Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, Happy New Year, and welcome to the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business Week Weekend Podcast. As we head into twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: we'll look at what's ahead in the world of business, tech,
Speaker 2: and society more broadly, while also reflecting on some of
Speaker 2: the biggest stories of the year that was. We begin
Speaker 2: with one of the major themes of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence. The job networking platform
Speaker 2: LinkedIn estimates that these skills needed for jobs are expected
Speaker 2: to change by at least sixty five percent by twenty
Speaker 2: thirty as AI accelerates workplace change. Bloomberg News Deputy team
Speaker 2: leader for US Equities, Jess Manton, and I recently caught
Speaker 2: up with LinkedIn Chief operating Officer Dan Shapiro, who joined
Speaker 2: us to discuss his predictions and big ideas for the
Speaker 2: job going forward. And you'll recall that LinkedIn is a
Speaker 2: business unit of Microsoft, which gives Dan and his team
Speaker 2: keen insight into the application that has taken tens of
Speaker 2: millions of us by storm. Well, artificial intelligence has been
Speaker 2: transforming the workplace.
Speaker 3: We know that, Jess.
Speaker 2: It's also been transforming in this stock market. I mean,
Speaker 2: look at what the vidiot has done so far this year.
Speaker 2: Plus we got the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet higher
Speaker 2: as a result of people being bullish when it comes
Speaker 2: to AI. By the way, LinkedIn is estimating that the
Speaker 2: skills needed for jobs are expected to change by at
Speaker 2: least sixty five percent by the year twenty thirty. This
Speaker 2: AI accelerates workplace change.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Joining us is LinkedIn Chief operating Officer Dan Shapiro, who
Speaker 2: joins us on Zoom from Mountain View, California. We like
Speaker 2: checking in with Dan every few months, particularly at the
Speaker 2: end of a year, because LinkedIn is out with some
Speaker 2: predictions about what twenty twenty four is going to look like. Dan,
Speaker 2: Good to have you back. How are you good.
Speaker 5: It's great to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good to have you with us. Hey,
Speaker 2: before we get to predictions, can it give us so
Speaker 2: where we are in terms of jobs in the economy
Speaker 2: Because the bond market and the equity market are certainly
Speaker 2: telling us one thing, and that's a soft landing is coming.
Speaker 2: What is the data at LinkedIn, which you have a
Speaker 2: plethora of tell.
Speaker 6: Us, Well, the labor market remains pretty tight, at least
Speaker 6: within the professional ranks on a global basis, and obviously
Speaker 6: that varies quite a bit by sector and by industry.
Speaker 6: You've seen a number of tech companies, particularly private tech companies,
Speaker 6: pull back, but then if you go into sectors like
Speaker 6: healthcare or services, those businesses continue to grow.
Speaker 5: So it's been a pretty big mix.
Speaker 6: But I think perhaps one of the most interesting trends
Speaker 6: has been that people moving jobs and switching between companies
Speaker 6: has come down by quite a bit, so many companies
Speaker 6: are experiencing attrition at a historical low.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: The interesting thing about attrition is that it's like water
Speaker 6: behind a dam. It always tends to pay off at
Speaker 6: some point. So I think it's pretty likely that sometime
Speaker 6: in the next twelve months you'll see attrition or just
Speaker 6: movement of professionals between companies to start to come back up,
Speaker 6: and more people will open up and look at new
Speaker 6: job opportunities.
Speaker 7: That's really interesting. It's coming on the back of what
Speaker 7: we saw and that latest jewel support that fell below
Speaker 7: nine million. It had been pretty elevated still is. So
Speaker 7: that's pretty interesting. Giving that backdrop there, What do you
Speaker 7: think are some of the biggest concerns among jobs switchers
Speaker 7: at this point, because we talked so much about when
Speaker 7: it comes to even though inflation coming down though, but
Speaker 7: that wage growth still strong. So obviously you would think
Speaker 7: that's helpful for people who want us switch jobs. What
Speaker 7: wo does the wage picture tell us?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 6: I think when the future is uncertain, you hold onto
Speaker 6: your chair. You want to make sure you have stability
Speaker 6: in your life, when it feels like the world around
Speaker 6: you is a little more chaotic, and so I don't
Speaker 6: think it's surprising that as the economic backdrop has been
Speaker 6: a little bit less certain, a little more opaque, that
Speaker 6: people have tried to really stay true to the job
Speaker 6: that they already have. But as people get more confident
Speaker 6: in the future, as the economy starts to pick back up,
Speaker 6: as the soft landing perhaps comes into clearer view, I
Speaker 6: think people will open up again.
Speaker 2: Hey, let's talk a little bit about wage pressure, because
Speaker 2: when you say the way that the market is tight,
Speaker 2: at least for the professional ranks, It makes me think
Speaker 2: about wage pressure and again going back to the macroeconomic
Speaker 2: conditions out there and what exactly the FED chair is
Speaker 2: trying to do with telegraphing rate cuts in the next year.
Speaker 2: Do you see kind of what the FED sees and
Speaker 2: what the data tell us at LinkedIn that, even though
Speaker 2: professional ranks it's still very competitive, are we still seeing
Speaker 2: the wage pressures like our potential employees still in the
Speaker 2: driver's seat?
Speaker 6: Dan, I don't have access to the wage data that
Speaker 6: the FED does, but what I can tell you is
Speaker 6: that it is not the environment that it was just
Speaker 6: a short years ago. A few years ago, you saw
Speaker 6: some incredible raises that people were getting when they jumped
Speaker 6: from company to company, and that's just not happening at
Speaker 6: the same rate that it was before, at least within
Speaker 6: professional ranks.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: I'm sure that there are certain disciplines where that might
Speaker 6: be happening. And if we get into AI in a second,
Speaker 6: you're definitely seeing that within AI technologies, where there are
Speaker 6: people that are deeply skilled in large language models and
Speaker 6: prompt engineering and data infrastructure, and there's going to be
Speaker 6: an insatiable appetite for that kind of talent all over
Speaker 6: the labor market. But more broadly, I think it's a
Speaker 6: different environment than it was just a few years ago.
Speaker 7: So we're beginning to see even more so some of
Speaker 7: those lagged effects from those FED hikes stand, even though
Speaker 7: we're waiting on potentially more next year.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it'd be interesting to see where it all nets at.
Speaker 6: I was following the news just like everyone to see
Speaker 6: what the recent releases are, and it'll be interesting to
Speaker 6: see as there's more predictability about what the Fed's doing
Speaker 6: and perhaps a rate decrease changes hiring plans.
Speaker 2: So Dan, let's get to AI and talk about some
Speaker 2: of the effects that AI is having on jobs. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're a great guy to talk to you. We should
Speaker 2: note that I did mention Microsoft. Microsoft is, of course
Speaker 2: the parent company of LinkedIn, and Microsoft is certainly going
Speaker 2: all in on AI.
Speaker 3: At LinkedIn, are you guys.
Speaker 2: Getting to use AI tools that Microsoft is developing? Kind
Speaker 2: of explain the relationship that you have with the parent company.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, As you mentioned, we're a business unit within Microsoft.
Speaker 6: More broadly, and I think that this is a moment
Speaker 6: where that's been wonderful for our LinkedIn's members and customers.
Speaker 6: Before the world saw chat ept in November of twenty
Speaker 6: twenty two, we got to see some of the new
Speaker 6: large language models that were coming out of the Open
Speaker 6: AI relationship, and it absolutely struck us, just like it
Speaker 6: struck the whole world at large. And as a result
Speaker 6: of that, we've had an opportunity to embed many of
Speaker 6: those capability is into a whole variety of products, Helping
Speaker 6: job seekers find jobs, helping recruiters engage with candidates, helping
Speaker 6: salespeople prepare for meetings by doing research on companies, helping
Speaker 6: marketers build campaigns. I mean, it's sort of remarkable about
Speaker 6: this technologies is how ubiquitously applicable it is and also
Speaker 6: how easily it can be integrated into existing tools that people.
Speaker 5: Are already using in their daily lives.
Speaker 6: So it's absolutely permeated our product portfolio. And my big
Speaker 6: prediction for twenty twenty four is that while last year
Speaker 6: was very much about learning about what this new technology
Speaker 6: could do, this is going to be the year where
Speaker 6: companies and individuals start to use AI to truly differentiate
Speaker 6: themselves relative to the competition.
Speaker 7: What industries do you expect to see stronger job growth
Speaker 7: due to the adoption of AI versus those that won't.
Speaker 6: Well, I think every AI and we've said in the
Speaker 6: last deck that every company is becoming a tech company
Speaker 6: of sorts, whether you're in retail or services or manufacturing.
Speaker 6: I think we're going to find the same thing with AI.
Speaker 6: Every company is going to be forced to figure out
Speaker 6: how their strategy is going to be shaped by AI
Speaker 6: and how their team is going to change how they
Speaker 6: work as a result of AI. One of the things
Speaker 6: we say at LinkedIn is that AI is going to
Speaker 6: impact every job and every team, and I think twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four is going to be the year where we
Speaker 6: figure out where that really comes to bear in different industries.
Speaker 2: What do we have to do as professionals to be
Speaker 2: prepared for the AI revolution?
Speaker 5: Well, let's talk about it at two levels.
Speaker 6: As an individual, my advice to everyone is just get started,
Speaker 6: download some of the apps, play with the technology, maybe
Speaker 6: use it for personal use, to use it for some professionals.
Speaker 6: You find one thing that you find useful, because my
Speaker 6: experience is that some people they can feel paralyzed. It
Speaker 6: feels like this new thing, they're not sure how to
Speaker 6: make use of it, and feels it can change in
Speaker 6: so many ways. But if you can find one habit
Speaker 6: to deploy on a daily basis. Then you can start
Speaker 6: to learn how this technology can make a difference for you,
Speaker 6: and then you can figure out how to embed it
Speaker 6: in a broader range of things in your life. I
Speaker 6: also think for job seekers, this is going to be
Speaker 6: a skill that's expected by employers. I was speaking with
Speaker 6: a head of recruiting at a large company in Chicago recently,
Speaker 6: and one of the things that she said is that
Speaker 6: it's one of the primary factors that they're starting to
Speaker 6: use and they're hiring processes. Are you comfortable it's using
Speaker 6: some of this new AI technology because they want they
Speaker 6: want talent on their team that's comfortable with it, and
Speaker 6: you're going to start to see a mix of people
Speaker 6: that are both comfortable and then others that are reluctant.
Speaker 7: I'm curious your view now that we're getting past the pandemic,
Speaker 7: because work from home was such a hot topic at
Speaker 7: that point and so many employees we're doing that. What
Speaker 7: does that look like now when it comes to negotiating
Speaker 7: through the job process.
Speaker 6: Well, it's been a ynamic situation. I think when the
Speaker 6: pandemic happened, you saw a lot of companies start to
Speaker 6: embrace more flexibility. You saw a lot of opening of
Speaker 6: remote roles, and as there was a time period just
Speaker 6: a few years ago where twenty percent of the job
Speaker 6: openings on LinkedIn were remote.
Speaker 5: But as we've gotten past.
Speaker 6: The pandemic phase and things have become more endemic, you've
Speaker 6: seen remote openings come down in some industries below ten percent,
Speaker 6: and so you start to see that remote roles are
Speaker 6: becoming less available on average. But there is still a
Speaker 6: lot of discussion about flexibility, and that's a place where
Speaker 6: each company defines flexibility a little bit differently, so it
Speaker 6: really varies company to company and industry to industry.
Speaker 2: So what about when it comes to actual long term
Speaker 2: hybrid work and flexibility here? This is something that I
Speaker 2: know our colleagues and certainly our listeners and viewers are
Speaker 2: really interested in. I've seen from what I've observed anecdotally
Speaker 2: and from also to people who have the data here
Speaker 2: that it does certainly feel like we're back to this.
