Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - October 20th, 2023

This is Bloomberg business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.

Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. Well, a big week of economic data and FED insights, coinciding with the first major spate of third quarter earnings, and yet safe to say, Tim, it was all overshadowed rightfully so, by the ongoing violence in the Middle East, with the Israel Hamas war now two weeks old.

That's right, and I head this hour. We're going to be looking at the conflict from multiple angles, including a conversation with a former Israeli Special Forces soldier turns Silicon Valley entrepreneur Leoris Susan of Eclipse Ventures says he loves the Palestinian people and offers his views on how true peace can actually be achieved in the region.

We'll also here from the head of software solutions from Cohesia on how geopolitical instability is impacting the Israeli tech sector. Meantime, we saw President Joe Biden make a brief but impactful visit to Israel this past week, somewhat controversial, I would say as well. He then delivered a primetime address from the White House Thursday, as Washington looks to maintain its strong support of Israel while also hoping to keep the violence from escalating further.

The Israel and Moss conflict has put an end, at least for now, to a hopeful narrative of what was supposed to be a quote new Middle East, one that ended old enemities between Israel and the Arab world in the pursuit of stability, and is now looking like something else that's horribly familiar, and things may only get worse, Carol.

Perhaps more so so, writes Sylvia Westall in the Remark section of the new issue of Bloomberg Business Week. Lots of talk about back with us as Bobby Ghost, He's Bloomberg opinion columnist.

He covers culture.

But you know, as a reminder, he spent many years covering foreign affairs, particularly from conflict zones in the Middle East, so much that he understands about the Middle East and the conflicts there.

Bobby, good to have you back with us.

A lot to try and keep abreast of Having said that, Sylvia Westol writes in the remark section and asks, can there ever be peace with the Palestinians?

Can there?

Well, it's a question that I've been asking myself for the best part of three decades now, and every time there seems even the slimmest hope that there might be some movement in that direction, something like what we've seen happen over the past eight or nine days happens and

Trying that one.

What would that look like, Bobby, Well, that would look like Palestinians having a bigger say in their future, having something like a state. That would look like the deal that was agreed between the two sides in the Oslo Accords. But for many reasons, and both sides have plenty of blame to share, never really got off the ground, never really got off the pages of the documents that was signed.

It's increasingly complicated in this day and age, with settlements moving into the West Bank and also with the way that, as you mentioned, for the last at least fifteen years, Garsins have been treated.

Yeah.

Yes, the settlers complicated, think complicate things. Hamas sort of turning into a full blooded terrorist organization greatly complicates things. We were hoping that some of the deals that Israel has made with other Arab countries might help, and that hope was predicated on the notion that those Arab countries might now have greater influence on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but that has turned out not to be the case.

Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln has said that Israel has the right to defend itself and ensure that this never happens again. President Biden has also made some comments to this effect. The Secretary of State said, how Israel does this matter?

Oh, yes, it absolutely matters. President Biden has also made the case that as a democratic country, rather than as a terrorist organization, Israel must be held to much much higher standards than Hamas. It's not enough to say that, well, Hammas did this, and therefore it's okay for Israel to do that. Well is a member of the United Nations, of the Committee of Nations, and therefore is has to meet a higher bar, which is very difficult at this moment.

Eye for an eye and I.

For an eye And what does that do? Makes the whole world blind in the long run. And that's the It's very hard at this moment for Israel's friends, including President Biden, to council peace. But that's what friends have to do. I've said this before. Friends don't let friends commit war crimes.

I'm curious about your thoughts on President Biden's trip, Bobby, I was surprised to see a sitting president go into a war zone such that Israel and Gaza are right now, even if for such a short time, even though security pers were taken, but it was also struck by the way that the Arab meetings were canceled with President Biden. What's the effect of that.

