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Speaker 3: Hi, everyone, welcome to the Bloomberg Business Weekend Podcast. After
Speaker 3: another non stop week full of earnings from the likes
Speaker 3: of Netflix, Tesla, Intel, GM and many many others, we
Speaker 3: also had a twenty billion dollar currency swap deal between
Speaker 3: the United States and Argentina, We had US sanctions on
Speaker 3: Russian oil giants, and then gosh, I forgot this was
Speaker 3: early in the week. A big media company, Warner Brothers
Speaker 3: Discovery in play big time.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to call this a mega busy week,
Speaker 1: and I don't to get ahead.
Speaker 3: Of ourselves capitals, capital letters on all of.
Speaker 1: It, but we should get used to it because next
Speaker 1: week is going to be really busy too. I know, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: We're going.
Speaker 4: To keep it here.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep it on what happened over the
Speaker 1: past week Our highlights for the weekend, explaining that deal
Speaker 1: between the United States and Argentina, the why, the why now,
Speaker 1: and why that country. We're going to get all of
Speaker 1: that and more in just a moment.
Speaker 3: Also President Trump's move backing off of an isolated United States.
Speaker 3: It does feel like this is kind of going on.
Speaker 3: It's all in a rare Earth's deal with Australia to
Speaker 3: fight China. This was kind of one of the first
Speaker 3: big moves that someone pointed out that maybe the US
Speaker 3: isn't going to go it alone here.
Speaker 1: And speaking of the President, we've got his top antagonist.
Speaker 1: It is the cover story of the latest issue of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.
Speaker 3: Plus in our second hour, Amazon Robotics chief technologist on
Speaker 3: robots in the workforce of tomorrow, Cheat Coats on how
Speaker 3: to improve your overall wellness totally into that and Tim Yes,
Speaker 3: we know we're all about generative and agentic AI LM's,
Speaker 3: but a lot is happening when it comes to quantum computing.
Speaker 3: Just asked the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Speaker 5: We did.
Speaker 3: That's all happening. In our second hour.
Speaker 1: We begin with an agreement signed this past week by
Speaker 1: the US Treasury with the Central Bank of Argentina. US
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessant characterized the Treasury's twenty
Speaker 1: billion dollar swap line with the crisis pro nation's central
Speaker 1: bank as a quote economic stabilization deal, an agreement that is,
Speaker 1: quote a bridge to a better economic future for Argentina,
Speaker 1: not a bailout. We had so many questions about this,
Speaker 1: and there was really one voice we wanted to turn to.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg New Economy editorial director Eric Shatzker. He's covered numerous
Speaker 1: global financial and market cycles. He's interviewed various Latin American leaders,
Speaker 1: including Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and former Argentinian President Mauricio Macri.
Speaker 1: Eric also had the September cover story on Secretary Scott
Speaker 1: Bessant for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 6: I think we can unpack this in three ways. One
Speaker 6: is why is the US doing this? The second is
Speaker 6: what exactly have we got here? And the third would
Speaker 6: be how might it all end? Perhaps in tears. I'll
Speaker 6: take on the why. And this actually goes back to
Speaker 6: that story you mentioned that I did about Scott bessen
Speaker 6: the Treasury Secretary for Bloomberg Business Week in September. I
Speaker 6: spoke to the Treasury Secretary back in late July, and
Speaker 6: at the time he told me that one of his
Speaker 6: overarching goals in office as the Secretary of the Treasury
Speaker 6: was to quote unquote lock in dollar supremacy. And I
Speaker 6: asked him, well, how do you do that? And he said,
Speaker 6: and I didn't appreciate the significance of it at the time,
Speaker 6: was by facilitating swaps through the Treasury Department, as opposed
Speaker 6: to the way that swaps have traditionally been facilitated, which
Speaker 6: is by the FED from central bank to central bank.
Speaker 6: Now there is precedent for this. The Treasury Department did
Speaker 6: that from Mexico back in the mid nineties the Peso crisis,
Speaker 6: and it helped, and maybe it'll help Argentina. But it
Speaker 6: appears that under the Trump administration, the government's focus is
Speaker 6: on again cuts to the why. It's not just about
Speaker 6: locking in dollar supremacy. It's using the dollar as an
Speaker 6: economic tool to support countries with which the United States
Speaker 6: feel it has some kind of ideological kinship or some
Speaker 6: kind of trading relationship. It's not like Argentina has been
Speaker 6: one of America's major trading partners.
Speaker 4: It has not.
Speaker 6: The amount of bilateral trade that goes on between those
Speaker 6: two countries is a fraction of what it is with
Speaker 6: the United States in Mexico, or the United States and Canada,
Speaker 6: or even the United States and Europe. So in that respect,
Speaker 6: it's unusual. I think. If you think about it though,
Speaker 6: in terms of locking in dollar supremacy and using the
Speaker 6: dollar as an economic tool, a tool of geostrategy, if
Speaker 6: you will, it begins to make a little more sense.
Speaker 1: You said that different elements that we could we could
Speaker 1: talk about with this. One is how another one is
Speaker 1: how this could end.
Speaker 6: Well, let's talk about what is it that we're actually
Speaker 6: talking about here. You mentioned that the Treasure Secretary today
Speaker 6: talked about it as a bridge to a better economic
Speaker 6: future and not a bailout, and not a bailout. But
Speaker 6: the operative word there is bridge, because bridge means something
Speaker 6: from here to there. In other words, what's the there?
Speaker 6: This is a bridge until when?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: Is it a bridge until after Argentina's Mitrum elections on
Speaker 6: the twenty sixth of this month Sunday? Is it a
Speaker 6: Trump seems to suggest as much the other day when
Speaker 6: he said, well, you know, if Malay doesn't win we'll
Speaker 6: get rid of the swap line, So that's one possibility.
Speaker 6: Is it a bridge until Argentina decides to abandon the
Speaker 6: Peso peg, which starts an acre the Minister for Deregulation
Speaker 6: and State Transformation said was in the cards. Is it
Speaker 6: a Is it a bridge until the twenty billion dollars
Speaker 6: runs out, which might happen because Argentina was burning through
Speaker 6: a billion and a half dollars worth of foreign currency
Speaker 6: reserves a week a billion and a half a week
Speaker 6: before the swap line was put in place. Is it
Speaker 6: until Argentina's economy can eventually support an exchange rate at
Speaker 6: this level It certainly can't right now. Or maybe is
Speaker 6: it a bridge until I don't know, President Trump just
Speaker 6: loses patience or President Malay does something to annoy him.
Speaker 3: It's a lot to be any of those. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of questions. It's a lot of like possible scenarios.
Speaker 3: You know, Bloomberg reporter that Jamie Diamond is visiting Argentina
Speaker 3: kind of an unprecedented show of support for the government. Mean,
Speaker 3: at the same time, we've had I think it's the
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal reporting that banks are having a hard
Speaker 3: time kind of getting around this without some kind of guarantees.
Speaker 6: Nobody knows. Nobody knows what Argentina is pledging as collateral.
Speaker 6: In fact, nobody has seen the agreement. To our knowledge,
Speaker 6: the banks themselves, which you're playing intermediary roles here, don't
Speaker 6: know what Argentina has agreed to pledge. You know, so
Speaker 6: that the United States isn't just on the unlimited losing
Speaker 6: end of a bad trade. And that is possible here, right.
Speaker 6: The big difference between what's going on here and the
Speaker 6: comparison that everybody wants to make with the trade that
Speaker 6: broke the Bank of England that the Treasury Secretary was
Speaker 6: involved in that he worked for George Soros and Stan
Speaker 6: Druck and Miller back in the early nineteen nineties. The
Speaker 6: big difference here is that then the UK had nobody
Speaker 6: backstopping them. Now Argentina has the United States backstopping it.
Speaker 6: But as I say, nobody knows until when nobody knows
Speaker 6: if there are any mechanisms that have been put in
Speaker 6: place to make the US taxpayer, if you will, hole,
Speaker 6: should the Treasury Department sustain losses on this trade. I've
Speaker 6: heard that Argentina's uranium reserves may be involved that some
Speaker 6: kind of preferential access to Argentine markets might be involved.
Speaker 6: Who knows. It's just it's like it's like a ready
Speaker 6: aim fire, you know, or a fire you know, ready
Speaker 6: aim in the sense that the swap line was put
Speaker 6: in place, and then it appears, since no document has
Speaker 6: surfaced yet, that all of the mechanics behind it are
Speaker 6: being taken care of after the fact. I don't know,
Speaker 6: but my point is that if anybody knows, he or
Speaker 6: she hasn't put in his hand to say, hey, I know.
Speaker 1: The Treasury Secretary, as you mentioned, described this as a
Speaker 1: bridge to a better economic future for Argentina, not a
Speaker 1: bail out. Is the not a bailout part a fair
Speaker 1: way to describe it in your view? Is this not
Speaker 1: a bail out?
Speaker 6: I think a bailout is in the eye of the
Speaker 6: beholder in some respects. It's unquestionably a gift to President
Speaker 6: Milay ahead of these mid term elections. It isn't working
Speaker 6: for the time being right. The PAESO fresh weakened today
Speaker 6: to a fresh low, and Argentine bonds which had gained
Speaker 6: earlier on the formal announcement of the sagree and have
Speaker 6: since given up those gains and I think are posting losses,
Speaker 6: so it would appear to be a gift in the
Speaker 6: sense that the PASO exchange rate or the PEG to
Speaker 6: the dollar is unsustainable. Milay doesn't want to allow the
Speaker 6: PAESO to float freely. He wants to maintain this peg
Speaker 6: so that Argentine inflation is under control. A critical critical
Speaker 6: economic consideration going into the midterms. So even if Argentine,
Speaker 6: I like, there's no question if the PAESO peg were
Speaker 6: to be abandoned today, it's not like inflation would Inflation
Speaker 6: would show up immediately, but it wouldn't show up in
Speaker 6: official statistics. Excuse me for some time to come. But
Speaker 6: Argentines are so conditioned to this, they know what would happen.
Speaker 3: Again, I want to go back to and I know
Speaker 3: we've got a couple more minutes here, but Eric the
Speaker 3: US involvement, and again it may be a relationship President
Speaker 3: Trump wants to have with the President of Argentina, But
Speaker 3: I mean, Bloomberg editors wrote an opinion piece why isn't
Speaker 3: the IMF coming in here? And the other question we
Speaker 3: as a group have been trying to figure out, is
Speaker 3: it also to kind of keep China at Bay is
Speaker 3: there that aspect as well.