Speaker 2: You know, not necessarily everyone's in the office five days
Speaker 2: a week, but gone are the days of like two
Speaker 2: or three days a week in the ya. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're in the office four days a week at a minimum.
Speaker 2: It seems like, and I'm not even speaking for Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking like me, like I have to be here
Speaker 2: every day because of what I do. But it does
Speaker 2: seem like everybody I talk to in New York City,
Speaker 2: it's this is the norm rather than the exception. What
Speaker 2: are you seeing in terms of jobs that are advertised
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn and sort of the experience of your members.
Speaker 6: It's interesting how geographically specific this trend is. So if
Speaker 6: you're in New York, if you're in Europe, if you're
Speaker 6: in Asia Pacific, you see that things in many places
Speaker 6: have gotten back a little bit closer to where they
Speaker 6: were pre pandemic, where people are in the office, you know,
Speaker 6: four and in some cases five days a week. I
Speaker 6: think you do see environments where a fordance of flexibility
Speaker 6: has definitely gone up. There's a greater understanding of people
Speaker 6: coming in or leaving at certain hours, or needing to
Speaker 6: work home and life around each other. A little bit
Speaker 6: more on the West Coast, the environments a little bit differently.
Speaker 6: You see more companies embracing a less frequent office participation,
Speaker 6: and it really varies by the industry you're in. So
Speaker 6: you know, it's one of the things that I encourage
Speaker 6: anyone that's going through a job seeking process is just
Speaker 6: to make sure you understand what's important to you and
Speaker 6: understand the norms that exist at the company. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 6: sometimes the norms that are written down on paper are
Speaker 6: not the norms that are practiced, and so it's always
Speaker 6: good to not just talk to the HR team, but
Speaker 6: talk to some people on the team that you're working
Speaker 6: with to understand how teams really operate.
Speaker 7: So who do you think has the upper hand now?
Speaker 7: Job seekers or employers?
Speaker 5: Oh well, it's a much more balanced market.
Speaker 6: If two years ago I would have said job seekers
Speaker 6: or in the dream seed buy and large, it's a
Speaker 6: much more balanced situation now. You know we're talking about
Speaker 6: AI before. If you're if you have AI skills and
Speaker 6: you are in such demand and by employers, than you
Speaker 6: are very much in the driver's seat and you're seeing
Speaker 6: companies pay very substantial sums to find AI talent. I
Speaker 6: think that's going to can persist, if not get worse
Speaker 6: as we get into twenty twenty four. But I think
Speaker 6: in lots of other places it's much more balanced.
Speaker 7: Can you talk to us about what AI skills particularly
Speaker 7: are and how do you acquire them absolutely.
Speaker 6: So I think there's two ways to talk about AI skills.
Speaker 6: I think the first is, in the broadest sense, if
Speaker 6: you are in sales, if you are in marketing, if
Speaker 6: you're in engineering, if you're in accounting, if you're in recruiting,
Speaker 6: your employer is going to want you to be comfortable
Speaker 6: with AI such that they can bring it into your
Speaker 6: day to day process. And so I encourage every job
Speaker 6: seeker to use AI in some way such that you
Speaker 6: can bring a personal story into your interview about how
Speaker 6: you've used AI to use any number of any number
Speaker 6: of tasks and having an understanding of how that might
Speaker 6: help you be more productive as an employee. So it's
Speaker 6: not that you're learning AI as a technical skill, but
Speaker 6: you're learning how to apply it to your day to
Speaker 6: day interactions. I think every employer is going to be
Speaker 6: looking for people with this kind of capability. And then
Speaker 6: beyond that, you get into much more technical realms and
Speaker 6: you're talking about do you have understanding of machine learning?
Speaker 6: Do you have an understanding of large language models for
Speaker 6: particular kinds of neural networks? And you're seeing an influx
Speaker 6: of people from technical backgrounds learning these kinds of AI
Speaker 6: specific technical skills to have access to some of these
Speaker 6: incredible opportunities that are now starting to emerge.
Speaker 2: Hey, Dan, I want to shift years and just end
Speaker 2: sort of about LinkedIn's business because as COO, you have
Speaker 2: a seat right a front row seat there. Colleague Sarah Fryar,
Speaker 2: who covers who is the Big Tech team leader for
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News, wrote an article back in August about how
Speaker 2: LinkedIn has been gaining engagement as Twitter now known as
Speaker 2: X and Facebook face stagnation, and she shared the stat
Speaker 2: that LinkedIn shared that in the spring of this year,
Speaker 2: users shared forty one percent more content on LinkedIn than
Speaker 2: they did in the same period in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Can you give us an update about engagement on the
Speaker 2: platform and what you're seeing in the second half of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 6: Well, more people are using LinkedIn every day for a
Speaker 6: wider range of things. We crossed a billion members on
Speaker 6: the platform recently, which is amazing. I joined the company's
Speaker 6: employee back in two thousand and eight we had less
Speaker 6: than twenty million members. Acrossing a billion as an incredible milestone.
Speaker 6: And you know whereas years ago, LinkedIn was a place
Speaker 6: to create a profile, maybe build connections. Increasingly, it's become
Speaker 6: a place to share and consume professional knowledge. So we
Speaker 6: see people giving updates on their industries. Conversations around AI
Speaker 6: are up over seventy percent year on years, so we
Speaker 6: see a lot of people understanding best practices of a
Speaker 6: applying AI in their industry. And then, you know, as
Speaker 6: you might expect in for companies or people that have
Speaker 6: been displaced from a job perspective in the last year,
Speaker 6: you see people finding jobs on LinkedIn, which is one
Speaker 6: of our core use cases. So engagement this year has
Speaker 6: been fantastic and we're really excited to chart our paths
Speaker 6: to the next billion professionals.
Speaker 2: Hey, Dan, happy holidays. It's always nice to check in
Speaker 2: with you. Really appreciate you joining us on Bloomberg Business
Speaker 2: Week this afternoon. That's LinkedIn Chief operating Officer Dan Shapiro.
Speaker 2: If you're watching, you saw him joining us on zoom
Speaker 2: from non View, California. Jess, it's going to be a
Speaker 2: yearfold with AI. That's a pretty and I certainly have
Speaker 2: that you're listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week.
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Speaker 2: As we continue our New Year's weekend edition of the program.
Speaker 2: We wanted to you examine what's ahead in our fight
Speaker 2: against carbon emissions. More than sixty percent of US electricity
Speaker 2: comes from fossil fuels, that's natural gas colon petroleum. About
Speaker 2: twenty one percent comes from renewables like wind, solar, and hydropower.
Speaker 2: The rest, well, it comes from nuclear energy, which has
Speaker 2: remained stagnant over the last decade at about nineteen percent.
Speaker 2: This all according to the US Energy Information Administration. Our
Speaker 2: next guest is among the growing chorus of experts who
Speaker 2: argue that governments have to go nuclear in order to
Speaker 2: reach net zero goals. Maria Korsnik is the CEO of
Speaker 2: the Nuclear Energy Institute. It's a trade association that advocates
Speaker 2: for more nuclear power generation. Bloomberg News Cross Asset reporter
Speaker 2: Emily Grafeo and I got her take on the path
Speaker 2: forward for the Sector's.
Speaker 8: Say, you have to look at the value of nuclear
Speaker 8: quite frankly right. It's that seven twenty four around the clock.
Speaker 8: Not only is it carbon free, it's highly reliable, and
Speaker 8: I think we don't talk as much about the value
Speaker 8: that you're getting. These power plants are built not for
Speaker 8: forty years, not for sixty years, eighty years, one hundred years,
Speaker 8: and so you really have to look at the complete
Speaker 8: picture that you get when you build nuclear. Yes they're
Speaker 8: large projects, Yes they're going to cost in order to
Speaker 8: make that happen, but the value that they bring to
Speaker 8: the system is really incredible. And again I think we
Speaker 8: just need to shift a little bit more to the
Speaker 8: value conversation.
Speaker 9: So you were at COP twenty eight, can you give
Speaker 9: us a sense of the narrative around nuclear energy? Was
Speaker 9: the consensus that this is green energy? Like? How were
Speaker 9: people actually talking about this form of energy?
Speaker 5: Absolutely?
Speaker 8: In fact, you know, some are coining this the nuclear
Speaker 8: cop you know, and I've been to the last few COPS,
Speaker 8: and I would just describe nuclear as a little bit
Speaker 8: trying to get a seat at the table, trying to
Speaker 8: create some conversation this cop. You know, we're in the
Speaker 8: sort of official.
Speaker 5: Documents from COP.
Speaker 8: We're in what's called the stock take, you know, paragraphs
Speaker 8: about nuclear, about wind and solar together being what's required.
Speaker 8: The fact is that you know, nuclear was never officially
Speaker 8: credited and mentioned in the way that it is here.
Speaker 8: Tripling nuclear was a pledge that was signed by twenty
Speaker 8: four plus countries. The IAEA had a pledge on just
Speaker 8: crediting nuclear for being part of the decarbonizing solution, over
Speaker 8: forty countries sign that. So I would really say this
Speaker 8: cop was sort of a real, real recognition of the
Speaker 8: value that nuclear is going to bring. And quite frankly,
Speaker 8: we're not going to get anywhere close to the commitments
Speaker 8: if we don't include nuclear in the solution.
Speaker 5: We have to be there.
Speaker 2: I think people are still scared of nuclear. I have
Speaker 2: to tell you I grew up and people who've heard
Speaker 2: me talk about this before apologies, but I grew up
Speaker 2: near a nuclear power plant in California. It's actually the
Speaker 2: last online nuclear power plant right now, Diablo Canyon in
Speaker 2: San Luis Obisco County. We would have siren drills.
Speaker 3: Once a year.
Speaker 2: I think it was the first weekend in September at noon,
Speaker 2: when you know, the sirens would go off to to
Speaker 2: you know, warn people like, Okay, this is what would
Speaker 2: happen if there were some sort of nuclear meltdown. People
Speaker 2: had iodine pills at their disposal. Is that, you know,
Speaker 2: and they grew up, you know, thinking about Chernobyl three
Speaker 2: Mile Island. You know, get what's the safety around this stuff.
Speaker 2: For people who say, wait a second, I'm a little scared.
Speaker 8: Of nuclear, yeah, honestly, it's incredibly safe. And you know,
Speaker 8: I also, I'll say, grew up around this nuclear I've
Speaker 8: operated plants. I've been a nuclear plant operator. I've been
Speaker 8: a site vice president in charge of one plant. I've
Speaker 8: been a chief nuclear officer in charge of five reactors
Speaker 8: at three locations. And I just say I know nuclear
Speaker 8: from the inside, and I would live next to a
Speaker 8: nuclear plant any day they're in. They're incredibly safe and
Speaker 8: especially as compared to other technologies that we need. And
Speaker 8: I would also say that you know, nuclear uses the
Speaker 8: fewest critical minerals. Nuclear uses the lowest land space, if
Speaker 8: you will, for the volume of energy that it produces.
Speaker 8: From a life cycle perspective, it is in the lowest
Speaker 8: use of carbon for the whole life cycle of the plant.
Speaker 5: It's clean energy.
Speaker 8: And you know, in terms of carbon free and in
Speaker 8: terms of other emissions and jobs, you get a lot
Speaker 8: of jobs with nuclear. There are little economic engines for
Speaker 8: the local community.
Speaker 2: I think to a lot of people it's almost perfect.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of people would also say,
Speaker 2: what about the waste. We still haven't figured out what
Speaker 2: to do with nuclear waste.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I look at that a little differently.
Speaker 8: I'm so proud of nuclear for being able to account
Speaker 8: for all of its waste. You know, oftentimes we look
Speaker 8: at nuclear and say, what are you going to do?