Well, it means that his trip had to be curtailed, and he went out there to achieve a few things. Some of those things were not achievable if he didn't sit across the table from the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, and the head of the Palestinian authorities when they backed off because of last night's bombing explosion, i should say, in the hospital in Gaza, when they backed off, the objectives that he had from that part

The right there are extended costs to all those moves. Hey, you have an opinion piece out about Hollywood release and it's about the iconic Israeli Prime Minister golled to my ear to coincide loosely right with the fiftieth anniversary of the Yam Kippore War. How is it kind of watching that and then a movie but obviously based on real things, and then seeing what's going on currently.

It was very, very strange to see that movie. You know, I've read so much about Goldemeyer and the Yam Kippour War, so It was always going to be a little odd to see that movie, but to see it happen right now while this war is raging, and we can make an educated guest that Hamas intended that invasion to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippo War, just as the makers of this movie intended its release to

I keep thinking of, you know, what's past is prologue, and like, are we in any way learning from the pastor And I don't know, are we well se in the Middle East where there's so many tensions, and certainly between Israel and Palestine in.

This case, the big sort of common factor between fifty years ago and now is complacency on the intelligence front. The war in nineteen seventy three began when the Israelis had gotten very complacent about their ability to eavesdrop on the Egyptians. And what happened this time the Israelis got very complacent about how much they knew was going on inside of Hamas.

It's unbelievable. Thank you as always give us some very deep insight into everything that's going on. Of course, Bobby Ghosh, columnist covering culture for Bloomberg Opinion.

But you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.

Yeah, very pleased. Up with us this afternoon. Lee Or Susan a former special forces agent for the Israeli military, also the founder and managing partner of Eclipse Ventures. It's a VC firm that invests in, as they note on their website, quote entrepreneurs rebuilding the world's physical industries. Leor joins us this afternoon on Zoom from Palo Alto, California. Lee are good to have you with us this afternoon.

Thank you, folks, thanks for having me, and first of all, sending my pros to all of the families that lost the lot of ones on both sides. I was start by saying, people are talking about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, they must zoom out. This is not an Israeli Palestinian conflict. We are talking about the Western world fighting against the all It's not a coincident that the Hamas opened that terrible terror attacks on Israeli when the Saudiast was ready

Do you see a way forward that though ultimately where I don't want to say capitalism, but a better economic way for more actually wins out.

There is no any other way around. Israel is not going anywhere, and the Palestinian is not going anywhere. We must find a way to live in peace next to each other, and there is zero chance that that's will happening. Well, a radical told organizations like comas controlling Gaza because they say actually on their foundation that their mission in the world is to wipe Jews in Israel is from the map. That's the only thing they believe in death, you cannot

You served in the Special Forces for the Israeli military. We see many many people going back to Israel to serve once again, as hundreds of thousands have been called up. Have you been called up? Are you going back?

Unfortunately, I don't have the clearance that it's required anymore to solve for my country because I live in the

So talk to us.

Though, I thought Lea, what was interesting, because I do think that many think it is a war between it is between Israel and Hamas. But I think there's a feeling too of conflict between Israel and Palestine or Palestinians. You say you work with them, talk to us about in your in your role as a founder of Eclipse Ventures. I'm assuming you're investing in all kinds of businesses. Talk to us little bit about that relationship that you are having with Palestinians.

Yeah, let me give you a sad story of a close friend. His name is Al Waldman, and he was the founder of a company called Melanox that sold in a couple of billions of dollars to in Nvidia. Eyal was the first one to establish an RND centers in the West Bank as well in Gaza software engineers who support mel Ox, and trust me, he didn't receive a lot of love from the right wings in Israel by

There's no words, There's absolutely no words. And I guess what I wonder too, is you know we think about this a lotly, or that we think finding an economic way out of things or capitalism ultimately will.

Prevail and it lead it to a better way for everyone.

Is I guess what?

We're just trying to figure out that there's been conflict in this region, in this area in particular, for such a long time. So I hear what you say, So how do we get the way forward, especially when you still do have terrorists who are out there like Amas.

I think it's a great example of me traveling to the UE ten times this year and doing amazing business and watching the highness leadership. It's a great example of how you interval. But which prosperity there is in Lebanon is physimalized? There to free the Lebanese? Is Hamasi is there to free the Palestinians? Is Isis is there to free the Surian people. Is al Qaeda was there to free Afghanistan. We all in the Western world needs to fight Tello so we can our kids can have a future.