Speaker 6: Argentina also has an existing eighteen billion dollar currency swap
Speaker 6: with China that goes back well before Sturtzenegger was the
Speaker 6: central Bank governor. I think it may go back to
Speaker 6: twenty fifteen, and perhaps even before that. There has been
Speaker 6: some talk that one of the conditions behind, or at
Speaker 6: least one of the underlying conditions to this swap with
Speaker 6: the Treasury would be that Argentina somehow winds up that
Speaker 6: previous swap agreement with the Chinese. Who knows as far
Speaker 6: as why the IMF isn't involved, I think the easy
Speaker 6: answer to that question is how many months would it
Speaker 6: take the IMF to get its act together? This was
Speaker 6: something that this was a perceived need on the part
Speaker 6: of the Argentine government the Malay government heading into these
Speaker 6: critical midterm elections that there's no way, there's no conceivable
Speaker 6: way that the IMF, in my mind, given everything that
Speaker 6: we've observed in our careers and everything we know that
Speaker 6: precedes that there's no way that it could possibly act
Speaker 6: it without much haste.
Speaker 1: So before we let you go, how could this end?
Speaker 1: What could it mean for the US If it's a
Speaker 1: bad trade, well, if.
Speaker 6: It's a bad trade. It could. I find it hard
Speaker 6: to believe that the United States would put itself in
Speaker 6: a position to ultimately lose money, but it may lose
Speaker 6: money on paper and have to recover that money, just
Speaker 6: like somebody who has been left holding the bag on
Speaker 6: a bad debt by liquidating some kind of Argentine assets
Speaker 6: or somehow you know, turning preferential access into Argentine assets
Speaker 6: or Argentine markets into value over time, that wouldn't look good.
Speaker 6: And again it all depends on how long this bridge is.
Speaker 6: We have seen in the credit markets that you can
Speaker 6: paper things over for an awfully long time before either
Speaker 6: things reflate and you're able to shout at par or
Speaker 6: you have to ultimately take some losses. So it's not
Speaker 6: like that's necessarily going to happen next week. It's not
Speaker 6: like it's necessarily going to happen next month, next quarter,
Speaker 6: even next year. But if Malay doesn't succeed, and if
Speaker 6: the Argentine economy doesn't continue to revive and inflation doesn't
Speaker 6: remain under control, it's hard to see how the speculative
Speaker 6: pressure against the peso won't continue, and we may even
Speaker 6: see I don't know We can only speculate here that
Speaker 6: twenty billion dollars may not end up being enough.
Speaker 3: All Right, we just got schooled by Eric Shatsker in
Speaker 3: a good way, in a good way. Thank you so much, Eric,
Speaker 3: so appreciate it.
Speaker 5: It's what we needed to know.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Eric Shatsker.
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Speaker 1: Trump's administration is involved in talks for a US company
Speaker 1: to access one of the world's largest untapped deposits of tungsten.
Speaker 1: This is a metal used by the Pentagon to make ammunition,
Speaker 1: projectiles and other weapon read.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting, right. We continue to see that
Speaker 3: Rare Earth's share space move as a result of these
Speaker 3: headlines coming out from the White House. Keep in mind,
Speaker 3: as to mention President Trump signing that landmark pack with
Speaker 3: visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albani's to boost America's access
Speaker 3: to Rare Earth's and other critical minerals. It's an effort
Speaker 3: to counter China's type grip on the supply chains of
Speaker 3: key metals. Now, the two governments will jointly invest in
Speaker 3: a swath of minds and processing projects in Australia to
Speaker 3: boost production of commodities used in advance technologies, everything from
Speaker 3: electric vehicles to setment conductors and fighter plants. It goes
Speaker 3: into a lot of stuff too.
Speaker 1: In a story on the Bloomberg, our next guest says, quote,
Speaker 1: this is the most significant bilateral minerals cooperation we have
Speaker 1: seen between two major Western countries. Here to explain why
Speaker 1: is Graceland Asker, and she's director of the Critical Minerals
Speaker 1: Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Study.
Speaker 1: She joins us from the Washington, DC bureau of Bloomberg News. Graceland,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Bloomberg Business Weekdaily. It's always great to
Speaker 1: have you on the program. I do want to start
Speaker 1: with the bilateral minerals cooperation that we are seeing between
Speaker 1: the United States and Australia. Why is all of this
Speaker 1: happening right now?
Speaker 6: It's so great to be back.
Speaker 7: You know, this is a really big deal, and it's
Speaker 7: a big deal because this is minerals cooperation that's going
Speaker 7: not just from conversation, and we've been doing years of
Speaker 7: talking about minerals to actually putting the resources in to
Speaker 7: develop really strategic projects. I mean, we've agreed to commit
Speaker 7: one billion dollars each to be deployed within six months
Speaker 7: on strategic projects, and this could be Alcoa's landmark gallium refinery.
Speaker 7: Keep in mind, China has cut us off of gallium,
Speaker 7: really crucial material for semiconductors, and this gallium refinery is
Speaker 7: going to produce one hundred tons a year in Western Australia.
Speaker 7: That may not sound like a lot, but remember the
Speaker 7: US only uses about twenty tons of galli in the year,
Speaker 7: so it's actually really significant to Australia announcing equity in
Speaker 7: a rare earth project there.
Speaker 3: But what we've also.
Speaker 7: Seen is the first time that these countries are making
Speaker 7: a concerted effort to counter China. So you may have
Speaker 7: seen that both countries have committed to preventing Chinese acquisitions
Speaker 7: of new projects, both within their own countries but also
Speaker 7: using diplomatic instruments. In other countries, we've seen a commitment
Speaker 7: to using price price support. So really, when you take
Speaker 7: the summation of all of these different efforts, We're really
Speaker 7: seeing rubber hit the road with a country that has
Speaker 7: enormous geological potential. We're talking about forty minerals that the
Speaker 7: US identified as critical. Incredible financial market gets in deep
Speaker 7: technical expertise.
Speaker 3: Is this all bottom line about putting kind of a
Speaker 3: hold on China?
Speaker 7: This is about countering China from a supply and a
Speaker 7: demand perspective. You know, let's be totally honest. This year
Speaker 7: was a wake up call for the whole world until now.
Speaker 7: A lot of the export restrictions on critical minerals we're
Speaker 7: really targeted at US here in the United States, but
Speaker 7: the multiple rounds of restrictions this year actually hit companies
Speaker 7: around the world, like these recent rare earth export restrictions.
Speaker 6: Australia is still on the other.
Speaker 4: End of them.
Speaker 7: So what we're really doing is we're uniting with our
Speaker 7: allies and again Australia being the one country that has
Speaker 7: fought beside US in every war since nineteen eighteen, right
Speaker 7: to say, okay, if we work together, we can actually
Speaker 7: start to counter China in a meaningful way.
Speaker 3: Very then significant again, because it feels like we have
Speaker 3: gone through a bunch of months where the US is
Speaker 3: like we don't need you. We're going to do it alone.
Speaker 3: We're going to build up stuff supply chain, so and
Speaker 3: so forth. At least this is coming from the administration
Speaker 3: to do stuff here in the United States. This feels
Speaker 3: like it's very significant the US saying wait, we actually
Speaker 3: need to have global partners on this. And this is
Speaker 3: kind of a big message. Again I'm going to point
Speaker 3: out to China and really the world at large.
Speaker 7: And this is a really important message because I want
Speaker 7: you to understand the historical relationship of Australian mining. Historically,
Speaker 7: Australian minerals have flow have gone to China for processing.
Speaker 7: So it's a highly vertically integrated industry between these two countries.
Speaker 7: So this was a pretty big disruption. You know, if
Speaker 7: we roll out restrictions on China, no, and really bat deny,
Speaker 7: but for Australia where those minerals go to China, this
Speaker 7: is a really important realignment with US and breaking from
Speaker 7: what has been their historical trade relationship as it relates
Speaker 7: to the mining industry.
Speaker 1: So I guess the question that we have is about
Speaker 1: the US companies that are a part of this, and
Speaker 1: we've spoken to quite a few of these. We spoke
Speaker 1: to US antimony. Gary Evans over there a critical mineral, not.
Speaker 4: A rare earth per se, but.
Speaker 1: In the same space, and with the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: they're getting a government contract, not investment from the government,
Speaker 1: but a government contract to actually buy antimony for Defense
Speaker 1: Department purposes. But I'm curious about US company's role and
Speaker 1: if there is such an opportunity for many different US
Speaker 1: companies right now to take advantage of this. And look,
Speaker 1: we have an investing audience. They want to know which
Speaker 1: are the companies that are best positioned right now to
Speaker 1: be in a place where they can be the ones
Speaker 1: that benefit from this increased need for critical minerals.
Speaker 7: So one of the big parts of this a new
Speaker 7: Framework agreement is that they will we will strategically together
Speaker 7: identify priority projects in companies.
Speaker 6: One of the.
Speaker 7: Early leaders here is Alcoa. Again, Alcoa is a Philadelphia
Speaker 7: based company who is now building this gallium refinery through
Speaker 7: support from the Department of War, and it was announced
Speaker 7: by the US and Australian governments yesterday. Again, I want
Speaker 7: to take you back to the fact that gallium is
Speaker 7: a no brainer of a priority for both sides because
Speaker 7: it was a commodity that China cut us off from
Speaker 7: earlier this year. So really, when we start to look
Speaker 7: at what are the winners going to be, I mean
Speaker 7: rare earth. Obviously we're going to see linus being really important.
Speaker 7: But broadly speaking, for some of these minor medals, which
Speaker 7: antimony is one of them, we've seen tungsten emerge in
Speaker 7: the news quite recently. These minor metals are going to
Speaker 7: be the ones where we're highly vulnerable and where we
Speaker 7: do not always have the geology to make it work,
Speaker 7: and where Australia often does.
Speaker 1: We both have questions, but Carole, you go first, Well,
Speaker 1: I want.
Speaker 3: To go back forgive me if we're abouts around, because
Speaker 3: it's just sometimes you know, the brain is a little
Speaker 3: slow and things settle in. But Grace, what I want
Speaker 3: to ask you is going back to, as you said,
Speaker 3: a big deal for Australia to do this because they
Speaker 3: have been so intertwined with China when it comes to
Speaker 3: Australia exporting large quantities of raw minerals and then China processing.