Speaker 8: And I so well know what. We know where every
Speaker 8: piece of it is from all of the waste or
Speaker 8: all of the nuclear power that we've used since the
Speaker 8: nineteen sixties, we know where every piece of that is.
Speaker 8: And you're absolutely right. Some of the fuel that we
Speaker 8: have today, which we call waste, I would prefer to
Speaker 8: say it's used fuel. And why do I say that?
Speaker 8: Because it can be used again in other types of reactors,
Speaker 8: and those other types of reactors are ones that we
Speaker 8: are trying to bring to the marketplace literally as we speak.
Speaker 8: And so I would say the used fuel you have
Speaker 8: today is a future resource and we should look.
Speaker 1: At it like that.
Speaker 9: What's next for nuclear in the US? Are we trying
Speaker 9: to build more reactors actively in this country?
Speaker 8: So we're building some down in Georgia right now. One
Speaker 8: went online this year and the second will go online
Speaker 8: next year. And what we're in the process of doing
Speaker 8: right now, if you could imagine an innovation pipeline, chocolate
Speaker 8: block full of different designs, and that is coming out
Speaker 8: over the next five, ten, fifteen years. And these are
Speaker 8: partnerships between our national labs and private companies and very
Speaker 8: much one a beautiful, quite frankly innovation here in the
Speaker 8: United States. And I'll tell you nuclear is not just
Speaker 8: being talked about in the United States. It's being talked
Speaker 8: about around the world. We just talked about cop but
Speaker 8: many other countries right now are looking to expand nuclear
Speaker 8: and they're looking at the United States to help them.
Speaker 8: So what we need to be doing here in the
Speaker 8: United States is bringing some of these innovations and getting
Speaker 8: them built so that these other countries can have a
Speaker 8: chance to see them and then choose which design they
Speaker 8: want built in their country. At cop Poland for example, said,
Speaker 8: we already have six sites. At each site, we want
Speaker 8: four small modular reactors. We're teaming with a US company.
Speaker 8: We want to put twenty four in place.
Speaker 9: Maria, I have to ask, what do you make of
Speaker 9: the price of uranium. It's up seventy five percent this year.
Speaker 9: I write about ETFs and commodities markets, and there's a
Speaker 9: lot of interest for buying into this nuclear energy uranium trade.
Speaker 9: But why is it up so much seventy five percent
Speaker 9: this year.
Speaker 5: Well, a couple of things.
Speaker 8: For one thing, we are I think that's an indication
Speaker 8: that people are bullish, if you will, as they look
Speaker 8: ahead for nuclear and I think also we're looking very
Speaker 8: much at ensuring that we have a solid and stable
Speaker 8: fuel supply as we move forward. You've seen that we
Speaker 8: want to invest in the US fuel supply here so
Speaker 8: that we have not only the mining but also conversion
Speaker 8: and enrichment services available to this industry, so that we
Speaker 8: have a solid supply as.
Speaker 5: We move forward.
Speaker 8: And so I think a lot of that is put
Speaker 8: attention on the front end of this fuel supply, and
Speaker 8: I think that's causing some of that price increase.
Speaker 2: That was Maria Korsenik, a CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Speaker 2: It is a nuclear industry trade association that advocates for
Speaker 2: more nuclear power generation.
Speaker 3: She joined us on zoom from Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern on Bloomberg Radio,
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business App, and YouTube. You can also listen
Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: Eleven thirty, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new measure
Speaker 2: that allows state law enforcement to arrest migrants who enter
Speaker 2: the US without authorization. Mexican President andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
Speaker 2: am Low has accused the governor of using such measures
Speaker 2: for political gain ahead of the twenty twenty four US
Speaker 2: presidential election, and he says that his country will challenge
Speaker 2: the measure. No question that immigration as front and center
Speaker 2: as we enter the twenty twenty four presidential election. In fact,
Speaker 2: swing state voters see US Mexico border security is a
Speaker 2: greater pity than the foreign policy crises that have increasingly
Speaker 2: dominated President Joe Biden's attention over the last few months.
Speaker 2: We're talking Israel, Hamas, and then of course what's going
Speaker 2: on in Ukraine. This, according to an October Bloomberg News
Speaker 2: Morning Consule poll, what we've got with us a great
Speaker 2: voice to help us understand migration and also to help
Speaker 2: dispel what he argues are common myths and misconceptions around migration.
Speaker 2: Heinde Haas is Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: He's also the director of International Migration Institute and the
Speaker 2: author of the new book How Migration Really Works, The
Speaker 2: Facts about the most divisive issue in politics. Professor de Haas,
Speaker 2: good to have you with us this afternoon.
Speaker 3: How are you.
Speaker 10: I'm fine, Thank you well.
Speaker 2: Thanks for stayd up late in Amsterdam and joining us.
Speaker 2: We really do appreciate it. Hey, if you go back
Speaker 2: in history, for pretty much as long as we've been
Speaker 2: had historical record, migration has been politically divisive. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is the type of thing that sparked wars in
Speaker 2: the past for orders. Why has it been so politically divisive?
Speaker 10: Migration is this perfect issue to detract the attention away,
Speaker 10: distract the attention away from other issues where people aren'thappy about.
Speaker 10: And I think migration is the perfect scapegoad as well.
Speaker 10: But it also provides an opportunity for politicians to deposition
Speaker 10: themselves as strong leaders against the common enemy. So it
Speaker 10: is very attractive for politicians to draw the migration card.
Speaker 10: And we see that all across the West. But like
Speaker 10: you said it's not something new. I mean, if you
Speaker 10: go a century back in the US, there was a
Speaker 10: lot of hostility towards Southern European migrants, Catholic migrants, Jewish migrants,
Speaker 10: German migrants, and you see that for all countries. So
Speaker 10: this phenomenon as such is not new. I think what
Speaker 10: it's worrying is the divisive an inflammatory language we're hearing
Speaker 10: from politicians. Of course, migration comes with its problems, but
Speaker 10: it's now being sort of magnified to this essential threat
Speaker 10: to societies, and I think that is really problematic because
Speaker 10: the debate is more and more disconnected from what's happening
Speaker 10: on the ground.
Speaker 9: Can you walk us through maybe some of the most
Speaker 9: common misconceptions that you hear about migration and what your
Speaker 9: responses would be to those.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Now, I think the most common sort of idea that
Speaker 10: many people share across the political world, from left to right,
Speaker 10: is this idea that the swelling mass of people from
Speaker 10: poor countries are moving to rich countries and that our
Speaker 10: borders are increasingly overwhelmed. And it's linked to this idea
Speaker 10: that poverty, inequality, warfare pushes more and more people to
Speaker 10: live their homelands now. Of course there are issues on
Speaker 10: the border, and certainly in the US case, that's not
Speaker 10: something we can ignore. But if you zoom a little
Speaker 10: bit out and you look at the overall volume of
Speaker 10: migration in the world, we talk about three percent of
Speaker 10: the will population, and that percentage remained remarkably stable over
Speaker 10: the last century. Basically there have been clear shifts in
Speaker 10: terms of directions of migration. If we don't really have
Speaker 10: evidence of migration as such as spinning out of control,
Speaker 10: although you'd get that impression of course if you look
Speaker 10: at particular border areas and the issues the US is
Speaker 10: currently dealing with. But I think if you zoom out,
Speaker 10: migration is essentially not driven by poverty and misery. The
Speaker 10: main driver of migration, also to the US has always
Speaker 10: been the economy and particular labor demand. And what you
Speaker 10: see right now both in terms of legal any legal
Speaker 10: migration in the US, and I'll be disconnected to the
Speaker 10: fact that use in employment as is the fifty year
Speaker 10: low right now. Labor shortages are huge. We have an
Speaker 10: unprecedented peak of vacancies topic topping I think ten million
Speaker 10: right now, which is really historical records. And these things
Speaker 10: are connected. So this is not so much about a
Speaker 10: sort of poverty push what people think. It is really
Speaker 10: primarily about there's opportunities, and that's always been the case.
Speaker 10: It's always been the case with immigration.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you and you're making the point, Professor,
Speaker 2: that the US can absorb the immigration that we're seeing.
Speaker 10: Well, I think the problem is that quite a lot
Speaker 10: of migration is undocumented. It's about the legal migration, and
Speaker 10: that reveals I think a huge issue all across the West.
Speaker 10: There is simply not enough political support for creating more
Speaker 10: legal channels for lower skilled migrants. And we need we
Speaker 10: sort of with the COVID pandemic that these people do
Speaker 10: all sorts of essential jobs in the economy. But this
Speaker 10: is not the kind of migrants for which we give
Speaker 10: in our visas, which means that people find other ways
Speaker 10: to enter countries, and I think that is one of
Speaker 10: the biggest causes of the search and border crossings which
Speaker 10: you see. Besides of quarter, there's also people fleeing conflict.
Speaker 10: So to put it simply, the best way to really
Speaker 10: really curb migration is to wreck your economy, and we
Speaker 10: see indeed in times with high unemployment economic recessions, migration
Speaker 10: goes down. When the economy does well, a lot of
Speaker 10: people come and it's partly what you see. And most
Speaker 10: of the migration also to the US is about legal migration,
Speaker 10: legal ten pporiary mirgant admissions to the US reach an
Speaker 10: all time high under the Trump presidency up to six million,
Speaker 10: and after a sort of COVID slack, it's back to
Speaker 10: five million of last year, and it reflects the actually
Speaker 10: very good state of the US economy. So to put
Speaker 10: it differently, if you want, if you don't like immigration,
Speaker 10: that is the price you pay for being a wealthy,
Speaker 10: open market economy as the US. But the same goes
Speaker 10: for the UK and many other European countries.
Speaker 9: So under the framework that you're working with that you
Speaker 9: know the only way to solve micration, you should well
Speaker 9: one way would be to wreck your economy. Obviously we
Speaker 9: wouldn't want to do that in the US. But underneath
Speaker 9: your framework, did you come up with ideas or solutions
Speaker 9: about I mean, we do have a lot of people
Speaker 9: trying to cross the border illegally. How do you solve that?
Speaker 9: How do you even begin to start finding solutions for that?
Speaker 10: Well, you cannot do anything if you don't do anything
Speaker 10: about the demand factor, and I think what really shows that.
Speaker 10: Another thing sort of myth is that, you know, politicians
Speaker 10: get tougher and tougher in immigration. Yet it's true on
Speaker 10: the level of rhetoric, but if you look at practices,
Speaker 10: we haven't found in a huge research project any difference
Speaker 10: between left leaning and right leaning politicians in terms of
Speaker 10: the policies they implement. For instance, a lot of particular
Speaker 10: Republican side, you hear a lot of tough talk on immigration.
Speaker 10: At the same time, labor enforcement is symbolically low in
Speaker 10: the whole of the US. Just one statistic, the number
Speaker 10: of employers that get prosecuted for employing undocumented migrants is
Speaker 10: somewhere between ten and fifteen a year. Without any zeros added,
Speaker 10: it is roughly the same chance of being hit by lightning.
Speaker 10: And it shows to whatever you call it, that's call
Speaker 10: it the hypocrisy of politicians that you know, I have
Speaker 10: a lot of tough talk to say about immigration, but
Speaker 10: a lot of these yeah, and a lot.
Speaker 2: Of these A lot of the big examples of this
Speaker 2: are in actually states where that are most aggressively rhetorically
Speaker 2: anti this migration. Who are migrants? Because in order to
Speaker 2: actually leave where you were born, leave where you're from,
Speaker 2: leave your family behind. That takes a person who's willing
Speaker 2: to make a lot of sacrifice and do these things
Speaker 2: and work, in my opinion, work very hard. What have
Speaker 2: you found in your research.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we find. That was true
Speaker 10: in the past of Europeans going to the United States.