Are you worried about a potential ground invasion of Gaza. After all, it's been days since Israel warned people in northern Gaza to move to southern Gaza, and do you.

Think it's wrong considering what you just said about Palestinians.

I'm sorry and sad about the situation that is happening there, but you need to understand that Israel is not going to sit aside and let the whole west of the country.

Leave it there, but I hope we can come back to you, and I hope we can come back to you at a time that's more peaceful, certainly in the in the Middle East at this point in Israel and Gaza specifically, were susan former special forces agent for the Israeli military, Founder and managing partner of Eclipse Ventures. They're an investor and they are investing in entrepreneurs who are rebuilding specifically the world's physical industries. So you can find

Joining us from Palo out of California.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App, and YouTube. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

All right, we'll get this.

Global cybercrime costs are set to reach ten point five trillion, that's right, trillion, with the t trillion dollars each year by twenty twenty five. So that's up from three trillion in twenty fifteen, and that's according to data from Cybersecurity Ventures, and that was cited in a report out from EY last year.

Just think about that recent computer hack that shut down many services at MGM's Casino hotels. The company said that that hack alone, Carol, is going to reduce third quarter profit by about one hundred million dollars. That's real money.

Here, absolutely, so.

Cybercrime and protecting data in the cloud is something our next guest knows a lot about. Sanjay Punin is the CEO at Cohesiity.

It's a data.

Security and data management platform. He's also the former CEO at the cloud computing and zation or virtualization tech company VMware.

How are you?

Thank you, Tim and Carol for having me on.

Hey, listen before we get into kind of security, cybercrime, all that good stuff. It's interesting times for anybody who's running a company, whether it's the focus on geopolitical and the unrest and the concerns obviously first and foremost the impact on lives, but also the uncertainty that also creates about kind of the global outlook. There's also concerns about certainly here in the US about the rate, environment, the economy.

I think it's a tremendous option for leadership. I think as a CEO and I was COO of VMware, we had thirty five thousand employees. As president SAP one thousand employees. Both were global companies. My company here is smaller, two thousand employees, but an important company cybersecurity. It's a time

It's also a business story and we're Bloomberg, so we got to talk about the business side of this. But we spent a lot of last week talking about Israel being a hub for cybersecurity. They made a lot of advances there and there are a lot of tech companies in Israel. There's prominent ones that have been bought by US companies. Do you have any exposure to Israel? Do you work with any Israeli companies right now?

But absolutely we work with a lot of In fact, a big part of our cybersecurity strategy is partnership with many Israeli companies, big ID, Digs, Era, CenTra, folks in the cybersecurity of data security. There are companies who are physically located there. Wiz I talked to them and talks to me and the CEOs. I've sent them messages, checked to see how they're doing the heart of innovation of security.

Sanjai, I mean they are used to, you know, instability in the region, no doubt about it. This takes it to a whole other level and another scale. And that's certainly what we've heard the feedback in terms of this latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. Having said that, when you had those conversations, we're leaders there saying we expect this, this.

Is something different.

This is going to be a longer period of instability or what are they saying, it's a.

Nine to eleven time moment. It's not anything close to, you know, anything they expected. So whether it was the first thing to feather and so on. But I think listen, you know, if you think about the threat, cybersecurity threat, it's different from you know, some of the ways in which we're seeing nation state actors. I think this is a focus on physical security. So if we come back to kind of some of the stats you led the

The past, we.

Don't see that, which is I mean, the nation state actors are the biggest threat to cybersecurity, so the biggest China. Yeah, those countries are the ones are the ones mostly Russia at fact in the past, but and much of we haven't seen an uptick in that signal of those just because of the Hamas Amas is much more of a low It's not like Habas is doing cybersecurity threats against the US. They're focusing much more low tech you know,

Yeah, you hear that. Hotel over again. Ye from cybersecurity experts. I mean they're talking about how you always have to be vigilant because they only have to be successful once. Switching geographies a little bit to talk about Russia, Ukraine. Russia the source of much cybercrime. What do you see on your platform from attempts at hacking from Russia?