Speaker 3: I mean, this has been a very important trading relationship
Speaker 3: and so we know US and China has been antagonistic
Speaker 3: for a while, but to have them do that. That's
Speaker 3: really significant.
Speaker 7: It's extremely significant. But you've been seeing that growing tension
Speaker 7: for but probably the last seven years. Remember that Australia
Speaker 7: was the first country to the ban howway back in
Speaker 7: about twenty eighteen. They also legislation to prevent foreign interference
Speaker 7: in their higher education sector. More recently, there was a
Speaker 7: one point twenty five billion dollar Australian loan that was
Speaker 7: given to build the Iluca refinery.
Speaker 3: For rare Earth.
Speaker 7: One of the t's and c's of that was that
Speaker 7: off take had to go to allied countries. But now
Speaker 7: what this really does now I mean, is it starts
Speaker 7: to potentially re architecture supply chains in a meaningful way. Australia,
Speaker 7: for example, is the biggest lithium producer in the world.
Speaker 7: They produce about close to sixty percent over a world's lithium.
Speaker 7: Over ninety percent of that actually goes to China for refining.
Speaker 7: If that didn't happen, China would lose its grip on
Speaker 7: lithium ion batteries. So what this deal really stands to
Speaker 7: do is re architecture supply chains, not just from mind
Speaker 7: but down to the manufactured good.
Speaker 1: So if we think about this in the context of
Speaker 1: the leverage that China could still have even after the
Speaker 1: US makes deals such as this and deals with allies,
Speaker 1: where's that leverage.
Speaker 7: The leverage is still there in the short term with
Speaker 7: rare earths for sure, no doubt. Right although Australian Australia's
Speaker 7: Linus was the first company to separate heavy rare erths
Speaker 7: earlier this year outside of China, but it's going to
Speaker 7: go beyond that. There was a line in this framework
Speaker 7: agreement that actually said that the US and Australia will
Speaker 7: work with other international partners on price support mechanisms. So
Speaker 7: this conversation is likely to extend beyond these two countries
Speaker 7: to the G seven later this year to think about
Speaker 7: how do we scale these partnerships up even more so, really,
Speaker 7: what we're starting to see is an economy of scale
Speaker 7: that we're creating for the minerals and the processing capabilities.
Speaker 7: I mentioned that our COED deal earlier, that our COED
Speaker 7: deal is also getting Japanese financing.
Speaker 3: It's actually a tripartheid effort.
Speaker 7: So an example of how this bilateral is going to
Speaker 7: set the stage for what's probably going to be a
Speaker 7: much bigger play of countries to counter China.
Speaker 3: How do we figure out, you know, especially as we
Speaker 3: see investors, you know, pushing up shares on all of
Speaker 3: these stories about the relationships, the investments by the US
Speaker 3: government and various critical mineral companies, how do we figure
Speaker 3: out which is investor speculation, you know, kind of chasing
Speaker 3: a trade. Do you think it's misplaced or is it
Speaker 3: a bit irrationally exuberant, or you think these investments, these relationships,
Speaker 3: this is the build out. It's happening, and with good reason,
Speaker 3: because the demand's going to be there.
Speaker 7: The broader buildout of the sector, when it comes to mining,
Speaker 7: being much more strategic, is absolutely here to stay. And
Speaker 7: it's here to stay for a couple of reasons. One
Speaker 7: of them is we are diversifying away from China, right,
Speaker 7: But the second thing we have to remember is that
Speaker 7: certain of these commodities, I need a lot more in
Speaker 7: objective terms, I need a lot more copper to electrify,
Speaker 7: to build data centers, to build defense technologies.
Speaker 3: So it's also the growing demand.
Speaker 7: So I'd say the larger macro trend in prioritization is
Speaker 7: here to stay. And again remember that the US Australia relationship,
Speaker 7: it's a continuation. It was being built under the Biden
Speaker 7: administration as well. But what you know, the other thing
Speaker 7: though is you know, there are going to be fads
Speaker 7: that come and go when it come to specific minerals.
Speaker 7: There's no doubt, right some things are going to you know,
Speaker 7: hit media attention. Certain deals are going to hit media
Speaker 7: attention and they're going to fall away. Not everything that
Speaker 7: this government is looking at is going to succeed, but
Speaker 7: what we are hoping is that the right number of
Speaker 7: them succeed to create a more resilient supply chain. But
Speaker 7: there are a lot of coming and goings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, certainly the relationship with Australia is on our radar
Speaker 1: right now, given the visit of the Prime Minister. But
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what other countries the US could ally with
Speaker 1: that would be able to offer some sort of countermeasure
Speaker 1: to China and its capabilities.
Speaker 7: So countries that like I'm looking at with interest Japan
Speaker 7: in South Korea, particularly because of their midstream and downstream capabilities.
Speaker 7: I'm looking at the UK. There have been you know,
Speaker 7: there's been some interesting acquisitions there, at least Come Metal
Speaker 7: by USA, Rare Earth, that's an interesting one. The EU
Speaker 7: again it's an interesting jurisdiction there as some minerals, I
Speaker 7: mean things like Solvey for their permanent magnets in France.
Speaker 7: An interesting one again with some conversations happening with the
Speaker 7: US as well. So there's certain pockets of interesting transactions
Speaker 7: happening from a global north obviously from the global south.
Speaker 7: Brazil is still a very interesting jurisdiction to US because
Speaker 7: they have the heavy, rare earth that can come back
Speaker 7: and be separated here in the United States.
Speaker 5: Everything we need to know.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you, Doctor Graceland Basker and Director of
Speaker 3: the Critical Mineral Security Program at the Center for Strategic
Speaker 3: and International Studies.
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Speaker 2: whole show.
Speaker 1: Democrats are more disillusion than they've been in decades, Sped
Speaker 1: up with agings, leaders frustrated by a party adrift and
Speaker 1: unsure who their next standard bearer should be, but yearning
Speaker 1: for someone to take on Trump So right Josh Green
Speaker 1: and elaiju Kemisher for a Bloomberg BusinessWeek California Governor Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom has leaped into the breach. He's on for the
Speaker 1: podcast a ballot Measure and tweets Governor Newsom is spoiling
Speaker 1: for a fight with the President he is.
Speaker 3: Indeed, It is the cover of the new issue of
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Business Week, out on newsstands, now online, and on
Speaker 3: the Bloomberg terminal. Bloomberg BusinessWeek National correspondent Josh Green is
Speaker 3: the lead author of the Profile of the Governor. Josh
Speaker 3: is also the author of several books, including the number
Speaker 3: one New York Times bestseller Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and The Storming of the Presidency. He joins us Josh
Speaker 3: from Washington, DC.
Speaker 5: Josh, great to have.
Speaker 3: You here with us, I mean, Gavin Newsom. He went
Speaker 3: from one of his lowest political points earlier this year,
Speaker 3: as deadly fires burned in southern California. She's now being
Speaker 3: a potential leader of the Democratic Party. That seems quite
Speaker 3: a turn. How did this happen and how dark was
Speaker 3: it for him?
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, as you guys said in that nice intro.
Speaker 8: He was our cover story, our cover profile this week,
Speaker 8: went out to the Sacramento spent some time with him,
Speaker 8: talk to him. For a lot of people nationally, I
Speaker 8: think outside California. The last time they really keyed in
Speaker 8: and focused on Governor Newsom was back in January, during
Speaker 8: the wildfires.
Speaker 4: Things were out of control.
Speaker 8: Trump was the new president, was sort of insulting him,
Speaker 8: tweeting negative things about him, and so, you know, he
Speaker 8: told us that was really the low point I think
Speaker 8: of his governorship. But what's interesting is that over the
Speaker 8: last couple of months, partly due to some things that
Speaker 8: Trump has done, Newsom has re emerged on the national
Speaker 8: stage as perhaps the most important Democrat right now, because
Speaker 8: he is in the middle of leading a ballot initiative
Speaker 8: that would create as many as five new Democratic House districts.
Speaker 8: And Democrats nationally are pretty much without power. They don't
Speaker 8: control the White House, they don't control either House of Congress,
Speaker 8: but they're very much hoping to win back the House
Speaker 8: next November. And so Newsome, by dint of his ability
Speaker 8: to kind of run the table in California, get this
Speaker 8: initiative on the ballot, has suddenly become important in preserving Democrats'
Speaker 8: chance to win back some shred of power to confront
Speaker 8: Donald Trump with next November, and of course that would
Speaker 8: vault Newsom himself into even more prominent role as Democrats
Speaker 8: look for somebody to lead the party in twenty twenty
Speaker 8: eight and out of the Trump era.
Speaker 1: Does that proposition have widespread support in California right now?
Speaker 1: I mean, former Governor Ronald Schwarzenegger has spoken out recently
Speaker 1: against it. What did you find in your reporting?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not clear that it does.
Speaker 8: I mean, what's going on, just to kind of clue
Speaker 8: in viewers, is that Trump and Republicans have been very
Speaker 8: aggressive about deciding to redraw or try and redraw congressional
Speaker 8: districts in red states across the country as a way
Speaker 8: of kind of putting their thumb on the scale in
Speaker 8: midterm elections in a way that would help Republicans withstand
Speaker 8: what I think most people expect to be an electoral backlash.
Speaker 8: So the fear for Democrats is that Republicans essentially rewrite
Speaker 8: the rules and you know, take control or keep control
Speaker 8: of a House of Representatives that they think they ought
Speaker 8: to be able to win, and so new some value
Speaker 8: to the parties that he's been able to kind of
Speaker 8: come in and I think offset this if this ballot
Speaker 8: referendum wins. But it's not clear that it's winning by
Speaker 8: a lot. The latest poll I've seen has it at
Speaker 8: about fifty percent in favor, about thirty five thirty six
Speaker 8: percent of pose and the rest undecided.
Speaker 4: So it really could still swing either way.
Speaker 8: And as you said, there have been prominent Republicans like
Speaker 8: former Governor Arl Schwarzenegger have come out and said, no,
Speaker 8: we don't want to do this, We don't want to
Speaker 8: create these democratic districts.
Speaker 4: And so we'll see.
Speaker 8: But I think the expectation among the experts that I've
Speaker 8: spoken to is that this probably will prevail, and if
Speaker 8: it does, Democrats nationally, I think are going to breathe
Speaker 8: a big sigh of relief.