Speaker 10: It's still true for migrants. Migrants are what we call
Speaker 10: a positive selection of people in home countries, which means
Speaker 10: these are the exceptional people, the entrepreneurial people. Three percent
Speaker 10: of the low population migrates, that means ninety seven percent
Speaker 10: stays home. So migrants are almost by definition, those who
Speaker 10: want to take risks or entrepreneurial who want to improve
Speaker 10: their lives. And that is still the case by and large.
Speaker 10: So migrants are a positive sub selection, and that is
Speaker 10: actually by research is found that immigration decreases crime, very
Speaker 10: contrary to what politicians say, because migrants are often very
Speaker 10: community business oriented. They don't come to countries to become criminals.
Speaker 10: And that's why we find in research the exact opposite
Speaker 10: of what politicians tend to claim.
Speaker 2: But I want to get back to our conversation with
Speaker 2: Heinde Haash professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: He's also the director of the International Migration Institute and
Speaker 2: the author of the new book How Migration Really Works.
Speaker 2: The fact is about the most divisive issue in politics.
Speaker 2: Professor Dehas joins us from Amsterdam this afternoon. So, Professor,
Speaker 2: one thing that I wanted to discuss was public opinion
Speaker 2: and what you've found in different parts of the world
Speaker 2: where you've studied this, and how democrats, how Republicans in
Speaker 2: the US think about immigration as a political issue, because.
Speaker 3: Your findings, I think would surprise a lot of people.
Speaker 10: Yeah, what is interesting, it is indeed true is most
Speaker 10: people would expect that more Republicans think negatively about migration
Speaker 10: compared to Democrat leaning voters who tend to be slightly
Speaker 10: more positive. But if you look at trends through time,
Speaker 10: it really becomes interesting. In the US, clearly the share
Speaker 10: of people who look positively at migration on both sides
Speaker 10: of the political divide between Democrats and Republicans is actually growing.
Speaker 10: So there is no sort of public backlash against immigration,
Speaker 10: which what you would think if you listen to politicians,
Speaker 10: and we find the same in Europe, and we can
Speaker 10: explain that because people get used to the presence of
Speaker 10: migrants'pheares often diminish and people start to think more positively
Speaker 10: about immigration. So there is no big public backlash against immigration.
Speaker 10: What you see is that the rhetorics have grown increasingly
Speaker 10: tough by politicians. It is more on the level of
Speaker 10: political rhetorus that you see the huge polarization between a
Speaker 10: sort of pro and anti migration.
Speaker 2: But is that rhetoric working, Does it lead to people
Speaker 2: changing their minds, does it lead to public opinion shifting,
Speaker 2: and is the lead of candidates being elected.
Speaker 10: Well in the broad sense not. But there is of
Speaker 10: course a share of voters that is worried about immigration,
Speaker 10: that sees immigration is a big threat, and that vote
Speaker 10: is being mobilized, and that is still a significant share.
Speaker 10: But the interesting thing is that the share of people
Speaker 10: thinking more positive will do up migration is actually increasing.
Speaker 10: It may, of course be that people on the fringes
Speaker 10: may be emboldened by divisive, inflammatory language, and that is
Speaker 10: of course a problem. It could spark violence and discrimination
Speaker 10: and racism. But overall, there is no clear trend towards
Speaker 10: growing sinophobia growing racism. The trend is rather in the
Speaker 10: other direction that is actually very surprising, and what it
Speaker 10: shows that there is I think there is a fair
Speaker 10: share of voters who wants to hear a different story
Speaker 10: because this pro anti division is simply not working anymore.
Speaker 10: Migration is of all times, migration comes with the share
Speaker 10: of problems. It comes also with a lot of benefits.
Speaker 10: But it's not something that can just think away. And
Speaker 10: I always say to ask you know me, for instance,
Speaker 10: are you in favor against migration? To be like asking
Speaker 10: an economist, are you in favor against the economy. That's
Speaker 10: not a serious way of talking about immigration. And that
Speaker 10: is partly why the debate is so incredibly stuck, because
Speaker 10: both camps sort of dig in, cave in, and cherry
Speaker 10: pick evidence, and there are not many politicians who dare
Speaker 10: to tell the true story about immigration, which bio neecessity
Speaker 10: is a much mon nuanced one than the one we
Speaker 10: usually hear when we listen to politicians.
Speaker 9: So what did your findings find with the nuance of
Speaker 9: who actually benefits from migration in the countries that are
Speaker 9: bringing people in, that are seeing more migrants, who benefits there?
Speaker 10: Well, migrants make the whole economy bigger basically, so the
Speaker 10: whole economic pie is simply growing. And if you look
Speaker 10: at average effects on wages, for instance, we find very
Speaker 10: very small effects, and there you can discuss about methods
Speaker 10: and data, but the fact the effect is so small
Speaker 10: that it is pretty insignificant. When you look at higher
Speaker 10: and lower incomes, you see a clear difference. It is
Speaker 10: particularly already affluent that benefit most economically from immigration, because
Speaker 10: these are, of course the people using services migants provide,
Speaker 10: often owning businesses that help them to boost their profits.
Speaker 10: But the lowest income earners, amongst whom also many former migrants,
Speaker 10: of people living on minimum wage, for instance, don't benefit
Speaker 10: much from immigration, and in some cases they may lose
Speaker 10: out a little bit. It doesn't mean that immigration is
Speaker 10: the cause for the long wage technotion we have seen
Speaker 10: for lower incomes in the United States. But it is
Speaker 10: in a way logical that people who earn really low
Speaker 10: wages have the feeling what's in it for me? Because
Speaker 10: these are also the people who see, of course the
Speaker 10: day to day consequences of immigration in their daily lives.
Speaker 10: So in that sense, the idea that they don't benefit
Speaker 10: as much from immigration as already effluent people is correct.
Speaker 10: But it doesn't mean that migans take away jobs, or
Speaker 10: a response for the long term wage technoluan that we
Speaker 10: have seen in many Western countries amongst lower incommanders.
Speaker 2: Professor de Haas, Let's say that by some imaginary force,
Speaker 2: you became in charge of immigration policy.
Speaker 3: Here in the US.
Speaker 2: No question, we face a crisis at the US Mexico border.
Speaker 2: How would you solve it?
Speaker 10: I think I would organize a national debate about immigration,
Speaker 10: and it is a serious debate, and that should by
Speaker 10: definition be a debate about the kind of society and
Speaker 10: economy you want to live in, particularly when we look
Speaker 10: at lower skilled jobs, because there's broad support also in
Speaker 10: the US to allow people to come in who do
Speaker 10: higher skilled jobs, but is a fact of life and
Speaker 10: certainly in the future that we need also lower skilled immigrants.
Speaker 10: So you can only solve this in two ways. Either
Speaker 10: you create more legal channels for lower skilled workers that
Speaker 10: will avoid a lot of misery at the border. And
Speaker 10: these policies that we've been trying to implement a border
Speaker 10: enforcement that go back more than thirty years, and we've
Speaker 10: been trying to do the same again and again and again,
Speaker 10: and it doesn't work because people are still attracted by
Speaker 10: jobs or you make those jobs not available anymore. I
Speaker 10: do enforce labor law, you know you're really going to
Speaker 10: prosecute employers massively. I don't think that is very likely.
Speaker 10: I'd rather have a different debate about the kinds of
Speaker 10: jobs we create that are jobs that are not attractive
Speaker 10: for native workers, that attract migrant workers. We really need
Speaker 10: to think about how we organize our economy. For instance,
Speaker 10: if you think about care, who's going to take care
Speaker 10: in the future of our children, our elderly. We need
Speaker 10: a serious debate about immigration where we no longer deny
Speaker 10: these economic realities, and on that basis we can make decisions.
Speaker 10: But we really cannot divorce the whole debate on immigration
Speaker 10: from a broader debate how to organize our economy. Well,
Speaker 10: that's a long story, it's a complex story, and that
Speaker 10: is the whole point. I think we've seen too much
Speaker 10: politics of denial over the last thirty years, and that
Speaker 10: also explains the mess we're in, not just in the US,
Speaker 10: but also in European Union, where this real demand follow
Speaker 10: is killed labor, which is going to stay because of aging,
Speaker 10: because of increasing education of the native workforce. All indicators
Speaker 10: show that we really need a debate about this, but
Speaker 10: also a debate about work and jobs and for instance
Speaker 10: minimum wage. These are all connected with immigration, and I
Speaker 10: cannot explain it fully, right, don't think well, no, I
Speaker 10: think this is a serious debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been really helpful and you got to come
Speaker 2: back and join us once again. Heinde Haas's professor of
Speaker 2: sociology the Diversity of Amsterdam.
Speaker 3: Check out his.
Speaker 2: New book, How Migration Really Works, The facts about the
Speaker 2: most divisive issue in politics.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Well, the next guest has made his living connecting people.
Speaker 2: Sam Darwish is the co founder, chairman and CEO of
Speaker 2: one of the world's largest independent owners, operators and developers
Speaker 2: of towers, providing communication infrastructure in eleven markets, serving about
Speaker 2: seven hundred and seventy million people. He joins us on
Speaker 2: Zoom this afternoon. He's the CEO of IHS Towers. It's
Speaker 2: got nearly forty thousand towers across Africa, Latin America and
Speaker 2: the Middle East. Also the co founder and chairman of
Speaker 2: the company. Good to have you with us this afternoon. Sam,
Speaker 2: How are you good?
Speaker 11: Good?
Speaker 5: Thank you?
Speaker 1: How are you hey?
Speaker 2: I'm doing really well.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 2: This is perfect timing for you to come on our
Speaker 2: program because we are our own tech Bloomberg technology team.
Speaker 2: That day and Matt Day and team wrote a piece
Speaker 2: about Project Kuiper earlier today about Amazon's fora into providing
Speaker 2: high speed internet, and he said, you know, Amazon's not
Speaker 2: just competing against the SpaceX and the SpaceX's starlinks of
Speaker 2: the world. He's competing with anyone out there right now
Speaker 2: providing connectivity. And that's a company like yours that provides
Speaker 2: the infrastructure for connectivity. How are you seeing the landscape
Speaker 2: right now in the markets that you operate.
Speaker 4: Look, we operate, as you said, we own forty thousand
Speaker 4: towers roughly across and fiber in the tens of thousands
Speaker 4: of kilometers, covering eight or nine million homes across our markets.
Speaker 4: Our markets are we operate in eleven countries across the world,
Speaker 4: covering roughly eight hundred million people, as you said, so
Speaker 4: we kind of like see the trends, understand what's happening.
Speaker 4: The likes of Amazon and the likes of Google, the
Speaker 4: likes of Facebook do from time to time come to
Speaker 4: our markets trying to stimulate basically demand for their own services,
Speaker 4: but we haven't come. We haven't seen them come into
Speaker 4: our markets, kind of like with big statements or with
Speaker 4: big broadjat that could move the need of that.
Speaker 5: Now, having said that, at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: I get startling.
Speaker 3: I get all the.
Speaker 4: Projects or the ideas of trying to create connectivity using
Speaker 4: satellite or nonterrestrial systems. But when it comes to basic propagation,
Speaker 4: basic wireless, there is no alternative to a tower on
Speaker 4: the ground.
Speaker 3: Really, why is that?
Speaker 2: Because you know, here, I am thinking to myself, this
Speaker 2: could be a prime moment for you know what you
Speaker 2: guys in the industry called leap frogging. Here the technology,
Speaker 2: you know, this infrastructure technology is so expensive. I don't
Speaker 2: have to tell you. You guys own and operate forty thousand
Speaker 2: of these towers. These are very expensive things to build
Speaker 2: and to operate. And then you have this other technology
Speaker 2: coming in that essentially broadcast internet from the sky. Why
Speaker 2: is this not a serious concern to you at this point?