Yeah, there's twenty ransomware attempts every second. You talked about a few of the hotel chains that have been affected recently. I think every organization needs to build a prevention and detection mechanism and a recovering mechanism.

I give an examty.

There's a lot of analogies between fighting cybercrime and fighting disease.

If someone told.

You Tim, I'll never get a cold, You'll be like, well, give me some of your DNA. The more important question is how quickly can you recover from a cold. So what we advise our clients is to ensure that you have the best detection prevention. That's basically detective, do you

So while a lot of the prevention and.

Detection technologies will be helpful and continue to be the ones that put out defenses up, you also want to be in place where if you do get hit, and it may sometimes not be a matter of if, but when you have a very fast recovery, and that's what we so assume you're going to hit, how would you recover quickly?

That's the big part of what we help our clients with.

So who are your typical clients.

We have four thousand customers, some of the biggest Fortune one hundred customers. But these are companies like Nationwide, like Broadcom, like Nvidia, like Salesforce, many of the largest customers, and financial services has been extremely successful for us. And these are all companies who do invest in security, and cybersecurity is often a top priority of spending. So we fit in that mode of sort of, you know, protecting the

One thing I wonder, Sanjay, two things artificial intelligence and have you seen an uptick as a result of that and kind of creeping into our narrative and conversation in a big way this year. And then secondly, since the Hamas Israel conflict, have you seen an uptick in people calling you or upping some of what they some of the work that they do with you.

Any world crisis is a moment where I think our vigilance needs to be higher. And we've not seen an exact correlation because of amoster nations, state crime, but I believe our vigilant should be higher. The last thing we want to do is let our guard down.

That's absolutely the case.

So my advice to people is, I mean, it's not just because of Hamas, but look at what happened with the Las.

Vegas stair hotels. Just keep your vigilance high.

But when you see something like that in the headlines, do you get an uptick or the I'm just curious if you see a director.

We haven't seen a significant of just in the last remember it's last Saturday or two Saturdays go when this all start. We haven't seen a signama, But we are all vigilant. One of our board members is a gentleman named Kevin Mandieir, who's one of the biggest cyber fighters in the world. His company called Mandiance, sees a lot when something gets hit Congress, the government usually calls him, so he's on board. I called him, talked to him. We keep pretty close eye on it, and my perspective

We call it responsible AI.

Put guardrails around it so that people can't do irresponsible things with it, but still harness its potential, which I think this is generally is the most fundamental innovation I've seen in twenty thirty years.

I'm curious what a guardrail means. We're running out of time twenty seconds, twenty five seconds.

What is a guard ridge?

What keeps the train on tracks?

Right, That's what a guardrail. It's a set of rails that ensures that technology can't be abused.

So you can have a guardrail but still tap into a potential junction.

Exactly what good responsible tech companies like US and Microsoft and Google and others are doing.

And that's what we're focused on.

Our gener AI technology is far ahead of everybody else industry, but we're guardrailing it with what we call a responsible AI framework.

Interesting stuff, comeback soon, Thank you very We would love Sandi. Yeah, really interesting conversation. Sandrey Punin. He's the CEO at Cohesiity.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.

You love.

Love Hey like it or not? Everybody facial recognition technology. It is everywhere. You may not realize it, but it is everywhere. It uses, you know, in terms of the applications vary from the mundane to well, you know, we use it right to open up our phone? Yeah, open up other stuff. But it also the uses can be downright controversial.

I mean, just think about Madison Square Garden. Yes, you've heard about this. It reportedly uses facial recognition technology to weed out lawyers at firms that are suing the company and berefts them from going to concerts and shows at the arena.

Welcome to the new reality.

Yeah, that's what it is.

What can go wrong though, when law enforcements or oppressed the governments get their hands on this technology. What happens when the technology gets so good that a company claims it can take a single photo of someone and then use that photo to find every detail of their life on the Internet.