Speaker 3: Josh. We want to dig more into this profile piece
Speaker 3: of Gavin Newsoen, but I just want to on this referendum,
Speaker 3: this ballot referendum. How important is it to new some specifically,
Speaker 3: how important is it to you really Democrats more broadly,
Speaker 3: as we all are kind of looking at the upcoming
Speaker 3: midterms and what it means and what it says about
Speaker 3: President Trump's administration.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a great question. The answer is that it's
Speaker 8: really important to both of them. I just explained on
Speaker 8: kind of the national democratic side why it's important. But
Speaker 8: for Newsom himself, I think it's especially important because you know,
Speaker 8: he is somebody who has long been thought to.
Speaker 4: Have presidential ambitions.
Speaker 8: Democrats are obviously looking for a new leader in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty eight, but talking to people around Washington, around the country,
Speaker 8: in Democratic circles, there could be literally dozens of people running.
Speaker 8: And so if this ballot referendum does pass, it will
Speaker 8: be a real validating credential for Newsome. He's one of
Speaker 8: the rare Democrats right now who isn't a position of power.
Speaker 4: And if he's able to lead his party.
Speaker 8: To victory on this ballot initiative and help Democrats win
Speaker 8: back the House for Representatives in twenty twenty six, he
Speaker 8: can go out and say look like, I'm out here,
Speaker 8: I'm fighting Trump, I'm doing things, I'm helping the Democrats party,
Speaker 8: and that's just not something that a lot of other elected.
Speaker 4: Democrats can say right now.
Speaker 8: And I do think it's going to lead to a
Speaker 8: lot of excitement and a lot of national attention and
Speaker 8: Newsome himself, as I mentioned, as we mentioned it some
Speaker 8: like in the profile, has spent a lot of time
Speaker 8: trying to raise his profile online, doing everything from you know,
Speaker 8: YouTube to Twitch to Twitter to x to try and
Speaker 8: raise his visibility. So I think a win on this
Speaker 8: ballot initiative would really help him in that regard.
Speaker 3: I always think about COVID and like how much he
Speaker 3: became so prominent, and we covered certainly everything he did
Speaker 3: during COVID and what was going on in the state,
Speaker 3: but he really became a national figure.
Speaker 1: Especially during that visit to the French laundry. As Josh
Speaker 1: points out in his piece, which what did he call that?
Speaker 1: In his podcast? Josh he quoted in the piece.
Speaker 8: I think he said it was like his most boneheaded
Speaker 8: move he made this governor, and not a lot of
Speaker 8: people would disagree with that. But you know, he is
Speaker 8: prone to the occasional scandal. So that's part of the
Speaker 8: excitement of following Governor Gavin Newsom. So it does a
Speaker 8: lot of exciting things, both for good and for better.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that a little bit. As a
Speaker 1: California and I followed Gavin Newsom for decades at this point,
Speaker 1: one thing that just always surprises me though, is where
Speaker 1: he was and who he was with early on in
Speaker 1: his political life. I mean, there's the famous photo shoot
Speaker 1: was at any Lebowitz with Kimberly Gilfoyle, his former wife,
Speaker 1: who is now you know, she was linked to one
Speaker 1: of the Trump's sons romantically. She's now the ambassador to Greece.
Speaker 1: What is his political history? You dive in here, there's
Speaker 1: connections to the Getty family. You really go really far
Speaker 1: back generations.
Speaker 4: Actually yeah, I.
Speaker 8: Mean he's had this fascinating life. You know, his his
Speaker 8: father and grandfather were kind of big time political fixers
Speaker 8: in San Francisco, which gave him entree into the kind
Speaker 8: of wealthy world of San Francisco politics and business. While
Speaker 8: at the same time, you know, his mom after his
Speaker 8: parents divorce, was a single mom who worked three jobs,
Speaker 8: so he kind of really grew up with a foot
Speaker 8: in both worlds. I think he's always been drawn to
Speaker 8: the camera as a politician. As he said, there's a
Speaker 8: famous Vanity Fair cover shirt shoot back when he was
Speaker 8: married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. You know, he managed to be
Speaker 8: a very high profile mayor of San Francisco, conducting or
Speaker 8: allowing gay marriages back before the Supreme Court had allowed
Speaker 8: that first got him on the national stage. But he's
Speaker 8: also you know, good looking, telligenic guy who really wants
Speaker 8: to have his profile out there, and you know, has
Speaker 8: a lot of political talent. I think that the challenge
Speaker 8: for Newsome as governor California, and we get into this
Speaker 8: in the piece a little bit, is that there's a
Speaker 8: lot not to like you about California right now at
Speaker 8: a time when you know, Americans are more and more
Speaker 8: concerned with inflation and the high cost of living. California
Speaker 8: has sky high home prices. It sort of struggles with
Speaker 8: a lot of the things that Americans struggle with generally,
Speaker 8: whether it's high gas prices, high unemployment, homelessness.
Speaker 4: So all of these things are.
Speaker 8: Subjects at Newsom and Business Week spoke about, talked about
Speaker 8: and try to kind of war game out of the
Speaker 8: piece whether this is something that he can overcome. And
Speaker 8: as Newsome himself said too, you know, he's got a
Speaker 8: real pitch I think for Democrats nationally, which is that
Speaker 8: California is this engine of dynamism, whether it's tech or
Speaker 8: AI or business, and really conducts itself in a way
Speaker 8: that I think Newsom would describe as the polar opposite
Speaker 8: of the way Donald Trump runs the US economy, with
Speaker 8: a focus on kind of industrial nostalgia and looking back,
Speaker 8: Newsom is very much a California guy, almost seems like
Speaker 8: a venture capitalist at times, kind of.
Speaker 4: Pitching his state.
Speaker 8: And I think it's going to be interesting to see
Speaker 8: whether Democratic voters connect with that and decide this is
Speaker 8: the guy that they want leading them forward.
Speaker 3: Josh, Dude. Democratic voters also connect with the way he's
Speaker 3: begun using social media, kind of playing President Trump at
Speaker 3: his own game with AI generated content and caps and
Speaker 3: so on and so forth.
Speaker 5: You single this out.
Speaker 3: Certainly in the story. Does that resonate? Is that what
Speaker 3: Democrats want?
Speaker 8: I mean to me, this is the most interesting part
Speaker 8: of the profile is, you know, a couple of months ago,
Speaker 8: Newsom turned the governor's Twitter feed into this kind of
Speaker 8: mockery of Donald Trump and the way he comports himself
Speaker 8: on social media with these all caps tweets kind of
Speaker 8: mocking and insulting him, and you know, AI generated images
Speaker 8: of Trump eating MacDonald's Burger's kind of stuffing his face,
Speaker 8: and it was basically kind of meant to get down
Speaker 8: in the mud with Trump, and it's something that's caused
Speaker 8: a ton of attention, a ton of engagement.
Speaker 4: A lot of.
Speaker 8: Democratic voters are seeing this and engaging with this online.
Speaker 8: I know in my own life, people relatives in mine
Speaker 8: are not particularly political, would have no reason to be
Speaker 8: interested in Gavin Newsom were suddenly asking me about him
Speaker 8: because of his wild social media persona. So in an
Speaker 8: intention getting sense, I think it's helped him. Whether or
Speaker 8: not this helps him like win votes in purple swing
Speaker 8: states three years from now, I'm still a little bit
Speaker 8: skeptical about that, but you know, partly the race right now,
Speaker 8: if you're a Democrat is the race for eyeballs and attention,
Speaker 8: and there's no question.
Speaker 4: That Newsome is doing that kind of.
Speaker 8: More aggressively and in a more interesting way than any
Speaker 8: other Democrat on the scene right now.
Speaker 1: Is it a risk politically for the constituents in California?
Speaker 1: Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, spoke at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: screen time earlier this month, and she talked about collaborating
Speaker 1: with President Trump in the of the disastrous wildfires. If
Speaker 1: there is another big natural disaster in California before Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom's term is up. Does he have to go begging
Speaker 1: to President Trump? And President Trump says, no, You've made
Speaker 1: a mockery of me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's a good question.
Speaker 8: I mean one of the things we talked about with
Speaker 8: Newsom and this piece is that he essentially, you know,
Speaker 8: Trump had kind of written him off back in January,
Speaker 8: before he'd even taken office, had kind of turned on Newsome,
Speaker 8: and Newsom had said, you know, in the past, they'd
Speaker 8: had a good working relationship. Back in the twenty eighteen
Speaker 8: Paradise fires in California, he thought Trump had been pretty helpful,
Speaker 8: but this time around he wasn't, and Newsom had to
Speaker 8: kind of force his way into Trump's sphere and orbit
Speaker 8: in order to get some of the help that California needed.
Speaker 8: I think it does run a risk when you kind
Speaker 8: of intentionally mock and insult someone, especially as a Democratic governor,
Speaker 8: if you need to then turn around and ask that
Speaker 8: president for help, it could be problematic. On the other hand,
Speaker 8: Trump as president has pursued a scorched earth policy against
Speaker 8: just about every Democrat, every blue state, in every blue
Speaker 8: city that I can think of, regardless of whether or
Speaker 8: not the mayors and governors of those States have insulted
Speaker 8: him personally and gratuitously the way Governor Newsom House. I'm
Speaker 8: not sure in the end will make much of a difference,
Speaker 8: but it'll certainly be something to watch if there is
Speaker 8: another big national disaster in California that requires federal help.
Speaker 3: Fascinating staff. I wish we had another fifteen twenty minutes.
Speaker 6: Josh with you.
Speaker 3: That's always the case, Josh Green, National correspondent at Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Business This is the cover story of the issue New
Speaker 3: Issue at Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 5: Find it on newsstands.
Speaker 3: It is on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot Com.
Speaker 3: His profile so much detail.
Speaker 5: Love it.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 3: Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg Business Week, including a computing breakthrough from Google
Speaker 3: when it comes to quantum computing, we check in with
Speaker 3: the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who is looking to make
Speaker 3: his mark in that space.
Speaker 1: Plus Xenax in your ears, an all in one face fixer,
Speaker 1: maybe some ketamine therapy. Those are just some cheat codes
Speaker 1: on maybe how to improve your overall well innes It's
Speaker 1: courtesy of our Bloomberg Pursuits team.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to stick to getting lots of sleep
Speaker 3: in drikutts.
Speaker 1: I think there's okay, just to throw it out there.
Speaker 1: There's also like the walking uphill treadmill one.