Speaker 4: Because the technology has limitations.
Speaker 5: I'll list a few.
Speaker 4: The first is that as you're trying to penetrate a
Speaker 4: building or a structure sideways from a tower, it's much
Speaker 4: easier because you're kind of like going through windows and
Speaker 4: glass and this and that. If you try to do
Speaker 4: it from the satellite, you basically have to penetrate ceilings,
Speaker 4: like multiple ceilings. I mean that's a lot given the distances.
Speaker 4: Also from the satellite to Earth, the satellite may be
Speaker 4: able to project the power, but the handset is kind
Speaker 4: of like small and it has limitations, and being able
Speaker 4: to penetrate back into the satellite again is another issue.
Speaker 5: What kind of spectrum do you use?
Speaker 4: Most of the carriers on the spectrum when you start
Speaker 4: interfacing with people, The size of the battery, how long
Speaker 4: can it last? I mean, those are practical limitations, and
Speaker 4: then compile that or add to all of this the
Speaker 4: fact that people need more and more and more capacity
Speaker 4: by the day, especially as some of these apps like
Speaker 4: like drones, driverless cars kind of like start to proliferate,
Speaker 4: We're going to need more capacity rather than less capacity.
Speaker 4: I mean, these satellites will not be able to provide
Speaker 4: that capacity. Hem there are great solution stem like offshore
Speaker 4: rural urban mountains provide some bridge like in the Ukraine situation,
Speaker 4: for example, but they can't be a solution to the
Speaker 4: millions of people using their phone, for example, in Manhattan
Speaker 4: or Los Angeles or London or a legos.
Speaker 2: Right, it's just too you know, apples and oranges. It
Speaker 2: certainly sounds like he sam, I wanted to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about the types of technology that these towers
Speaker 2: are providing. When you think about the different markets that
Speaker 2: you're in, is this are we talking four G? Here
Speaker 2: are we talking five G? I mean, what is the
Speaker 2: sort of standard in terms of the equipment that you
Speaker 2: provide or that the folks who lease and use your
Speaker 2: towers end up using.
Speaker 4: Simply put, there is no difference in the aspirations of
Speaker 4: carriers and people in our markets to where the United
Speaker 4: States or Europe is. Everyone wants the fastest, cheapest pipe.
Speaker 4: Everyone wants five G one one fiber to the home. Now,
Speaker 4: having said that, we are definitely behind. Our markets are
Speaker 4: largely in the four G cycle.
Speaker 5: At the moment.
Speaker 4: Most of the four G deployments have happened on our towers.
Speaker 4: They're selling it now to customers to upgrade from some
Speaker 4: markets two.
Speaker 5: G, three G into four G.
Speaker 4: Many of our markets like Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil have
Speaker 4: also seen five G spectrum licensing recently, so we're beginning
Speaker 4: to see commercial tryers or commercial pilots into five G,
Speaker 4: but five G is still still not the standard, so
Speaker 4: it's largely four G.
Speaker 2: You guys offer six different solutions including new sites in
Speaker 2: building solutions, fiber connectivity, small cell infrastructure in urban areas.
Speaker 2: Where are you most bullish for your company?
Speaker 4: For us, we think about it from a deployment point
Speaker 4: of view. What does the wireless network that carries a
Speaker 4: four G or a five G or eventually a six
Speaker 4: G what does it require? Initially, it used to require
Speaker 4: these macro towers, the big towers, you know, and that's
Speaker 4: what most of us US and some of our peers
Speaker 4: eight American Tower crown SBA focused on. But as you
Speaker 4: as rollout starts to change, especially with five G, more
Speaker 4: small cells will be needed. The DAAs becomes very important.
Speaker 4: Fiber is critical as small cells start to kind of
Speaker 4: like cells start to get closer to each other, so
Speaker 4: the fiber connection to those locations become important. Also, we're
Speaker 4: seeing now compute and cash becoming very important.
Speaker 5: At the end of the day.
Speaker 4: Those towers are the closest really state possible to the
Speaker 4: eyeballs using a cell phone, So an element of computing
Speaker 4: could happen potentially some data center or our edge data
Speaker 4: center on on on these locations. But what I'm trying
Speaker 4: to tell you here there is no one size fit
Speaker 4: all kind of like solution.
Speaker 11: You have to be ahead.
Speaker 4: You have to look at the technology of the time
Speaker 4: in that country and what kind of rollout does it require.
Speaker 4: It always will require macro hours in our view, because
Speaker 4: that's kind of like the basic the umbrella cannot cover it.
Speaker 5: But all these other types like.
Speaker 4: Like small cell, like the in building, like the fiber
Speaker 4: will be required in different types and different instances.
Speaker 2: Well, Sam, I could talk about this stuff all afternoon.
Speaker 2: I used to cover telecom, so I just love talking
Speaker 2: about connectivity and how people are getting connected around the world.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate you taking the time in joining us
Speaker 2: on Bloomberg Business Week this afternoon. Sam Darwash Darwish, co founder,
Speaker 2: chairman and CEO of IHS Towers, joining us on zoom
Speaker 2: this afternoon.
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business App, and YouTube. You can also listen
Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: Plenty ahead in our second hour of this new year's
Speaker 2: weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a look at
Speaker 2: the weight loss drug phenomenon sweeping the US and what
Speaker 2: it means for businesses outside of big Pharma, Plus key
Speaker 2: takeaways from Sam Almon's abrupt Ouster and subsequent reinstatement in
Speaker 2: Open Ai, and the very best in luxury and culture
Speaker 2: from our friends at Bloomberg Pursuits.
Speaker 3: First up this.
Speaker 2: Hour, I look back at one of the most storied
Speaker 2: careers in the history of investing, Charles Munger, the alter Ego,
Speaker 2: sidekick and foyle to Warren Buffett for almost sixty years
Speaker 2: at Berkshire. Hathaway died a little over a month ago
Speaker 2: at the age of ninety nine. On the day of
Speaker 2: his passing, Carol and I spoke with Bloomberg News reporter
Speaker 2: Noah Bouhier, who covered Munger and Bill Smead, the founder
Speaker 2: in CIO of SMED Capital Management and a longtime Berkshire investor.
Speaker 12: I wrote a letter to Buffett probably five years ago,
Speaker 12: just thanking him for how incredibly generous that him and
Speaker 12: Munger have been with all of us. I mean it
Speaker 12: literally changed our lives.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Oh, by communicating the discipline that they practiced. They shared
Speaker 12: why they were doing what they're doing all these years
Speaker 12: in the writing, in the annual meetings, sitting there and
Speaker 12: taking questions for six hours, all the way way up
Speaker 12: into their nineties. It's like a gold mine of wisdom.
Speaker 12: But here was this incredible resource. Charlie Munger was the
Speaker 12: Solomon of our era. He was the wisest man in
Speaker 12: the investment business. He was a cal Tech grad, Harvard
Speaker 12: law educated, started a law firm in Los Angeles, had
Speaker 12: a successful career in real estate, successful career in making
Speaker 12: common stock choices, and the right hand guy to the
Speaker 12: most successful investment selector and asset allocator of all time.
Speaker 11: I mean he is.
Speaker 12: You know, we just admired him so much, And then,
Speaker 12: of course we admired him immensely because he'd say exactly
Speaker 12: what he was thinking. And didn't really care very much
Speaker 12: Bill who he might offended the process.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you've been doing this for over forty years.
Speaker 2: What are some lessons that you've incorporated from Charlie Munger
Speaker 2: over these decades into the way that you manage portfolios
Speaker 2: and you allocid assets.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we when we're talking to people. I'm here in
Speaker 12: New York talking to some possible new customers, and we
Speaker 12: tell them when it comes to value people, we hold
Speaker 12: our winners to a fault because compounding is the eighth
Speaker 12: wonder of the world. So if you can find a business,
Speaker 12: let's just right off the top of our head, pick
Speaker 12: Occidental Petroleum, who Monger and Buffett started buying in the
Speaker 12: last year and a half or two years. They're generating
Speaker 12: massive free cash flow, they're paying down debt with it,
Speaker 12: but then they're also buying backstock. So, like Buffett says,
Speaker 12: over the years, if it's a company generating high returns
Speaker 12: on equity, high free cash flow buying back their stock,
Speaker 12: he ends up owning a larger and larger and larger
Speaker 12: part of the business as the years go by. That's
Speaker 12: what he did with Coke, That's what he did in
Speaker 12: an Americ Express that's you know what he did with
Speaker 12: a lot of different companies and holding your winners. The
Speaker 12: fault is a key component of alpha. As I explained
Speaker 12: to people, you buy a stock at thirty and pay cash,
Speaker 12: the worst thing happened is it goes to zero. You
Speaker 12: lose thirty points of alpha. If you buy a stock
Speaker 12: at thirty and it goes to ninety and you sell
Speaker 12: it and goes to two ten, you lose one hundred
Speaker 12: and twenty points. And Buffett Monger taught that to people
Speaker 12: as a powerful thing. It's it's much better to get
Speaker 12: a less spectacular company that you can hold all the
Speaker 12: way through a ten or fifteen times your money than
Speaker 12: it is a spectacular company that you might make five
Speaker 12: times in five years. But you've got to be smart
Speaker 12: enough to sell it and go to another project.
Speaker 13: Well, and you're you know something. I want to ask
Speaker 13: you a little bit more too, about what Charlie Munger
Speaker 13: was to Warren Buffett, what he brought out, and Warren
Speaker 13: Buffett having said that, I want to bring Noah Bouhier
Speaker 13: into this because you know, Noah, it's one of those
Speaker 13: things where you think, as we're hearing from Bill, you
Speaker 13: know these are both brilliant men, successful men, and would
Speaker 13: have been on their own, but something about them together
Speaker 13: brought out even so much more.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I think that's a critical point here is the
Speaker 14: combination of talents they brought to bear really was deeply
Speaker 14: important in the evolution of Berkshire. The other thing, just
Speaker 14: speaking as a journalist, the thing that I always found
Speaker 14: so amazing about Charlie Munger was his directness and his
Speaker 14: willingness to speak his mind, even if his opinion wasn't
Speaker 14: necessarily a popular one. You know, as a as a
Speaker 14: business reporter and someone writing about investing, you always knew
Speaker 14: that Charlie was not just going to give you the
Speaker 14: piffy quote, but something that actually had some real substance
Speaker 14: behind it. And I think that's, you know, in large part,
Speaker 14: what has resonated with a lot of investors over time.
Speaker 14: I mean, people would go One of the things that's
Speaker 14: underappreciated about Charlie Munger is is that deep into his nineties,
Speaker 14: people would go to Los Angeles to hear him speak
Speaker 14: at the annual meeting of a small publishing company called
Speaker 14: the Daily Journal.
Speaker 3: Daily.
Speaker 14: This was Buffett had nothing to do with this thing.
Speaker 14: They would just go to hear Munger alone. And I
Speaker 14: remember the first time I went to this thing, that
Speaker 14: were maybe one hundred or two hundred people, and you know,
Speaker 14: three or four years later word had gotten out and
Speaker 14: a couple thousand were going. I mean, you have to
Speaker 14: understand Charlie Munger was respected in his own right. It
Speaker 14: wasn't you know. He's often known for his affiliation with
Speaker 14: with Buffett, but he really did have his own loyal following.
Speaker 12: To back up Noah on that, one of our favorite
Speaker 12: things is when it comes to climate change, he just said,
Speaker 12: why don't we just build a seawall?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: That was his opinion.
Speaker 12: It's like, okay, if it's real, let's do what they
Speaker 12: did in Amsterdam and just build a seawall in California
Speaker 12: and New York. And that's so simple and logical and
Speaker 12: less expensive. But that's Charlie Munger. It was always common sense,
Speaker 12: always won. The difference between the two men is Warren.