It's the promise of a new national best selling book by New York Times technology reporter Kashmir Hill. The book is called Your Face Belongs to Us, A secretive startups quest to end privacy as we know it and is no doubt about it. Tim A very timely conversation.

Yeah. The book has been longlisted for the Ft and Schroeder's Business Book of the Year awards. Cashmir right now joins us on Zoom from New York. Kashmir has been covering the intersection of privacy and tech for around fifteen years before people were even thinking about privacy online. So very pleased to have her with us. KSh We are good to talk to you. The book centers around Clearview AI. It's the secretive startup which you've been writing about and

Yeah, Hi Tim, Hi Carol. Good to be here.

So what CLEARVIEWI did was it went out and scraped billions of photos from the Internet from social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Venmo.

It did that without anyone's consent.

Now has a database of thirty billion faces, and it has this facial recognition app where you can take a photo of someone and it will bring up all these other places on the Internet where it's seen their face, along with a link to where it appears, so you can find out someone's name, you know, where they live, who they know, maybe.

Photos they didn't even know we're on the internet.

And they've been selling that app to police now for a few years.

Okay, So that's a really important point. It's not like you can go download this app from the app store and just start, you know, looking at photos of your colleague and your friends on there. You've been able to see it in action, though, Kashmir from the company tell us what it's like to kind of experience that.

Yeah, when I first started looking into Clearview AI, they were not happy about it, and they actually put an alert on my face so that they would know when police officers I was talking to, we're searching my face, and they blocked my face from having results.

Which was which was a bit chilling.

But eventually the company started talking to me, and its founder, Wanton Tat, has run searches on me several times over these years now that I've been talking to him for my reporting for The Times and for the book, and I just remember the first time he did this search of my face, and you know, it brought up photos I knew about, you know, you know, headshots that I have put out there in the world.

But it was also photos I had never seen.

Before, photos of me with a source that I was interviewing for a story. We were out at a public event, a photo where it was somebody standing in Washington, d C. With somebody walking by in the background. And when I first looked at the photo, I didn't think I was in it until I recognized the jacket the person in the background was wearing, and it was a very distinctive

CASHU. I would say that I think we all realize.

I mean, I've got.

A security badge that I have to check into my office, right, I know that as I walk around the world out on streets, you know, you go over in Europe, like their cameras are everywhere. So I'm I have an awareness, and I think a lot of us do that. So much of what we do is being tracked digitally, right, we have these dossiers. Everything's being tracked. It's what people

Yeah, I mean I think what's work some about it is this idea that we were all put.

In this database.

I mean, I'm sure the three of us are in here, and that We never got a choice in the matter that it was operating secretly, you know, until I came along and discovered it. We didn't even know police had a technology like this. You know, the algorithm that they were using hadn't been tested. We'd actually didn't know how accurate it was. And now that the technology is out there, I think it just raises concerns about our ability to kind of move anonymously in a public space and trust

You can identify you.

You can't buy something sensitive and a pharmacy and trust that somebody sees you, can't take your picture.

And know who you are.

It just could really change our ability to just have you know, private going goings on in the world where anybody can take our picture.

Just think of the story the Bloomberg Business Week story about location services with Google right and police using those also.

It's just it's terms of this.

It's kind of the perfect segue to my next question for Kashmir, which is, Yeah, which is why Kashmir this is Clearview doing this and not Google or Facebook. You spent a big part of the book talking about that why it is Clearview even though technologically Google and Facebook could do this. I mean, think about all the pictures that Facebook has willingly from us, and Google, if we use Google Photos, has from us.

Yeah.

I mean when I first found out about clear Viewyi, I just assumed that they were super geniuses, that they had been able to accomplish this, this this thing that you know, Facebook and Google hadn't released, that governments hadn't built. But I did find out in my reporting for the book that Google to Google and Facebook both developed this kind of technology internally. Eric Schmidt as early as twenty eleven said it was the one technology that Google had developed and decided not to release.