Speaker 3: That I love, no but makes sense. Love it, yeah,
Speaker 3: love it exactly.
Speaker 1: Just a little just a little preview of what's to come.
Speaker 3: All right, love it, love it all right. First up
Speaker 3: this Hour addressing the future of work and how robots
Speaker 3: play into that. The New York Times reported this past
Speaker 3: week that Amazon executives believe the company is on the
Speaker 3: cusp of its next big workplace shift, and that is
Speaker 3: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots. So
Speaker 3: the question will the future of work include robots or
Speaker 3: is it all hype? I mean it already kind of
Speaker 3: includes robots, right.
Speaker 1: How do you know I'm not one? I don't know.
Speaker 5: I did see you plug yourself.
Speaker 1: In the Sometimes I feel sometimes I feel like it's
Speaker 1: neither here nor there. Well here with more on what
Speaker 1: Amazon is up to is Ty Brady, chief technologist at
Speaker 1: Amazon Robotics. Ty joined us from Amazon's Delivering the Future
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five event out in California.
Speaker 9: We are fourth Delivering the Future event here and there's
Speaker 9: a bunch of press that we have here and we
Speaker 9: made a couple of big announcements in robotics. The first
Speaker 9: is in our manipulation robot that we call blue Jay.
Speaker 9: And what blue Jay the way that you can think
Speaker 9: of that as we can you can take three assembly
Speaker 9: lines and put it in the same footprint of one.
Speaker 9: What it does is help eliminate the menial, the mundane,
Speaker 9: and the repetitive, and it could pick more than seventy
Speaker 9: five percent of the inventory that we actually sell in
Speaker 9: our sortable network, which is a really big deal. I'm
Speaker 9: really proud of that. And I also say there's something
Speaker 9: interesting about blue Jay as well as compared to our
Speaker 9: other bird manipulation systems Sparrow and Robin, it took us
Speaker 9: about three years to kind of design, deploy and get
Speaker 9: out to our frontline employees. We have actually done blue
Speaker 9: Jay with the power of AI and just over a year,
Speaker 9: so it's really the pace of innovation.
Speaker 1: I think one of a lot of people think about Amazon
Speaker 1: and robots. I just want to jump in because we
Speaker 1: don't have a ton of time, but I like that.
Speaker 1: I want to we'll get to some of the other announcements.
Speaker 1: They think about the Kiva Systems robots the big acquisition
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, twenty twelve, that was a
Speaker 1: big acquisition for Amazon, and they've seen pictures of the
Speaker 1: way that those can move large loads of things across warehouses.
Speaker 1: But if you were to go into a state of
Speaker 1: the art Amazon warehouse today, what would you see That's
Speaker 1: in addition to those Kiva robots.
Speaker 9: Yeah, in addition to the world's first goods to person
Speaker 9: fulfillment strategy, which was just a really good idea where
Speaker 9: we have more than a million robots that we manufacture
Speaker 9: action in Massachusetts doing that job every day. You're going
Speaker 9: to see more of the unstructured fields, right, So, you're
Speaker 9: going to see green robot that we call Proteus that
Speaker 9: can move big cargoes of packages to the right dock
Speaker 9: at the right time. You're going to see many more
Speaker 9: manipulation systems that they we have in there, eliminating kind
Speaker 9: of the repetitive motions that they we have no one
Speaker 9: wants to lift a fifty pound box box all day,
Speaker 9: Robin does that, Cardinal does that. Moving into some of
Speaker 9: these proteus bound carts that we have, you're going to
Speaker 9: see much more collaborative robotics, right. So that's where we
Speaker 9: build our robotic systems to enable people to augment what
Speaker 9: people are capable of. And we really believe in the
Speaker 9: philosophy of people and machines working together. How can we
Speaker 9: build a tool set that enables our employees to do
Speaker 9: their job not only more efficiently, but also with better
Speaker 9: safety in mind?
Speaker 3: All right, So there's this robot arm called blue Jay.
Speaker 3: You just talked about it. You know, you guys are
Speaker 3: using this AI agent called Iluna, and then you're also
Speaker 3: working with augmented reality glasses to be worn by dry
Speaker 3: and delivery trucks in the field. There's like so much
Speaker 3: going on. Step back for a moment, because you guys
Speaker 3: have a lot of data.
Speaker 5: You look at what you're doing.
Speaker 3: I'm just curious investors who are thinking about Amazon and
Speaker 3: what you are doing, how do they think about the
Speaker 3: long term, like ROI return on investment when it comes
Speaker 3: to the investments you guys make in robots, is the
Speaker 3: goal about labor efficiency, through put speed or is it
Speaker 3: margin expansion kind of tie across your fulfillment operations?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, definitely the efficiency. We think about efficiencies and
Speaker 9: how can we gain efficiency through all the chain of
Speaker 9: our fulfillment processes for sure, And you mentioned data and
Speaker 9: data is the fuel for AI systems. Data has allowed
Speaker 9: us to bring think of the body of being our robotics,
Speaker 9: but bring the mind to robotics, allowing it to be
Speaker 9: more adaptable, more fluid. You can almost think of this
Speaker 9: as the ability to pour our robotics systems into any
Speaker 9: size building, scale of building to amplify what our employees
Speaker 9: are already doing. We want to give them an amazing
Speaker 9: tool set and we see that when we do that,
Speaker 9: we're more productive. Right when you do robotics, right when
Speaker 9: you do collabor of robotics where you need both people
Speaker 9: and machines doing what they do best and they do
Speaker 9: different things better, that it allows you to be more productive.
Speaker 9: And when you're more productive, that allows you to invest
Speaker 9: more in people. We've skilled more than seven hundred thousand
Speaker 9: of our employees, which is a great stat and also
Speaker 9: in our robotics we've expanded from the Kiva days. We've
Speaker 9: expanded from just a movement solution to now movement and
Speaker 9: mobility and sortation and storage and perception systems, packing systems
Speaker 9: that have really changed the game for our customers. That's
Speaker 9: a big deal to us.
Speaker 3: What ty you know, well you need less workers, and
Speaker 3: I got to bring it up. You know, The Times
Speaker 3: had a story out They talked about interviews and a
Speaker 3: cash of internal strategy documents that they saw that it
Speaker 3: reveals that your execs think that the companies on the
Speaker 3: cusp of its next big workplace shift. I'm reading from
Speaker 3: the Times and replacing more than half a million jobs
Speaker 3: with robots, so you know, we know things change. I'm
Speaker 3: not in a horse and buggy anymore. I don't make
Speaker 3: things piecemeal. I get it. I don't get tons of
Speaker 3: faxes and I don't get tons of pieces of physical mail.
Speaker 3: Thank god, things change. Having said that, is Amazon, do
Speaker 3: you guys believe that you're on the cusp of a
Speaker 3: workplace shift and that you won't need as many workers
Speaker 3: because the advancements in robotics, Well.
Speaker 9: There's no doubt that things change. I mean, and we're
Speaker 9: actually really proud of that day and Amazon is that
Speaker 9: we avoid stasis at all costs. We change and we adapt,
Speaker 9: and the nature of tasks definitely changed. There's no doubt
Speaker 9: about that. We are laser focused on efficiencies inside of
Speaker 9: our buildings. But when it comes to that article, that
Speaker 9: article was speculating ten years out right, that's a ten
Speaker 9: year speculation, and it's hard to say what's going to
Speaker 9: happen in the next ten years. But I can tell
Speaker 9: you what happened in the last ten years, the last
Speaker 9: ten years, which is when we seriously invested in robotics,
Speaker 9: that we created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and
Speaker 9: new job types. And there's been no employer in the
Speaker 9: United States that has employed more people than Amazon in
Speaker 9: ten years. I mean, that's and that's the power of
Speaker 9: efficiencies and building your robots in way that's applied and
Speaker 9: real that actually augments the human potential.
Speaker 3: All Right, my brother Sam, I like a dog with
Speaker 3: a bone. So does that mean ten years out it
Speaker 3: could be less jobs or we just don't know or
Speaker 3: you don't think that's the case, Well you.
Speaker 9: Have to think about I mean, there's jobs and there's tasks, right,
Speaker 9: so of course we're changing the nature of tasks. Like
Speaker 9: I'm very bullish on eliminating every menial, mundane and repetitive
Speaker 9: job out there. Nobody wants to do that, so we're
Speaker 9: going to change those tasks one hundred percent. But we
Speaker 9: can again, as history has shown, we continue to create
Speaker 9: jobs right with the goal of two things. Can you
Speaker 9: have it all? Can you be more productive which means
Speaker 9: more efficiency, and can you also create a safer environment
Speaker 9: for employees? And we're actually doing both. That's what history
Speaker 9: has shown. In the last ten years. We have created
Speaker 9: better than thirty percent reduction in our overall recordable injury
Speaker 9: rate over the last five years because of our robotics
Speaker 9: and also much more efficient. For example, our latest generation
Speaker 9: filment center in shreport is twenty five percent more efficient.
Speaker 9: You can have it all, but you have to build
Speaker 9: your robotics in the right way that empowers people.
Speaker 1: We're speaking with Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics.
Speaker 1: When we think about hiring for these one off or
Speaker 1: seasonal events like the holiday season, our Amazon Prime Day,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how you're putting pencil to paper right now
Speaker 1: and thinking about those numbers and to what extent automation
Speaker 1: has reduced Amazon's dependency on seasonal or hourly labor for holidays,
Speaker 1: for prime day. What does that look like or what
Speaker 1: will that look like this year next year.
Speaker 9: Well, it's the same philosophy of empowering employees, whether they're
Speaker 9: temporary or the full time employees with the world's best
Speaker 9: machines that help them do their job. It's the same philosophy.
Speaker 9: I'm really proud of the fact that this year we're
Speaker 9: going to offer more than two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 9: temporary jobs for our employees to come in during the
Speaker 9: holiday season. Those are good paying jobs. I'm really happy
Speaker 9: about that, really pleased with that. And I'm really pleased
Speaker 9: with the work that our women and men have done
Speaker 9: in the robotics field, designing the pioneering these new physical
Speaker 9: AI systems that help them do their jobs better.
Speaker 3: I got to say, one thing that I've been thinking
Speaker 3: a lot about is what's going on overseas, whether it's China,
Speaker 3: whether it's Japan. Bloomberg has done some reporting about service
Speaker 3: industries in Japan because they have a labor shortage that
Speaker 3: they are leading increasingly on robotics. Have you been over
Speaker 3: there and looking at what they're doing, And I'm just
Speaker 3: curious if you're seeing some things that are pretty impressive,
Speaker 3: and that the US, as a creator of things or
Speaker 3: its role in the robotics industry, has to keep a watch.