Speaker 12: Warren wants to die without any enemies. He has more
Speaker 12: of an urge to be liked. It's a wonderful man,
Speaker 12: and he wants to be liked, whereas Charlie could care
Speaker 12: less if he's liked, right, he wants to share wisdom,
Speaker 12: share truth.
Speaker 13: What was it like from the different meetings you went
Speaker 13: to and just kind of seeing them up on stage,
Speaker 13: things that kind of stood out for you.
Speaker 12: Well, there's hardly any better comedy routine that's ever been done,
Speaker 12: the back and forth. Of course, Munger had lots of
Speaker 12: the singers, but Buffett had plenty himself. And yeah, they
Speaker 12: played off fantastically. It was I had a next door
Speaker 12: neighbor that was four years ahead of me in school,
Speaker 12: and I had no brothers, three sisters, and he was
Speaker 12: one of four brothers. And here I are extremely close friends.
Speaker 12: But he's four years older than me in the same
Speaker 12: way that Longer was six or seven years older than
Speaker 12: six years older than Warrent. Right, But yet you know,
Speaker 12: we met and we were finishing each other sentences. And
Speaker 12: that's the way these guys were. They were finishing each
Speaker 12: other sentences. They'd say the first part of the sentence
Speaker 12: and they didn't have to continue because the other guy
Speaker 12: already knew what the rest of the sentence was going
Speaker 12: to be.
Speaker 13: This is that kind of relationship we.
Speaker 3: Know, Bouhire.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're with us because we've been reading
Speaker 2: from your obituary. You know, to Bill's point about this
Speaker 2: this idea of common sense and not you know, not
Speaker 2: always needing to be liked. You mentioned this some of
Speaker 2: his donations, and this one's this one's at the top
Speaker 2: of mind from him because it's it's relatively recent, forty
Speaker 2: five hundred person dorm on UCSB's campus, which actually got
Speaker 2: a lot of people interested in dormitory architecture who didn't
Speaker 2: think that they would actually be interested in dormitory architecture.
Speaker 2: But you know, here Monger is trying to solve this
Speaker 2: problem of student housing, and he got a lot of
Speaker 2: blowback to this idea, and ultimately they canceled it.
Speaker 3: What happened in.
Speaker 14: His later years, Munger used these donations that he gave
Speaker 14: the universities to play architect I mean, he was deeply,
Speaker 14: deeply interested in architecture, and you know, he had some
Speaker 14: pretty unconventional ideas that I think really bothered people, and
Speaker 14: it became its own, you know, subplot, it's own right.
Speaker 14: But like you have to understand, for Munger, he was
Speaker 14: an incredibly wide, widely read person. He wasn't as narrowly
Speaker 14: interested in investing and you know, how to make money. Obviously,
Speaker 14: he spent a lot of time doing that, but he
Speaker 14: had an interest outside of it. The other thing I
Speaker 14: wanted to add and the stakes with in a slightly
Speaker 14: different direction. But like you know, for all that Munger would,
Speaker 14: you know, sit up on stage and sort of act
Speaker 14: as the skull and the curmudgeon next to Buffet. He
Speaker 14: he did have a you know, a generous heart, and
Speaker 14: you know, when you talk to people who spent time
Speaker 14: with Charlie, you know he was a deeply nice and
Speaker 14: caring person, and you know, on some level, this sort
Speaker 14: of permudgeon stance he would take on stage and in
Speaker 14: public sometimes was a bit of an act, but it
Speaker 14: helped him make his point.
Speaker 13: A truly wonderful conversation with Bloomberg's Noah Boo Hire and
Speaker 13: Smede Capital Cio Bill Smead more on our podcast feed
Speaker 13: on the Legacy of Charlie Munger.
Speaker 2: We should note that shortly after Amonger's death, we also
Speaker 2: lost a pair of luminaries in the fields of geopolitics
Speaker 2: and law, respectively. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died
Speaker 2: at the age of one hundred and Sandra de O'Connor,
Speaker 2: the first woman to serve as US Supreme Court Justice,
Speaker 2: died just days later at ninety three.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: Live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 1: or watch us Live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: It was perhaps the biggest story of the year in
Speaker 2: the tech sector, and one that transfers Silicon Valley along
Speaker 2: with the global artificial intelligence industry. Fewer than five days
Speaker 2: after Sam Altman's abrupt ouster from open Ai, Altman was
Speaker 2: back at one of the world's most valuable startups. In
Speaker 2: the immediate aftermath of Altman's return, Caroly and I spoke
Speaker 2: with someone who knows quite a bit about this space
Speaker 2: and the broader implications of AI in our society, Andrew McAfee,
Speaker 2: Principal research scientist at MIT.
Speaker 15: I think this is just a crystal clear case study
Speaker 15: of the importance of good old fashion, boring corporate governance
Speaker 15: and running a good board. This feels like a huge
Speaker 15: enforced error on the part of the Open Ai board,
Speaker 15: and I still don't quite understand it.
Speaker 13: What is ultimately the important thing that we get odd
Speaker 13: of this, or how it ends in your view.
Speaker 15: I don't think we're ever going to know all the details,
Speaker 15: but we do know that if you have an extraordinarily popular,
Speaker 15: very effective CEO at growing a tech company, the board
Speaker 15: might not want to fire that person with no notice,
Speaker 15: really without apparently engaging on a lot of back and
Speaker 15: forth with him, not for any fraud or misconduct or malfeasance,
Speaker 15: but because of some other kind of vague problem. If
Speaker 15: the board is going to take that fairly rash step,
Speaker 15: they probably want to alert their major investors, their biggest
Speaker 15: business partners, their employee base, and give them time to
Speaker 15: get ready for all that they didn't appear to do
Speaker 15: any of that.
Speaker 11: Whatever you think the board's duty.
Speaker 15: Is, I can't see how it includes destroying that much
Speaker 15: value following out the employee base of the company. And
Speaker 15: if the mission of the Open AI Foundation is to
Speaker 15: advance safe AGI for humanity, I do not see how
Speaker 15: these actions support that mission at all.
Speaker 13: You know, Tim was really smart in terms of our
Speaker 13: discussions that we've been having around this about what seems
Speaker 13: to be maybe at odds, and that is this debate
Speaker 13: about a need for balance of pushing generative AI, this technology,
Speaker 13: expanding exploring it to reach its potential, but with also
Speaker 13: having an ethical line because of the potential of it
Speaker 13: to do wrong. Although I would go back to you know,
Speaker 13: the Cold War and missiles and the battle to have
Speaker 13: the greatest and best in terms of military and how
Speaker 13: that could bring the end to civilization. So I'm trying
Speaker 13: to kind of figure out what is at risk if
Speaker 13: we get this wrong?
Speaker 11: Help me here, Yeah, whatever is at risk?
Speaker 15: If your organization organization's mission is safe AI, and you
Speaker 15: believe apparently that a for profit company is not the
Speaker 15: right way to accomplish that mission, then doing things that
Speaker 15: let your CEO and again almost all of the employees
Speaker 15: wind up at an AI building for profit company that
Speaker 15: is not accomplishing the goals of your mission.
Speaker 11: I personally am.
Speaker 15: Not worried about the existential the alignment risk of AI.
Speaker 15: All very powerful tools bring risks and harms with and
Speaker 15: they demand vigilance, and we got to be careful about it.
Speaker 15: I don't think AI is any big exception to that
Speaker 15: trend or requires us to do radically different things.
Speaker 11: We just have to be vigilant stop the bad uses.
Speaker 2: That is really really surprising for me to hear from you, Andrew,
Speaker 2: because I hear from you know, the worst case scenario
Speaker 2: when it comes to this stuff is, Okay, what if
Speaker 2: AI developed some sort of super bug or biological weapon,
Speaker 2: or in fact, you know in the Elon Musk school,
Speaker 2: become sentient and more powerful than human beings.
Speaker 3: Why does that not worry you?
Speaker 15: I mean I read a lot of science fiction as
Speaker 15: a kid, too. I think terminators sci fi scenarios are
Speaker 15: not great guides to policy, are not great guides to
Speaker 15: using this very powerful, very beneficial toolkit. I do think
Speaker 15: that there is a risk that AI, for example, could
Speaker 15: be used to engineer bad bugs or bioweapons. Great, why
Speaker 15: are we focusing on AI and not gene editing and
Speaker 15: not gene sequencing technologies? And why are we letting anybody
Speaker 15: apply to molecular biology and genetic doctoral programs and distributing
Speaker 15: that knowledge very freely? Again, there are risks in the
Speaker 15: modern world, let's not be naive about that. But singling
Speaker 15: out AI as the lynchpin that's going to make everything
Speaker 15: bad happen, I just think that's wrong. I think that's
Speaker 15: a misallocation of our effort. Okay, demonizing technologies that will
Speaker 15: be super beneficial to us, I think as allows the idea.
Speaker 2: Well let's move away from the superbug concern and more
Speaker 2: to the concern that it will become a sentient being
Speaker 2: that is more powerful and smarter than us. Why does
Speaker 2: that not concern you?
Speaker 15: We have so many more important things to worry about.
Speaker 15: We have to accomplish an energy transition in the twenty
Speaker 15: first century. We have too high a disease burden. There
Speaker 15: are too many people in dire poverty around the world.
Speaker 15: I believe that AI might be the most powerful tool
Speaker 15: that we've ever come up with to help us solve
Speaker 15: these global planetary challenges facing humanity. And we're sitting around
Speaker 15: worried about the terminator when there's not a shred of
Speaker 15: evidence that AI has become sentient or taken control of
Speaker 15: anything that we don't want it to.
Speaker 11: Bad sci fi mixed bad policy and.
Speaker 13: To full transparency, you're working with Google on research related
Speaker 13: to the societal impacts of generative AI.
Speaker 3: I am curious that what is.
Speaker 13: The balance you all at Google are pursuing when it
Speaker 13: comes to generative AI reaching its potential but also being
Speaker 13: smart about it and careful with it.
Speaker 15: Yeah, thanks for that, because I really want to make
Speaker 15: clear here I am just talking about my own personal views.
Speaker 15: I am not representing Google's views on this. I actually
Speaker 15: am not on top of everything that Google believes. What
Speaker 15: I do know that Google stance is that we need
Speaker 15: to be bold and responsible. I think we are in
Speaker 15: danger of walking away from the bold part in an
Speaker 15: overabundance of not just caution, but fear about things that
Speaker 15: we just don't have any evidence for. I want to
Speaker 15: say this again, this is my view, not necessarily Google's view.
Speaker 2: The thing that most concerns me about generitive AI is
Speaker 2: misinformation and the ability for bad actors to use that
Speaker 2: misinformation at scale to control outcomes like happens in social media. Exactly.
Speaker 2: It's not that different than a lot of accusations that
Speaker 2: we saw fly in the wake of twenty sixteen and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty elections here in the US. But if you
Speaker 2: thought a bought army of people, you know in Eastern
Speaker 2: Europe with social media, we're scary, then what about an
Speaker 2: actual bought army of generative AI that's able to you know,
Speaker 2: do this stuff at scale?
Speaker 15: Andrew, Now that's a harm that we should be worrying
Speaker 15: about because these are actual challenges and like you say,
Speaker 15: bad actors are going to weaponize generative AI to do
Speaker 15: all kinds of harm or try to do all kinds
Speaker 15: of harm. This is a real risk, it's a real harm.
Speaker 15: I have faith in our ability to deal with the
Speaker 15: harms that technology brings us. I think we can find
Speaker 15: ways to have trusted sources that will verify whether a
Speaker 15: thing is a deep fake or not. All of us
Speaker 15: have the new sources that we run to when we
Speaker 15: see something that might be true or might not be true.