I watched this video of.

Engineers at Facebook and twenty seventeen in this little conference room in men Lo Park with a smartphone on the brim of a baseball cap held in place by rubber bands, and when the person wearing it looked around at people in the room, it actually called out their names. And this was really striking to me because neither one of these companies released the product, and they just felt like it was too dangerous to put this out in the world,

I want to get into, like maybe the investigations in terms of security forces around the world that maybe have been looking into this company. Having said this, if you're not already freaked out, we have about a minute and a half and then we'll come back and talk some more. But tell us about some of the individuals that have somehow been connected with this company or behind this company.

Yeah.

So the main person I talked about before, Juantan Tat. He is the technical co founder, grew up in Australia, loved technology nineteen years old, dropped out of college, moved to San Francisco, was just kind of trying to make it in the tech world, the tech gold Rush in kind of the early two thousands, and he ended up moving to New York and really falling in with a more conservative crowd, people that were kind of on the

It really kind of came out of those.

Those kind of online right currents, or around the time that Trump was becoming president.

All right, we're going to continue with the conversation. I've got to say, we're all just kind of hanging on each word because I think it's you know, this is the reality of our world, right now we have an understanding of it, but you begin to wonder, Okay, how does.

It get used exactly? And when we come back, we're going to speak to Kashmir Hill, the author of this new book it's called Your Face Belongs to Us, A Secret of Startups, quest and Privacy as we know it. We're going to dive into the organizations that are using this technology, the law enforcement organizations, then also talk about how this technology is being used around the world by oppressive government.

Right, we all kind of google ourselves, let's be honest, but like normal things pop up. But if you start to see all of sudden these pictures come up and you're like, where did that come from? That would freak me out? Hey, cashure what they were wondering, you know, and you get into this in the book is just you know, global forces, global regulators around the world. I feel, especially when you go outside the United States, you go over in Europe, they're really concerned privacy issues when it

Yeah, how private your faces really varies depending on where you live. And so after I kind of expose the existence of CLEARVIEWAI, privacy regulators in Europe, Canada, Australia all announced investigations into the company, and they all came to the same conclusion, which is that CLEARVIEWAI violated their privacy laws by collecting all this data about their citizens, this kind of sensitive biometric information without their consent.

They said, hey, this is illegal.

Some of the privacy regulators find them, and Clearview had been offering, you know, its product to officers around the world, and this effectively kind of kicked a Clearview out of those countries.

But not here in the US.

No, here in the UNITS has been very different.

We just do not have a federal law that really applies to what CLEARVIEWI is doing. There are some states that have privacy laws that give you the right to access the information that a company holds on you. So if you're in a place like California or Connecticut or Colorado or Virginia, you can actually go to clearview dot AI and request to know what they have in their database about you and ask that it be deleted.

But the only state that has a.

Very strong privacy law that's directly kind of about facial recognition technology is Illinois and this law passed in two thousand and eight, the rare law that moved faster than the technology. And I tell the history in the book, but it says that if you want to use someone's biome trick information, including their face print, you need to get their consent or pay up to five thousand dollars per use. And so there has been litigation against CLEARVIEWAI

How much when police enforcement here in the United States have used this that it's led to mistakes or erroneous arrests, if you will.

So there are hundreds of police departments that have used clearviewai's technology. The Department of Homeland Security has a contract with them the FBI does I know of one case where this has gone wrong, and there may be others that haven't come to light. But in that situation, a man named Randall Karan Reid was pulled over the day after Thanksgiving in Atlanta, Georgia, and there are four police.

Cars that pulled him over.

They asked him to step out of his vehicle on the side of the highway and started to arrest him and told him there was a worn out in Jefferson Parish for him for larceny and he said, where's Jefferson Parish and they said it's in Louisiana. He said, I've never been to Louisiana in my life. And it turned out that he had been identified through running a surveillance still from a person who had been basically stealing purses in and around New Orleans and it had hit on

Hey, Kashmi, Carol's died to get a question here. We have a couple of minutes left. I'm gonna get the stair to each other very very quickly. Talk a little bit about how oppressive governments have used this type of technology around the world.