Speaker 5: On what's going on in other countries.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think it's easy, especially in robotis, to get distracted
Speaker 9: about what other people are doing. I think anybody can
Speaker 9: make a YouTube video. I think anybody can kind of
Speaker 9: pop in and overflate something. But if you come into
Speaker 9: our world, our world is all about application. So final
Speaker 9: thoughts is that robotics when done the right way, when
Speaker 9: you reframe your relationship with machines, you can enable more productivity,
Speaker 9: create greater efficiencies, and create a more safer environment for employees.
Speaker 9: And this collaborative mindset that we've had that we've done
Speaker 9: for the last ten years really does make the day.
Speaker 3: Ty Brady over at Amazon so appreciate it.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 3: Some news this past week in the world of quantum computing.
Speaker 3: Google ran an algorithm on its Willow quantum computing chip
Speaker 3: that can be repeated on similar platforms and now performed
Speaker 3: classical supercomputers. A breakthrough, it said, clears a path for
Speaker 3: useful applications of quantum technology within five years.
Speaker 1: The folks in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have been thinking about quantum
Speaker 1: computing for years. The first commercially available quantum network in
Speaker 1: the US was established there. That was back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. We should also note that last year Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Philanthropy is named Chattanooga one of twenty five cities selected
Speaker 1: for its American Sustainable Cities Program. Bloomberg Philanthropies is founded
Speaker 1: and supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority
Speaker 1: owner of Bloomberg LP.
Speaker 3: Now Chattanooga Sustainable Cities program still ongoing, and so we
Speaker 3: wanted an update on their quantum network. Back with us
Speaker 3: was Tim Kelly, Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Also Janet Raeberg,
Speaker 3: President and CEO Elective EPB, formerly known as the Electric
Speaker 3: Power Board of Chattanooga. That company it provides energy, internet,
Speaker 3: phone and more in and around Chattanooga. The environment today,
Speaker 3: how is it in terms of running your city, being
Speaker 3: a mayor in a political environment that's a tough one,
Speaker 3: an economic environment that may be tough.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's tough, but you know, running cities is an
Speaker 10: eminently practical exercise. And I will say, you know, our
Speaker 10: mayor's races are nonpartisan. They always have been, and I stayed.
Speaker 4: In that lane.
Speaker 10: Again, I mean, I'm not here to catalog my political beliefs.
Speaker 10: They're pretty confusing to most people anyway. I'd say, you know,
Speaker 10: Republicans think I'm a Democratic, and Democrats think I'm a Republican.
Speaker 10: I'm probably doing a pretty good job. So you know,
Speaker 10: I look, that has served me well in this environment,
Speaker 10: because again I believe, as does a lot of folks
Speaker 10: of Bloomberg as do rather, but that cities are really
Speaker 10: the foundation of our economy. I swear ninety percent of
Speaker 10: the GDP's generateds we're all innovations generated. So I'm focused
Speaker 10: on whatever is best for Chattanooga. So I can work
Speaker 10: and have managed to work with people on both sides
Speaker 10: of the aisle, and you know, in the best interest
Speaker 10: of my city.
Speaker 1: Do you find yourself getting pulled into the social issues
Speaker 1: that seem to define our era right now? The stuff
Speaker 1: that does dominate cable news, whether you're talking about the
Speaker 1: right or the left.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean I find myself, you know, I find
Speaker 10: people attempting to pull me into those but I think
Speaker 10: I've gotten pretty good at wrestling my way out of
Speaker 10: them and trying to just translate back into simple terms.
Speaker 10: You know, is this what's best for the city? You know,
Speaker 10: does it work or does it not work? I mean,
Speaker 10: sometimes you can't avoid those political issues. It's not as though,
Speaker 10: you know, I don't have my own beliefs. But again,
Speaker 10: I think you, just as a mayor, have to take
Speaker 10: a thoroughly practical approach to what's going to work best
Speaker 10: for the city.
Speaker 3: All right, So when you think about what's best for
Speaker 3: the city, let's talk about that, because you are on
Speaker 3: the ground talking to people what they need, what you
Speaker 3: need to make sure you have a good economy, strong economy,
Speaker 3: not just today but in the future. That quantum computing
Speaker 3: that you made it back in twenty twenty to tell
Speaker 3: us about, kind of give us an update for someone
Speaker 3: who didn't hear the conversation when you were last on
Speaker 3: with this kind of where you guys are with us.
Speaker 10: So I'll give you the cliff notes version, which is
Speaker 10: that you know, we took advantage of a large federal
Speaker 10: low interest loan way back when during Clinton and Gore
Speaker 10: to put in a giant municipal fibre network, and that
Speaker 10: gave us the first and fastest municipal fiber network in
Speaker 10: the country. We had a lot of folks move in
Speaker 10: during COVID because you know, you can get one gig
Speaker 10: of symmetrical speed for sixty seven bucks a month.
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty great.
Speaker 10: You can get twenty five gigs of speed at your
Speaker 10: house in Chattanooga. But it turns out that you can
Speaker 10: also do quantum computing on large loops of dark fiber,
Speaker 10: one particular type that uses photons and trapped ions, which
Speaker 10: is where ion Q began to become interested in Chattanooga.
Speaker 10: So we opened and Janet can talk more about it.
Speaker 10: The first commercially available quantum network, and it is starting
Speaker 10: to attract a lot of investment and attention.
Speaker 1: So Janet, come on in here, because one thing that
Speaker 1: we're trying to understand is what the practical applications of
Speaker 1: quantum technology are. We spoke with Ed Ludlow the coast
Speaker 1: of our Bloomberg Tech program a little earlier and Carol agreed,
Speaker 1: I mean you thought healthcare first, he said healthcare also,
Speaker 1: this is one area of application, but it's still kind
Speaker 1: of the world where we're thinking about what this tech
Speaker 1: can do, not necessarily seeing what it can do. Have
Speaker 1: we seen any material things be developed as a result
Speaker 1: of this technology and what you're doing in Chattanooga.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So ian Q has been working on a lot
Speaker 11: of different type of application with different industry, and so
Speaker 11: we were interested because we're in an electric company and
Speaker 11: so we have all the data for them to help
Speaker 11: us optimize our grid. So we're doing a partnership actually
Speaker 11: with Ionq, Nvidia, and Oakridge National Lab as a full
Speaker 11: way partnership to help do use hybrid computing until quantum
Speaker 11: computing can get to where it needs to be to
Speaker 11: help us with some grid optimization problem that we can't
Speaker 11: solve today in.
Speaker 3: Terms of energy demands. Tell us about that. That is
Speaker 3: like what you are seeing front and center. The AI
Speaker 3: conversation narrative has moved from the spend and chips and
Speaker 3: so on and so forth, like to basically, all right,
Speaker 3: do we have enough power to do all of this?
Speaker 3: And there is certainly a power scramble among the big hyperscalers.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing on that front?
Speaker 11: Yeah, and I think that's a nationwide, you know, issue
Speaker 11: with with the energy problem. And as AI gets better
Speaker 11: as an energy problem, right, Yeah, I mean as AI
Speaker 11: gets better and better the more energy that it's going
Speaker 11: to need. And so that's where quantum comes in. Very
Speaker 11: important to the part of that solution is that quantum computer,
Speaker 11: once it gets to the phase that it needs to be,
Speaker 11: is it can solve things at a much faster rate,
Speaker 11: which uses less energy than a classical computer because it
Speaker 11: can do things in parallel versus sequential as a classical computer.
Speaker 1: Today, Where do you get the energy that you sell
Speaker 1: to people in and around Chattenoga?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we buy it from TVA Tennessee Valley Authority,
Speaker 11: and so they generate the power and we distribute it
Speaker 11: to our customers.
Speaker 4: How do they generate it?
Speaker 11: They have a diverse mix of portfolio from hydro, different
Speaker 11: types of renewables to natural gas, and so you know
Speaker 11: they're continuing to look at other options.
Speaker 1: Do you see that mixed going now?
Speaker 10: I was just going to say, they're also very much
Speaker 10: on the front foot in terms of advanced.
Speaker 1: Nuclear Do you see that mix?
Speaker 4: This is either of you.
Speaker 1: Do you see that mixed changing and focusing less unrenewables
Speaker 1: more on nuclear as a result of the changes out
Speaker 1: of Washington.
Speaker 10: I think you're going to see that, you know, and again,
Speaker 10: regardless of your political affiliation, if you just kind of
Speaker 10: look at the math, there's no way around nuclear, right.
Speaker 10: I do think they are giving us or EPB more
Speaker 10: latitude to generate some of our own power because of
Speaker 10: the anticipated demands. And I think we still have a
Speaker 10: lot of headway on solar, So I mean, I think
Speaker 10: we'll contin and we've got a lot of things we
Speaker 10: can do with hydro. We're going to actually start using
Speaker 10: biogas at our wastewater treatment plant to generate electricity. So
Speaker 10: we're looking at any in all ways that we can generate.
Speaker 3: Because my understanding when we talk about SMRs, the small
Speaker 3: modular reactors, it's ten fifteen.
Speaker 1: Will remind us, Will Wage reminds us who covers this
Speaker 1: here at Bloomberg News that we're not there right now,
Speaker 1: it's a while we are not, but we have a
Speaker 1: pretty significant nuclear footprint with TVA already in the tendency.
Speaker 3: What would you tell people who are still kind of
Speaker 3: nervous when it comes to the nuclear footprint that you
Speaker 3: guys have. You know what you know, fine, people do it, Okay,
Speaker 3: do it across the country or do it in another country.
Speaker 5: But you know the feeling here in the I mean, I.
Speaker 1: Grew up next to a nuclear power planet. But I'm fine, right,
Speaker 1: I'm a little weird.
Speaker 5: But what would you say about that?
Speaker 10: I mean, the technology has come a long long way. Yeah,
Speaker 10: that's what I would say. Man, I'd say, go do
Speaker 10: your research, do your homework.
Speaker 4: They're not.
Speaker 10: I mean, that's why we have these discussions, That's why we.
Speaker 4: Have the fears.