Speaker 15: We can strengthen those kinds of institutions and those kinds
Speaker 15: of responses. We can also educate people to be more
Speaker 15: discerning consumers of the news.
Speaker 13: You know you talk about you know, you have faith
Speaker 13: to deal with the harms of this technology maybe will
Speaker 13: ultimately bring us. Should there there be some guardrails in place,
Speaker 13: you know, shamy once you know full you know, shame
Speaker 13: or full me one, shame on you for me twice,
Speaker 13: shame on you know.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, Okay, George W. Bush Rich Sutchy.
Speaker 13: But I guess my point is, whether it's social media,
Speaker 13: whether it's crypto, there's a lot of things out there
Speaker 13: that it's like, Oh, I guess we should have been
Speaker 13: doing this is there something we should have in place
Speaker 13: at this point when it comes to generative AI.
Speaker 15: I think what we should have in place is a
Speaker 15: very agile system for becoming aware of the harms and
Speaker 15: dealing with the harms as they crop up. For example,
Speaker 15: after smartphones were out for a while, we learned that
Speaker 15: a bunch of losers were using them to take pictures
Speaker 15: up the skirts of women, you know, as they commuted
Speaker 15: to work on the subway.
Speaker 11: We didn't not love a smartphone.
Speaker 15: We didn't make smartphone makers apply for a license to
Speaker 15: use a camera. We didn't make all of us apply
Speaker 15: for a license to have a camera equipped smartphone around
Speaker 15: the states. Anyway, lots of legislatures acted really quickly to
Speaker 15: make that particular use of the phone illegal. Fast response
Speaker 15: to the harms that come up is my preferred approach
Speaker 15: for dealing with these. I don't trust me, or you
Speaker 15: or anybody else to sit around right here and correctly
Speaker 15: anticipate all of the things that will happen and all
Speaker 15: of the effective ways to head that off.
Speaker 11: I just don't.
Speaker 2: That was our conversation with MIT Principal research scientist Andrew
Speaker 2: McAfee back in late November and on December eighteenth, Bloomberg
Speaker 2: reported that the OpenAI Board can now choose to hold
Speaker 2: back the release of an AI model even if the
Speaker 2: CEO has deemed it safe. The chat GPT maker revealed
Speaker 2: the arrangement as part of a new set of guidelines
Speaker 2: that it's implementing to help deal with AI risks still
Speaker 2: to come. On Bloomberg BusinessWeek, we take a moment to
Speaker 2: savor our best experiences of twenty twenty three, from the
Speaker 2: theater to travel, to fine dining and everything in between.
Speaker 2: Our Bloomberg Pursuits team wraps up the year in luxury.
Speaker 3: When we return. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio,
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business app, and YouTube. You can also listen
Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: No year end edition of this program would be complete
Speaker 2: without a comprehensive cultural review from Bloomberg Pursuits. We have
Speaker 2: a chance now to take stock of the finer things
Speaker 2: in life and also get a preview of some of
Speaker 2: the new and exciting attractions that we can expect in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Very pleased to welcome in the editor
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser, and to discuss some of
Speaker 2: the outstanding work that he and his team have done
Speaker 2: over the last twelve months.
Speaker 3: Chris, it's always good to have you here.
Speaker 2: The Pursuits team has published its best of lists for
Speaker 2: the year that was, and once again I asked my
Speaker 2: self the question, why am I not part of the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Pursuits team, traveling the world drinking wine, trying on watches,
Speaker 2: driving cars, and going.
Speaker 3: To the theater.
Speaker 16: Tim, We're always asking you, Well, you actually say not,
Speaker 16: You're too busy busy.
Speaker 2: Hey, I do want to start with the theater, though,
Speaker 2: because Sarah Rappaport goes to a lot of theater.
Speaker 16: She sure does.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 16: Sarah is based in London, and so she gets to
Speaker 16: see all these amazing West End shows and independent shows
Speaker 16: out there, and she saw some of the really big
Speaker 16: hits that were there this past year, including Sunset Boulevard
Speaker 16: with Nicole Scherzinger, which I also saw when I was
Speaker 16: there for work. But her favorite show was a show
Speaker 16: called Operation Mincemeat, which is homegrown, like small cast musical
Speaker 16: about sort of this caper that the British pulls during
Speaker 16: World War Two, they tricked their enemies. And it doesn't
Speaker 16: sound like something that would be like a really fun
Speaker 16: capery musical, but it actually really works.
Speaker 2: Hey, I want to talk a little bit about time pieces.
Speaker 2: This is your area of expertise. Yes, that is before
Speaker 2: I met you, I used to call them watches.
Speaker 16: Well, you know, you can only use the word watch
Speaker 16: so many times in one articles. You have to mix
Speaker 16: it up. That's also why you'll see the word horology.
Speaker 16: It's not a word I want to use, but it's.
Speaker 3: One that you dose.
Speaker 2: You know, you travel each year to an exhibition in Switzerland,
Speaker 2: don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 16: So there's a big trade show that happens in March
Speaker 16: or April and Geneva every year called Watches and Wonders
Speaker 16: and is where most of the big brands globally, especially
Speaker 16: the Swiss brands, show off their new time pieces for
Speaker 16: the coming year. And I always go and they do releases.
Speaker 16: They also do releases throughout the year at special events
Speaker 16: and dinners and fancy things. So I see most of
Speaker 16: the new watches that come out, you know, things from
Speaker 16: three hundred dollars to things that are one point eight million.
Speaker 3: Dollars for a watch for a time piece.
Speaker 16: For a time piece at that price point, it's definitely
Speaker 16: a time piece.
Speaker 2: What is this mb and F Horological machine eleven that
Speaker 2: looks nothing like a watch?
Speaker 16: Yeah, So mb and F is a brand that we
Speaker 16: write about a fair amount because it's one of our
Speaker 16: favorite brands. They have these watches that are very space
Speaker 16: age and swoopy, and they sort of reinvent how you
Speaker 16: tell time. So everything from you know, you don't look
Speaker 16: at the face of the watch, you look at an
Speaker 16: angle and there's a little window that tells the time
Speaker 16: and in a weird way, and they just don't really
Speaker 16: look like watches, the watches. And so because they're so unique,
Speaker 16: they're really coveted and a small production, and they make
Speaker 16: these horological machines every couple of years and they're completely
Speaker 16: new movements, which means they're completely like they've reinvented the wheel.
Speaker 16: So my friend that works at NBNF came to Bloomberg
Speaker 16: and like was like, I smuggled something in for you.
Speaker 16: I want to show you this crazy new watch. We have,
Speaker 16: the Horological Machine eleven. HM eleven, which is they call
Speaker 16: the Architect and it's a little round watch that looks
Speaker 16: like a UFO. It has four different sort of conical
Speaker 16: sections that have different little surprises in them. So one
Speaker 16: tells the time, one has the crown, one shows the
Speaker 16: power reserve, and one has a thermometer, a mechanical thermometer,
Speaker 16: So it's a thermometer that tells the temperature based on
Speaker 16: attention in a coil, which you have on your Apple watch.
Speaker 16: But for a mechanical watch, that's pretty unusual. And I
Speaker 16: just love the way it looked. It's the only time
Speaker 16: I'll ever wear it because it's two hundred and thirty
Speaker 16: thousand dollars, but it definitely caused a sensation. There's sometimes
Speaker 16: I'll see a watch and be like this is.
Speaker 2: But there's a problem with these, which is if somebody
Speaker 2: comes up and asks you what time it is, you
Speaker 2: have to like look through a little people and shake out.
Speaker 16: Not really, I mean sometimes yes, but this one you
Speaker 16: can tell a time pretty easily.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: One of the people on your team who has among
Speaker 2: the most enviable jobs, I think is Nicki Eckstein, who
Speaker 2: gets to travel all over the world, stay in different hotels,
Speaker 2: all over the world. Interestingly enough, her favorite hotel this
Speaker 2: year was actually one here in the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 16: So Nicki is our the Bloomberg's Travels are and she's
Speaker 16: been pursuits as travel editor for many years, and so
Speaker 16: this year she actually checked in a bunch of classics,
Speaker 16: like hotels that are not necessarily new but have been refurbished,
Speaker 16: like Clarridges in London and the Carlisle in New York
Speaker 16: and the Bristol in Paris, which are really fabulous hotels.
Speaker 16: But her favorite hotel was the Montage Palmetto Bluff, which
Speaker 16: is between Hilton in Savannah, and it's kind of like
Speaker 16: a little community, little cottages and suites. And she went
Speaker 16: with there with her kids, and so she has she
Speaker 16: has two young kids. For a travel editor, that's like
Speaker 16: a whole different paradigm because you can't kind of go
Speaker 16: on these wild adventures. You have to really figure out
Speaker 16: how to do stuff and.
Speaker 3: To check bags.
Speaker 16: Sometimes when you have to nightmare, it's a nightmare scenario.
Speaker 16: And she just found that the Montage was like really
Speaker 16: wonderful for kids, had great activities for adults like boating
Speaker 16: the beach. They had every night, they had cooked giants'mores.
Speaker 16: The staff was super nice, and she just felt like
Speaker 16: it was such a treat in a way that sometimes
Speaker 16: hotels forget about these days.
Speaker 2: If you were to think about the trends that we're
Speaker 2: going to see next year for hotels and for traveling,
Speaker 2: what's on your radar, what's on Nikki's radar, that's a
Speaker 2: great question. So travel is still travels booming, and it's
Speaker 2: really it's been coming back since the pandemic. People are
Speaker 2: switching their spend from buying things to buying experiences. We're
Speaker 2: seeing that continue some parts of the world or not
Speaker 2: are seeing travel soften, especially in the Middle East because
Speaker 2: of the war. What companies are trying to do big
Speaker 2: hotel companies are trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: blend business travel and leisure travel because people are actually
Speaker 2: traveling less for business, but they are able to travel
Speaker 2: more because their business is more flexible. So there's you're
Speaker 2: finding hotels that are cropping up basically like hotel communities
Speaker 2: near airports where people can go and kind of have
Speaker 2: a home base in a city where they can fly in,
Speaker 2: in and out easily, but it's almost like a residence area,
Speaker 2: like they're doing this in Atlanta, where you can you know,
Speaker 2: there's shared workspaces, there's amenities and stuff like that, so
Speaker 2: that this hotel can kind of be a home away
Speaker 2: from home, doesn't feel so much like an anonymous place
Speaker 2: that you're just passing through, because people realize you can
Speaker 2: work from different places, your life can be more nomadic,
Speaker 2: and you're seeing countries do that too, like digital nomad
Speaker 2: programs that are still going strong. So we can't talk
Speaker 2: about travel without talking about dining. And Kate Crator, who
Speaker 2: used to be based here in New York, is now
Speaker 2: based in life in Yep and she gets to eat
Speaker 2: at different.
Speaker 3: Restaurants for a living. She does. That is her job title.
Speaker 1: What did.
Speaker 3: It sounds better coming from you guys? What stuck out
Speaker 3: to her this year?
Speaker 16: So she Kate lives in London and goes to all
Speaker 16: the amazing restaurants in London, and she is from New York.
Speaker 16: She's like the Queen of New York food. So she
Speaker 16: has eaten everywhere that's good here. But this year she
Speaker 16: went to South Korea and she went to Seoul, and
Speaker 16: she went to Busan, and she went to this place
Speaker 16: in Seoul called Born and Bread, where she had a
Speaker 16: twenty course meal that was just han Wu beef, which
Speaker 16: is a particular kind of beef that it's like wagu,
Speaker 16: but it's just in creed. It's very difficult to get
Speaker 16: it outside of Korea, and this chef Min Kongwan serves
Speaker 16: it twenty different ways, so it's like the best beef
Speaker 16: in the world, twenty different ways, like melting, slices of chuck,
Speaker 16: like tartar, tons of different textures. And she said, just
Speaker 16: watching them cook it, because they cook it in front
Speaker 16: of you and then serving it to you, which really cardible.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to go eat there. That sounds good.