Yeah, so China and Russia are a bit further ahead of us in the deployment of facial recognition technology. And for example, Russia has rolled out kind of real time facial recognition on their surveillance cameras around Moscow, and they've been used to identify protesters against the war in Ukraine. I've heard about doppelgangers who get stopped on the street

One thing that stuck at struck me in your book. The Chinese government has also started collecting DNA and tracking phones, layering multiple systems in an attempt to create and all seeing eye on its population of one point four billion. We know that this is what China is doing when you look at this and we've just got about.

A minute left.

More broadly, I mean I do my fingerprint multiple times a day to check in.

I mean, we've given up so much.

What is the big concern about kind of where this goes beyond is it all about police arresting you falsely or what is it?

I would just say I start in many ways, that's okay, that's many ways in which facial recognition technology can be beneficial, and that we want to use it in our lives. But I think that we should have the ability to take what we want and not be forced.

To accept it as being ubiquitous in our lives, that we're tracked all the time, that we just have no privacy I think that's very dystopian and that we should be able to choose the future that we want and not just let what's possible with the technology determine it.

It's safe to say we're living in a surveillance state already, it's just how it's all used and where it goes from here. What a fascinating book and so glad we could have you with us.

Yeah, in your time, Technology port Kashmir Hill. Her book is called Your Face Belongs to Us, A Secret of Startups, Quest to end Privacy as we know it. The book is out now. Also, we went to graduate school together and it's so cool to see all the success that Kashmir has had. Congrats on just a great book, Kashmere. Really appreciate Kashmere taking the time to join us.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App, and YouTube. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship York station, Just Say Alexa, Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

There's a common refrain that if an app is free, you are the product that's certainly been true for years with Meta platforms. Despite the tech giants collection of social media apps, including Facebook and Instagram, along with a slew of high end hardware and software products, a whopping ninety eight point four percent of Meta's revenue comes from personalized advertising.

Yet The Wall Street Journal reports that Meta has told European Union regulators that it plans to charge EU users around fourteen dollars per month for access to an ad free mobile version of Facebook, and about half that for Instagram. A story in the Technology section of the new double issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine explains Meta's flirtation with ad

So, Jeel, lots of things going on.

Not just advertising. That ninety eight point four percent figure personalized.

Personalize, personalize, that those ads that follow you around.

Yeah, and so that ad tracking is a hallmark of Max Chafkins reporting it's not just Meta. He's also pointed out, you know, Google in the past has had some big numbers like this.

Facebook would not say it was creepy. They would say, it's very useful that, as Mark Zuckerberg says that, so there's that that they like, person that people like personalized advertising. You'd be a huge loss if this if this one away.

But raise your hand in the studio if you like personalized and advertising.

You know.

Sometimes sometimes nobody raised their hands.

Sometimes it's so much halfway, you.

Know your halfway.

My favorite is you know on Amazon, when you buy something and then it's like an ad for the thing that you bought already. It's like, come on, you want to.

Remember the pair of shoes that you had in your cart the day before.

But but Max walk us through what this experiment looks like and how and what it really means for a minute, right.

So, basically, in twenty eighteen, the EU passed the thing called GDPR. It's a big, complicated set of privacy rules that essentially require companies to ask for consent before showing personalized ads. And Facebook has been in this kind of long running battle with European regulators, which kind of reached a culmination this summer with a court ruling that essentially is forcing them to finally go ahead and do this.

And the way they want.

To do it is by offering a paid version of the service with no advertising in Europe. So the EU is sort of asking, hey, you're going to if you're in to personalized ads, you got to offer people a way out. Facebook is saying, well, our way out is no ads at all, and we're going to charge you for it. And the amount of money they're talking about

I kind of think that, you know, people will not opt to pay for the services.

I think that's that's exactly the plan.

And and that's like would you pay for you?

I would pay, I would like pay to not use it. Really, how much do I have to pay in order to keep me off Instagram?