Speaker 10: But but there's just not absent fusion. I will say
Speaker 10: the state in the University of Tennessee is also working
Speaker 10: very very hard on fusion technology. Absent that breakthrough, there's
Speaker 10: really not.
Speaker 5: That's what I'm waiting for you.
Speaker 1: When we're talking about quantum today and we're talking about Google,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Silicon Valley. How do you get people
Speaker 1: to think about Chattanooga, Tennessee, and not Silicon Valley, not
Speaker 1: New York City, not Austin, Texas when they're thinking about
Speaker 1: where they want to live to have a job in technology.
Speaker 10: Coming on Bloomberg is a great first step. No, I mean, look,
Speaker 10: we talk about this all the time. It's a mid
Speaker 10: side Southern city with kind of a funny name, and
Speaker 10: there's a bit of cognitive dissonance there. So you know, look,
Speaker 10: we are out telling the story. I mean, I was
Speaker 10: just in Detroit last week at a sustainable mobility conference.
Speaker 10: We were at the Quantum World Congress. I mean, at
Speaker 10: some point it's you know, the evidence is mounting. We
Speaker 10: are it's not just smoke. We are doing the work
Speaker 10: and it's working.
Speaker 6: Is it? Is it?
Speaker 1: If you build it, they will come mentality, I think,
Speaker 1: So have they come?
Speaker 6: Yes, they have come.
Speaker 10: I mean again we had you know, we now have
Speaker 10: independent verification that you know, ten twelve thousand people moved
Speaker 10: to Chattanooga during the pandemic very you know, degree talented
Speaker 10: people that could work remotely. And I think again, our job,
Speaker 10: my job as mayor, is to help break that glass
Speaker 10: ceiling so that we have the level of business investment
Speaker 10: and again can build up our academic horsepower to be
Speaker 10: able to sustain those knowledge economy jobs.
Speaker 3: Jenna, you know, when we think about quantum computing, we
Speaker 3: spend so much time to talking about you know, large
Speaker 3: language models and generative AI and kind of where that's
Speaker 3: agentic AI. You just talked about the power aspect or
Speaker 3: the use of less power when it comes to quantum computing.
Speaker 3: But I mean, should our conversation be shifting in terms
Speaker 3: of what we are having for an investing audience when
Speaker 3: we talk just so much about AI generally versus quantum Well, I.
Speaker 11: Think that with quantum computer, when it gets to you know,
Speaker 11: at the level it needs to be, you can team
Speaker 11: it up with AI and get even more powerful algorithm
Speaker 11: that comes out of it to be able to solve
Speaker 11: more complex problems. So I don't think it's one or
Speaker 11: the other. I think it's going to be a combined
Speaker 11: of you know, how do you combine that and use
Speaker 11: less energy and be able to build algorithm more efficiently.
Speaker 3: So help me because when we talk about the data
Speaker 3: center build out, so does that go hand in hand
Speaker 3: with the buildout of quantum computing? Is that part of it?
Speaker 11: So right now, it's you know, the we're building a
Speaker 11: quantum computer to kind of learn more and be able
Speaker 11: to help accelerate and advance that technology with companies like
Speaker 11: ion Q, and I think once it gets to where
Speaker 11: it needs to be, then well we can team it
Speaker 11: up with AI.
Speaker 10: Okay, yeah, yeah, and many of the implications with quantum.
Speaker 3: I'm asking basic questions because I feel like we spend
Speaker 3: so much time talking about the AI, but this is
Speaker 3: something that increasingly is coming into the dialogue.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Now, I'm just going to say the logistics is a
Speaker 10: huge vertical in chattre Go as well, and I think
Speaker 10: the implications for quantum for logistics have huge implications for
Speaker 10: lower power demand and a lower carbon footprint, right, because
Speaker 10: you're going to waste a lot less time getting stuff
Speaker 10: from A to B. Right with root optimization we're going.
Speaker 3: To have to do because we talk about like the
Speaker 3: power drag or the power demand and the cost. Mayor Kelly,
Speaker 3: I'd be remiss not to ask you you are trying
Speaker 3: to build a city where everyone has an opportunity to
Speaker 3: thrive and prosper. We talk so much about the case
Speaker 3: shaped economy. There's a lot of people who aren't thriving
Speaker 3: and prospering in this environment. Thirty five seconds, what's a
Speaker 3: message to send to everybody?
Speaker 10: Well, we are working very hard to reform our workforce
Speaker 10: fillment system so that we so we don't leave folks behind.
Speaker 10: And I think we have some significant opportunities to do that,
Speaker 10: and we are in the midst of doing that again.
Speaker 10: It's tough out there, Yeah, and I think it's going
Speaker 10: to fall more to the state government and to philanthropy
Speaker 10: frankly to kind of take up the slack in the meantime.
Speaker 10: But I mean, we have to play the long game,
Speaker 10: and the long game is we need some significant change
Speaker 10: to the way that we do education workforce development in
Speaker 10: this country so that we don't leave people behind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does feel like in terms of education, we're
Speaker 3: starting to think about that.
Speaker 6: Come back soon.
Speaker 3: I'd love to kind of continue this conversation if we may.
Speaker 3: Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Janet Rieberg, she's
Speaker 3: the President's CEO elect of EP be joining us right
Speaker 3: here in our Bloomberg Interactive Burger Studio.
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Speaker 3: I felt like being well has turned into another job.
Speaker 3: From health trackers reporting our every step and snore to
Speaker 3: pricey longevity clubs and celebrity endorse up bits. Like I say, Tim,
Speaker 3: sometimes it feels like protecting your overall wellness can be.
Speaker 1: A lot of work and really hard and also a
Speaker 1: little expensive. Yeah, okay, thankfully we can cheat or maybe
Speaker 1: boosting if that makes us feel better. Yeahat the word cheat,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's so hard, I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: to cheat their cheat days with us with a list
Speaker 1: of wellness hacks to try, is the Bloomberg Pursuits Editor
Speaker 1: at Large, Chris Rouser. It is The Pursuit's cover story
Speaker 1: of the October issue of a business week magazine. It's
Speaker 1: available now online, on the terminal and on news stands.
Speaker 1: Before we get into some of the individual cheats, I
Speaker 1: already have my favorite.
Speaker 3: Wait, can we just say, first of all, Chris, you
Speaker 3: look marvelous.
Speaker 12: Oh thank oh my gosh, thank you.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome cheating.
Speaker 3: Now, go ahead, what's your favorite?
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about the overall tone of
Speaker 1: this and how it all came together, because I think it.
Speaker 1: Is it because there's a moment happening with wellness? Or
Speaker 1: is it because we're all getting older?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 12: I think both, Okay, both of those things. The reason
Speaker 12: we uh, the reason I to look at it and
Speaker 12: have us do a package on it was I had
Speaker 12: a couple of injuries earlier this year where I had
Speaker 12: a foot surgery, you guys remember, and I fractured my
Speaker 12: elbow and I couldn't work out. And the three of us,
Speaker 12: I know are fitness people, and when you cannot work out,
Speaker 12: you become mentally unwell.
Speaker 1: Very true.
Speaker 12: And so I just and when I finally was able
Speaker 12: to work out again, you know, I'm in my mid forties,
Speaker 12: it's like hard to get back in shape, put muscle on,
Speaker 12: lose weight, whatever. And I was like, you know what,
Speaker 12: I really wish I had a little cheat something where
Speaker 12: I could like really get back in shape faster. And
Speaker 12: it turns out there is one. There is a stem
Speaker 12: suit called the Catalyst suit, which is basically like one
Speaker 12: of those as seen on TV ab zappers from the nineties,
Speaker 12: where you put it on your whole body and it
Speaker 12: electrocutes you while you're working out and it activates more
Speaker 12: of your muscles.
Speaker 5: Wait, electrocute YOUO?
Speaker 3: Yeah, did it hurt?
Speaker 10: It?
Speaker 12: Hurting is not the right word. It feels. It's like
Speaker 12: a buzz. It's a very intense buzz, and it can
Speaker 12: be quite uncomfortable, not in a painful.
Speaker 5: Way, like I said, but no pay, no gain.
Speaker 12: Yeah, you really gotta get used to it. So there's
Speaker 12: this suit that activates your muscles like supercharge your workouts
Speaker 12: and actually can get you back in shape faster. And
Speaker 12: so once I started doing that, I was like, well,
Speaker 12: what other cheats are there? And I got everyone on
Speaker 12: the team looking for different chets for wellness, fitness, eating, sleeping,
Speaker 12: all that.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: I do want to say, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about the stemsuit, the Catalyst. Catalyst is the company
Speaker 1: that owns it. Brandon Kennedy's the CEO of the company
Speaker 1: that owns the stemsuit that Chris is talking about. We
Speaker 1: had an extending conversation with him and Chris a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago. You can check it out on our podcast
Speaker 1: feed to learn more. Little spoiler, Chris says, it actually works.
Speaker 4: It works. I do.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about some of these other tricks. Some
Speaker 1: of them involved needles, that's true. Some of them involve treadmills.
Speaker 1: I want to start with my favorite. It's old school.
Speaker 1: It's walking up hill. Oh yeah, because you know we
Speaker 1: think about cheats. This one doesn't even seem like a
Speaker 1: cheat to me, because this is like keeps you in shape.
Speaker 1: This is what you do. But apparently you can do
Speaker 1: this three or four days a week and you're not
Speaker 1: going to feel the effects of like having gone on
Speaker 1: a run or something.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so a lot of these cheats are things where
Speaker 12: you still have to put in work. So like with
Speaker 12: a the stemsuit the Catalyst suit, you have to exercise,
Speaker 12: but just to exercise while you're getting electrocuted, so it
Speaker 12: works better. And walking up hill is an old school
Speaker 12: thing that like celebrity trainers tell people to do because
Speaker 12: it burns calories a lot, but it also doesn't wear
Speaker 12: you out. So if you're doing if you need to
Speaker 12: save your energy for big lifts because you're trying to
Speaker 12: become like a Marvel superhero, you don't want to be
Speaker 12: running a lot and that also burns that also like
Speaker 12: gets in the way of building muscle, whereas walking uphill
Speaker 12: is great, it's not too strenuous, but that's like really
Speaker 12: the best way to burn fat.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: I also like the soul renewal. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: when I think about massages, I'm like, you're gonna do
Speaker 3: my feet right, So, but this is so easy, Like
Speaker 3: if you do pet they often say, roll your foot
Speaker 3: on a ball.
