,
Speaker 1: and experts agree on this that that the defense would
Speaker 1: like to have. There are two kinds of jurors. I
Speaker 1: think one is a juror that is savvy about Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley startups and sort of knows that a lot of
Speaker 1: this is puffery and what you have to do in
Speaker 1: order to get investors to come in and against that
Speaker 1: is going to be the prosecution, which is going to say,
Speaker 1: we want to a line between puffery and between actual fraud.
Speaker 1: We don't want this. This is the biggest fraud in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley history. We don't want this to happen again.
Speaker 1: So here's the line. The other jury they're going to
Speaker 1: want is someone that's going to be sympathetic to her defense.
Speaker 1: She has over the weekend less Thursday, Let's say the
Speaker 1: judge released documents that had been undersealed, so he unsealed them,
Speaker 1: and in that it shows that the defense is going
Speaker 1: to try to show that she was physically, psychologically, and
Speaker 1: emotionally abused by Sonny Bell Wannie, her former lover and
Speaker 1: the president of the company Profound Company. Right, Yes, that
Speaker 1: he controlled everything from what she ate to what she wore,
Speaker 1: and that she so the process here is that alone
Speaker 1: is not a defense, But the defense would be dress
Speaker 1: that she didn't know what she was doing. She had
Speaker 1: no choice in what she was doing because he was
Speaker 1: controlling or sort of like the mastermind and the puppet
Speaker 1: that he was controlling her, and that's so she did
Speaker 1: what he said. It's it reminds me of the gun
Speaker 1: to the head defense. I had to do it because
Speaker 1: that person had a gun to my head. So she
Speaker 1: had no choice, and that would take away the intent
Speaker 1: element which is the key element here. They have to
Speaker 1: show that she intended to deceive investors about this, investors
Speaker 1: and patience about this. Soon. You've covered a lot of trials,
Speaker 1: a lot of legal situations, and I think about this
Speaker 1: when in particular, almost everybody in the media I know,
Speaker 1: we have Bloomberg have done stories on her. I mean,
Speaker 1: for such a long time she was a get everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to have a conversation with her because she was really, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of up ending a big part of the testing
Speaker 1: world in terms of how things are. How will that
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, this goes back. How do
Speaker 1: people kind of get their head around that. It's it's
Speaker 1: such a tough sell to me because you have this
Speaker 1: image of her as being confident and self for sure
Speaker 1: for real Steve Jobs, she was kind of exactly and
Speaker 1: also she cultivated that she wore the turtlenecks, she had
Speaker 1: the deep voice that some people say was a little
Speaker 1: bit put on and so, and also the way she
Speaker 1: handled interviews and the way she answered questions. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to reconcile that with a woman who is being,
Speaker 1: you know, a puppet for someone else. The other thing, though,
Speaker 1: that she has on Her side, though, is that Balwani
Speaker 1: is not in the courtroom because he's going to be
Speaker 1: tried separately because of this defense. He's going to be
Speaker 1: tried separately next year, and they can't call him as
Speaker 1: a witness because that would be against his Fifth Amendment rights.
Speaker 1: So he emphatically denies this in court papers, but he's
Speaker 1: not going to be able to come in and say
Speaker 1: that's not true. Does that help Elizabeth? That helps her,
Speaker 1: But still I think it's overwhelming for the defense to
Speaker 1: to try to show this there there is a there.
Speaker 1: She's been examined by a psychologist for the defense who's
Speaker 1: going to testify, and also psychologists of the prosecution. So
Speaker 1: you're going to hear a psychological you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of psychological expert testimony, and that will come out both ways.
Speaker 1: One side will say, oh, yes, she was order that. Well,
Speaker 1: is she acted to testify? She is? And I find
Speaker 1: this hard to believe, but she is expected to testify.
Speaker 1: Her lawyers have said that it's more likely than not.
Speaker 1: They told the judge that she'll testify, and in order
Speaker 1: to establish this defense, it seems like it would make
Speaker 1: sense that the best would be to have her saying
Speaker 1: this rather than to have a psychologist saying she told
Speaker 1: me this. But the problem is then the cross examination.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always a gamble to put someone on
Speaker 1: the stand, but here you can imagine some of the
Speaker 1: questions that you've been raising that the prosecutor is going
Speaker 1: to raise. Also, she was did a deposition with the
Speaker 1: SEC because she was charged by the SEC and settled
Speaker 1: those charges, and she six hundred times said I don't know,
Speaker 1: So now is she going to say I know? And
Speaker 1: she never told the SEC that she was involved with
Speaker 1: Sonny about wanting and that she was under his control.
Speaker 1: So you understand the legal world, who do you think
Speaker 1: has the tougher cases at the prosecution of the defense?
Speaker 1: Prosecution has the burden of proof, so they had to
Speaker 1: prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense only has
Speaker 1: to get one juror to hang it up. But I
Speaker 1: still think the defense has the tougher case to make here,
Speaker 1: just case for case, okay, And is it like if
Speaker 1: she loses what then what's the impact on her? Well,
Speaker 1: the biggest I mean the longest sentence would be twenty years,
Speaker 1: but she'll probably the jail time. Yes, absolutely absolutely, She's
Speaker 1: she's charged with multiple conspiracy counts and fraud counts. So
Speaker 1: this is very it's very serious, and also the prosecutors
Speaker 1: want to make I think they want to make an
Speaker 1: example out of her that you know, for Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: because there's been a lot of startups, you know that
Speaker 1: just they're wild, they're great, and then they just fail miserably.
Speaker 1: Why did they pick on her? A lot of people
Speaker 1: have been asking that question, so they really want to
Speaker 1: prove their case, and they want to prove that you
Speaker 1: can't do this. There's a line and you can't cross
Speaker 1: that line. Well, fascinated to watch and I know you'll
Speaker 1: be covering it big time for us and looking forward
Speaker 1: to all your coverage. June, Thanks so much. June Grosso.
Speaker 1: She's Bloomberg News legal analyst and you can catch her
Speaker 1: week night. It's at ten pm Wall Street Time on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. She is host of Bloomberg Law. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: or Bloomberg dot com. And you can also listen to
Speaker 1: our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio
Speaker 1: or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News