Speaker 3: Just go, Chris. We only have a minute left. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I want you to choose. Are we going to talk
Speaker 3: about art, wine or cars.
Speaker 16: Let's talk about cars, okay, because a lot of the
Speaker 16: great art exhibits from this year were like once in
Speaker 16: a lifetime things that are closing soon. So I want
Speaker 16: to recommend two of the cars that Hannah Elliot, our
Speaker 16: car columnists, tried out.
Speaker 3: They're very expensive, but they are things in pursuits.
Speaker 16: But they both they're both electric versions of very exciting cars,
Speaker 16: very top end cars, which will trickle down to influence
Speaker 16: the way that we drive the rest of our cars.
Speaker 16: So there's the electric g Wagon, which is Mercedes like
Speaker 16: off road, you know, really expensive. People love it. She
Speaker 16: was the first journalist to try it. She'd drove off road.
Speaker 16: She said it was incredible, the power. It was just
Speaker 16: as capable as a combustion engine version, actually more. And
Speaker 16: then she drove the Rolls Royce Specter, which is there
Speaker 16: Rolls's first electric car, which she said is like the
Speaker 16: most Rolls Royce of Rolls Royces because it's silent, incredibly
Speaker 16: powerful and just super super luxurious.
Speaker 3: I think she got to go to Town, South Africa
Speaker 3: to do that. Yeah, she did, because her life is
Speaker 3: also extremely difficult. Yeah, that's another enviable job.
Speaker 2: Before we let you go, twenty twenty four, how's it
Speaker 2: shaping up in Pursuits Land.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a really interesting year.
Speaker 16: There's a lot going on. There's a lot of hotels opening,
Speaker 16: a lot of really incredible restaurants coming back. We do
Speaker 16: a list at the beginning of January of the year
Speaker 16: where we tell you where to go in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 16: and that we're working on that list now. We're finishing
Speaker 16: it up, and it's a really there's some really exciting places.
Speaker 16: A lot of places in South America, Quito, Lima. I
Speaker 16: can't give away too much, but Halifax, which is a
Speaker 16: favorite of mine, so you've got to check that out
Speaker 16: on January second.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, we're looking forward to that and we'll certainly
Speaker 2: have you back on the program to give us an
Speaker 2: idea of everywhere we should go to in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Happy new year, Chris, and a big thank you as
Speaker 2: always to our Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser, looking forward
Speaker 2: to what comes next from the best team out there covering.
Speaker 3: Luxury and culture. You guys are the best.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on
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Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Unless you even live it under a rock.
Speaker 2: Then you're familiar with the so called the weight loss
Speaker 2: drugs we go vio Zepic, zep bound, and monduro The
Speaker 2: weight loss benefits have been well documented, but now researchers
Speaker 2: are pushing this class of drugs that became famous for
Speaker 2: helping people lose weight and testing the shots across a
Speaker 2: spectrum of disorders, from Alzheimer's disease to sleep apneil.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this.
Speaker 2: They're also testing it out on alcoholism. However, in the
Speaker 2: case of alcoholism, Novo Nordisk, which is the Danish drug
Speaker 2: maker behind we go Vi, isn't even involved. Though one
Speaker 2: study is happening in its hometown. It didn't even agree
Speaker 2: to supply scientists with the medicines. Neither is Eli Lilly,
Speaker 2: which makes zep Bound and monduro Malomi Kresky and Madison
Speaker 2: Muller write about the alcoholics who are seeking a cure
Speaker 2: from these drugs, but without Big Pharmer's help. Madison Moller
Speaker 2: is health reported for Bloomberg News, and she joins us
Speaker 2: here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. It's so rare
Speaker 2: to see an example of a study that's not actually
Speaker 2: supported in some way by the manufacturer of a specific drug,
Speaker 2: especially one that's so lucrative.
Speaker 3: What's going on here exactly?
Speaker 17: I mean, you'd think that these companies want to study
Speaker 17: the drugs in as many indications as they can because
Speaker 17: for them, you know, that helps expand it to more patients,
Speaker 17: and you know, it's a clear business opportunity, but in
Speaker 17: this case, we're not seeing that. And you know, one
Speaker 17: of the reasons that the experts and the scientists that
Speaker 17: we talked to for this story gave for that is
Speaker 17: that utilization of alcohol disorder drugs in the US is
Speaker 17: so low that the drug makers just don't see this
Speaker 17: as a good business opportunity.
Speaker 2: Why has the utilization been low? I mean, couldn't there
Speaker 2: be a whole host of reasons. I mean, one, maybe
Speaker 2: they haven't been effective, right.
Speaker 17: And I mean I was even surprised. I mean, I
Speaker 17: don't know if you knew this, but in the process
Speaker 17: of reporting this story, I didn't even realize that there
Speaker 17: were three or four alcohol on the market. I was like, oh,
Speaker 17: I thought there was one, or you know, and it
Speaker 17: didn't work or something. And these drugs do work, they're effective,
Speaker 17: but they're not there's side effects, and not every doctor,
Speaker 17: even like some addiction doctors, are not really well educated
Speaker 17: in how to prescribe these drugs to patients, how to
Speaker 17: sort of oversee that process. There usually is a lengthy
Speaker 17: prior authorization, you know, process to actually even write a prescription,
Speaker 17: which doctors are busy and they don't even have time
Speaker 17: for resources to do and so there's a lot of
Speaker 17: barriers to get people on these drugs currently, you know,
Speaker 17: And that's not even getting into the stigma of all
Speaker 17: of this and the fact that people just sometimes don't
Speaker 17: believe that you should be using drugs to treat alcohol
Speaker 17: use disorder.
Speaker 3: So is that a part of this story too, Yeah.
Speaker 17: I mean, the stigma definitely is a huge thing, and
Speaker 17: that's something in the conversations with these scientists, every single
Speaker 17: one of them brought that up, and they were like,
Speaker 17: aside from the business case that these companies, you know,
Speaker 17: maybe don't see potential here, the stigma is still such
Speaker 17: a big issue. And that's an issue that you know,
Speaker 17: is there regardless of whether or not Novo Nordisk and
Speaker 17: Eli Lilly are supporting these studies. It's just a continuous
Speaker 17: problem for this field.
Speaker 2: Is it being used off label for this right now?
Speaker 2: I've seen anecdotal tweets about this. I've seen anecdotal tweets
Speaker 2: that have said not by people who have alcohol use disorder,
Speaker 2: but they say basically, hey, I went on this and
Speaker 2: it stopped me from eating a lot. It stopped me
Speaker 2: from drinking a lot, right so.
Speaker 17: Yeah, and I mean that's the reason why some of
Speaker 17: the some of these Interestingly, some of these studies happened
Speaker 17: and started, or the researchers were at least in the
Speaker 17: process of getting these studies going long before sort of
Speaker 17: the hype around these way laws drugs really took off
Speaker 17: this last year. I mean, they had been looking at,
Speaker 17: you know, anecdotal reports from ozembic because ozempic, remember was
Speaker 17: approved several years ago, so they've sort of been hearing
Speaker 17: about this now for a few years from you know,
Speaker 17: psychologists and psychiatrists that have been talking about this sort
Speaker 17: of in their inner circles, and then there's there was
Speaker 17: also some pre clinical studies done and some early studies
Speaker 17: done in patients. So some of these researchers have been
Speaker 17: looking at this for a while. The other ones heard
Speaker 17: about this just sort of within the last year from
Speaker 17: you know, anecdotally from people on Twitter being like I
Speaker 17: had no desire to drink after going on ozembic, and
Speaker 17: they were like, this is super exciting. We have to
Speaker 17: see what's going on here, and so they launched studies
Speaker 17: sort of as a result of that.
Speaker 2: So you and Naomi Kresky, who's in our she's she
Speaker 2: based she's based in Berlin.
Speaker 11: Berlin, Yeah, so she.
Speaker 2: Helps cover this from the European angle. You both did
Speaker 2: some reporting actually in Denmark. Talk to us a little
Speaker 2: bit about what you found in terms of these like
Speaker 2: who's who are doing these trials and people who you
Speaker 2: and Naomi spoke to.
Speaker 17: Yeah, so it was it was really fun to work
Speaker 17: with Naomi because she's obviously in brillant, so she was
Speaker 17: able to go to Copenhagen and talk to the researchers
Speaker 17: and patients and nurses and everyone that's helping run this study.
Speaker 17: And we also had help from colleagues in the Copenhagen
Speaker 17: Bureau who went out and talked to some of these
Speaker 17: people involved in these studies as well. And then on
Speaker 17: the US side of things, there's like four or five
Speaker 17: studies happening at least four studies happening here as well,
Speaker 17: So I sort of went out and talked all the
Speaker 17: US researchers. And it's funny because they all met at
Speaker 17: a conference over the summer. It was, you know, some
Speaker 17: addiction conference, and they all came together and were like,
Speaker 17: oh wow, we're all studying this thing. They got dinner
Speaker 17: and they talked about it and sort of made sure
Speaker 17: that their studies were lining up. And they've all continued
Speaker 17: to communicate since. And it's cool to see their excitement
Speaker 17: because some of them have been studying addiction alcoholism for
Speaker 17: decades and they were like, this is one of the
Speaker 17: most exciting times in the history of this field right now,
Speaker 17: because it's just it's sort of difficult to find breakthroughs
Speaker 17: because there's just not a lot of pharmaceutical companies funding
Speaker 17: these types of studies. There's not a lot of like
Speaker 17: in happening in this field.
Speaker 2: Break down the science for us. You know, why do
Speaker 2: scientists and researchers believe that these GLP one agonists, Yeah,
Speaker 2: can actually help people who have alcohol use disorder.
Speaker 17: Yeah, it's super interesting because they don't really know exactly
Speaker 17: why it should work yet. And that's one of the
Speaker 17: amazing things about these drugs is like we are when
Speaker 17: we've talked about this on the show, like seeing all
Speaker 17: of these other health effects, and a lot of times
Speaker 17: the answer is, we don't really know why some of
Speaker 17: them are happening. And in this case, we know that
Speaker 17: there's a connection in the you know, brain pathways that
Speaker 17: regulate rewards systems. So when we eat food, the same
Speaker 17: feelings of pleasure that we get and maybe from other
Speaker 17: things from drinking, there's there's some interconnections in the brain
Speaker 17: that regulates those feelings of pleasure that we get from
Speaker 17: doing different activities, and so they think that the drugs
Speaker 17: are having an effect there, which we know that they
Speaker 17: do have an effect in the brain. I mean, they
Speaker 17: make you feel satisfied after eating food. And so there's
Speaker 17: some other neuroscientists that I've talked to who think that
Speaker 17: the drugs could affect a person's strongest craving. So for
Speaker 17: some people that might be food. For some people that
Speaker 17: could be alcohol, for others, it could be other things.
Speaker 17: Maybe you know, it's just the drugs aren't really being
Speaker 17: used in that population.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: So the strongest let's say you're strongest s craving is
Speaker 2: or something that's not food or right, you know, alcohol, right,
Speaker 2: addicted to something else like yeah, drugs or something.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 17: And one of the researchers we talked to in this
Speaker 17: story is also studying GLP one drugs in people who
Speaker 17: are addicted to nicotine and cigarettes, so similar there's a
Speaker 17: lot of different different things that you could used for well.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible story. We love all of your coverage
Speaker 2: when it comes to these Madison Madison Mueller is health
Speaker 2: reporter for Bloomberg News. Check out our story Alcoholics seek
Speaker 2: a cure and we go v without Big Pharma's help.
Speaker 2: It's available on the Bloomberg Terminal and.
Speaker 3: At Bloomberg dot com. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
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