Speaker 12: Yeah, this is just rolling your foot on a ball.
Speaker 12: Not only does it make your feet feel better, which
Speaker 12: actually makes your whole, your whole walking around feel better,
Speaker 12: but it actually can calm you down. It's actually something
Speaker 12: that can sort of soothe your mind.
Speaker 5: Tim, I think we should get a collection of balls
Speaker 5: for our team.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you think that'll work.
Speaker 5: To com you down?
Speaker 4: You think it'll do anything.
Speaker 5: No, we could just throw them, that's true.
Speaker 12: The idea of this package was there's so much information
Speaker 12: being thrown at us, like you guys said earlier, where
Speaker 12: there's like a million manosphere podcasts talking about sleep, about eating,
Speaker 12: about when you eat, about just every little supplement you
Speaker 12: should take, and there's so many supplements. And you know,
Speaker 12: BusinessWeek has covered Brian Johnson, the never Die guy who
Speaker 12: wants to have the sort of metabolism an eighteen year
Speaker 12: old and has like used his son's platelets injected into him.
Speaker 12: Like it gets really crazy and it gets really expensive,
Speaker 12: and so we were looking for things that are just
Speaker 12: easy that you can do that actually make a difference.
Speaker 3: That alone, to me, just men getting so involved. Like
Speaker 3: women we kind of have always been obsessive about this stuff,
Speaker 3: but men really getting into it and thinking about it.
Speaker 12: Yes, because it's very quantified, it's very it becomes a hobby,
Speaker 12: it's competitive. Yeah, it just has really like been attractive
Speaker 12: to men for a while. This for the past few years.
Speaker 1: Got another one that you like, well, I want I
Speaker 1: tease that we were talking a little bit about needles
Speaker 1: and the peptides thing kind of got my attention because
Speaker 1: in endurance athletics, this is getting attention right now too,
Speaker 1: along with like boosting testosterone, stuff that in the past
Speaker 1: has been sort of dubious in terms of like competitive
Speaker 1: rules and what has been allowed in terms of antidoping.
Speaker 1: What's up with peptides?
Speaker 12: So, Peptides are basically long strings of amino acids that
Speaker 12: tell your molecule, tell your cells what to do and
Speaker 12: how to behave and for so for like testosterone, for example,
Speaker 12: you know you used to get testosterone injected just like
Speaker 12: straight up testosterone. Now people are injecting things like cel
Speaker 12: morale and which tells your body to make testosterone, which
Speaker 12: actually is which is better because if you if your
Speaker 12: body gets used to getting testosterone injected, it won't make
Speaker 12: it on its own. So you know, there's there's peptides
Speaker 12: that will do everything for make your skin more tan,
Speaker 12: you know, make you sleep better at all this stuff,
Speaker 12: and then we go v and ozempic. Those are peptides.
Speaker 1: Which I did not know.
Speaker 5: That was kind of eye opening for me.
Speaker 12: So yeah, So there's a lot of kind of off
Speaker 12: label on label things that are going around, and the
Speaker 12: big most popular one is NAD or NAD plus. And
Speaker 12: doctors caution that when you're getting this from like an
Speaker 12: internet company that that you know has doctors, you still
Speaker 12: really don't necessarily know what you're getting if you're ordering
Speaker 12: this stuff online, especially if you're ordering it in a
Speaker 12: more even more sketchyway. So if you want to get
Speaker 12: into this stuff, definitely talk to a doctor who knows
Speaker 12: you and that you work with.
Speaker 3: What does the FDA say about all this? I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously with wegov and those the GLP ones, they're regulated,
Speaker 3: but I'm just curious.
Speaker 12: Yeah, because of changes in rules that happened during during COVID,
Speaker 12: basically where people can deliver this kind of stuff online,
Speaker 12: the regulation is a lot less It's just like a
Speaker 12: lot less tight.
Speaker 3: I was saying, about peptides, and I think because there's
Speaker 3: a lot of cosmetic stuff has peptides, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so this is maybe like just injecting what.
Speaker 1: Speaking of, how do we tighten up that face? I
Speaker 1: didn't know you could do these massages or these sculps
Speaker 1: that actually make your face look different. I thought it
Speaker 1: was like, I thought we all had to go the
Speaker 1: what's who's the who's the Kardashian who got the amazing
Speaker 1: plane facial?
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's what Chris Chris Jenner. Okay, that is not
Speaker 12: a big cheat, that's not a little cheap.
Speaker 1: Okay, because that's extensive.
Speaker 12: That's like face off from John Travoltage level. What we're
Speaker 12: talking about is a fashion facial, which is when you
Speaker 12: go in and somebody basically massages the face, your face,
Speaker 12: and the fascia is the is the lining of your muscles,
Speaker 12: and they can kind of rearrange how your face is
Speaker 12: and uh, you know, if you have a big event
Speaker 12: or like your wedding or something, you can go in
Speaker 12: and for a couple of days it'll look snatched.
Speaker 5: Come on, now I'm gonna watch I'm gonna be looking
Speaker 5: over at Tim. He's gonna be like doing these weird things.
Speaker 1: To apparently they also like you can put on gloves
Speaker 1: and massage you're inside your mouth.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah yeah, and that can
Speaker 12: also help with like if you have pain with TMJ
Speaker 12: and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, well listen, sometimes an old thing is
Speaker 3: actually good. Maybe not, you don't feel that way about
Speaker 3: your body in your face, but when it comes to
Speaker 3: warn barber jackets.
Speaker 12: Oh yeah, so this is it's fall. Fall was late
Speaker 12: to arrive in New York City, but it finally came
Speaker 12: and it's cool, and that means it's barbera coat season,
Speaker 12: which is all the finance bros and gals and and
Speaker 12: my mom.
Speaker 1: Throw on their Chris Guilty at Barbara coats.
Speaker 12: And you know, I always remind my friends every fall
Speaker 12: that you can get your barber coat rewax. So barber
Speaker 12: coat is like a wax cotton mostly waterproof jacket that
Speaker 12: people used to wear for hunting in like the UK,
Speaker 12: Prince Charles is always wearing one, or King Charles rather,
Speaker 12: and uh, so you can get it rewax so that
Speaker 12: it will last longer. And people keep on these coats
Speaker 12: for decades because they you can sort of you can
Speaker 12: keep re upping the waxing and they last, and then
Speaker 12: the longer that you've had it, the better it looks.
Speaker 12: It's like worn in, it's got this great patina. So
Speaker 12: I started looking at other companies that sort of offer
Speaker 12: those services so that your clothes can age and look
Speaker 12: cool and old.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of that, you talk about how increasingly gen
Speaker 1: Z is looking for stuff that is aged and well worn,
Speaker 1: this idea that it's been loved in the past, and
Speaker 1: Barber is actually getting in on that by buying back
Speaker 1: old coats and fixing them up and reselling them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: So if your coat has gotten too worn and you
Speaker 12: don't want you don't want it anymore, I really want
Speaker 12: to start over. They'll buy it back for you and
Speaker 12: give you a store credit, and they'll deconstruct the coat
Speaker 12: and they'll reuse it for other coats. And so now
Speaker 12: they sell They have a whole reloved program where they'll
Speaker 12: sell coats that are kind of patched up, mixed in
Speaker 12: match coats. Sometimes they have the tartan pattern on the outside.
Speaker 12: They can look really funky, and they sell them at
Speaker 12: a lower price because they're you know, sort of recycled items,
Speaker 12: upcycled items, and gen Z really likes that and they
Speaker 12: find that they get a lot of younger shoppers coming into.
Speaker 3: But I was surprised that you say the prices start
Speaker 3: at like three twenty five, so they're.
Speaker 12: Not like they're not cheap.
Speaker 3: They're not cheap like even the recycled I have to say, but.
Speaker 12: That's like a Patagonia cos I mean, that's what a jagger.
Speaker 3: No exactly exactly, but I see that in a younger generation.
Speaker 3: I see with my daughter, like she likes to go
Speaker 3: whether it's consignment or like stuff that's been already a
Speaker 3: little bit around the block and a little bit of
Speaker 3: weird and tear in.
Speaker 5: Some things are sometimes really nice.
Speaker 12: Well, you think about resale sites, which are huge, and
Speaker 12: for a long time it was like I got to
Speaker 12: find things that are in mint condition on the real reel,
Speaker 12: Like I want this bag that looks like no one
Speaker 12: uses it and it's changing a bit, and now it's
Speaker 12: now it's like, oh, I want to find something that
Speaker 12: looks like it's been loved and it's been worn, because
Speaker 12: we always want, you know, our geans to look kind
Speaker 12: of beat up. But if you get genes from a
Speaker 12: store that are like pre beat up, it looks really fake.
Speaker 12: It looks like a factory someone went and scratched, like
Speaker 12: the lines in the lap. But if you go to Levi's,
Speaker 12: they buy back jeans and then they resell old jeans
Speaker 12: and like, what's better than a beat up pair of Levi's, Like,
Speaker 12: and you know, gen zs and younger people are really
Speaker 12: into that and really good for the environment as well,
Speaker 12: and that's part of it. They're very into sustainability.
Speaker 3: Didn't you just buy a recycled, not recycled, an old
Speaker 3: watch and you actually said?
Speaker 5: Yes, I love this. As we wrap up here, one.
Speaker 12: Of my favorite watches is this old Gerard Parago triple calendar,
Speaker 12: which is a very old fashioned kind of watch, and
Speaker 12: the like the day and the date are so tiny
Speaker 12: it's hard to read, but it looks great and I
Speaker 12: h and I got it fixed up because it was
Speaker 12: parts of it weren't working, and they were like, okay,
Speaker 12: do you want us to polish it and make it,
Speaker 12: you know, make it new and replace the gold here
Speaker 12: and I was like, no, do not polish it. I
Speaker 12: want it exactly as it was. I just want it
Speaker 12: to work. And that's a thing in watches now, people
Speaker 12: want it. They don't want things polished, they don't want
Speaker 12: things updated. They want it to be exactly as it was.
Speaker 1: Let the record show Chris is wearing not one, but
Speaker 1: two watches right now, the the Analog on his left
Speaker 1: wrist and the Apple Watch Digital on his right.
Speaker 4: Risk.
Speaker 5: It just wants to be balanced. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 3: Love these cheets, Love you, Chris, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Really appreciate it, really appreciate it. Bloomberg Pursuits Editor at Large,
Speaker 3: Chris Rouser.
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