They should consider they should be interesting revenue stream for UH, for meta platforms.

UH.

The so I think the intent basically is that most people will not pay for it. If you if you look at the statement that they put out there, which is in our story, which essentially says, you know, we still believe in personalized advertising. We just want to work with regulators. You read between the lines, are basically saying regulators are making us do this. We don't expect anyone to take them up on it.

You know.

On the other hand, a lot of companies are playing around with this. Uh you know, we've seen obviously Elon Musk and Twitter and kind of very loud fashion offer his own subscriptions.

You pay, you tweet a lot or post a lot? Do you pay for it? I have not yet paid for ex Premium either, have I? And I feel like my tweets are getting lost as a result. Well yeah, sorry, this is like a totally different time.

Well so, and that's where it gets a little bit complicated because, among other things, Elon Musk has talked about this as a way to see fewer ads, but he's also created all these other enticements, including you know, basically pay to play, and even so x Premium is not doing very well despite the much lower price points about half of that proposed figure that Mark Zuckerberg is, which I love Facebook.

You're talking about if you can't have a cage fight, you just have a cage fight and you know, in the marketplace and go, you know, have half price or double the price.

Yeah, the app store is basically the cage fight of social media. Snap is also playing around is, as we report in the story, is testing an ad free version. TikTok has done this.

You know.

I think part of it is that we don't actually know what the market is. I think there are a lot of people who do not like seeing advertising obviously. I mean, it's it's coming to play with cable television and other markets.

Absolutely.

On the other hand, and this is where the real problem.

Is, it's annoying.

It is such a good business, you know, as Joel's intro pointed out, it's it's not just as a percentage. It's just like the raw numbers we're talking about, you know, more than one hundred billion dollars a year for Facebook when you do it, when you break down a per user basis, if they wanted to do this in the US, you know, they would need to reclaim about two hundred twenty dollars per person per year who opts out of this, So you know that that works out to almost twenty

So if this worked, how lucrative could it be? Like, what's the math have to kind of work out to where you're obviously going to probably not get everybody to do it. It could actually just be a very small percentage of people who opt into it, But like you could have a pretty loyal group of people here who are willing to you know, pay that.

Annual Again, I think people, I think, I mean, well, it's not coming to the US at least, Facebook is meta is signaling that it won't. That this is a this is a europe only thing, This is you know, a thing they're gonna you know, this has to do with regulation, not not with what they think the market wants. And I do I do think. I mean, I'm sure they would like to have more revenue. There is a problem though, if you if you start eating into this network of personalized advertisements.

You know, one of the uh.

Source I talked to you for this story was saying that essentially that you know, this is a network business. Part of what makes this network valuable is all the people. Right now, Facebook has all this data about you that collects across the Internet and essentially rents it out to advertisers. If you start pulling people out of that data set,

I also think so you're saying you get the cake and eat.

It too, that's the goal.

Yeah, but maybe things go exceptionally well in Europe and you have, you know, a three year experiment and you take all those learnings and roll it into a US that's more favorable by this.

I do think. And you know, there's another point making the story if you look at all that's wrong with social media, things that people actually don't like about it, the fact that it kind of makes us feel enraged, that it throws all this information at us to try to get us to stay engaged, which like a lot of these things have to do with this advert with the way they make money, and if they made money in a different way, you know, maybe social media could

It sounds like you have familiarity with us.

Why don't they just.

I mean, they can't give away the tracking, let the ads come through, but get rid of the trade.

So yeah, privacy ad everybody would yeah, right that there's like a middle ground and that's and they don't want to do this, which is where they could just change their advertising and make it less personalized, or or make it not personalized at all and just show you contextual ad which is kind of like how Google works. Google does a lot of personalization now at this point too.

Might be more within reach.

Again, this the main businesses that they have is really good, and so it's really a question of are they going to be forced to do this or is there some way where demand is much greater than we expect and as a result, it's more economical than it would seem at first.

Clients in a you know, if you're a product manager, I think one way you would describe this is that you're gonna ab test in real time and you're going to have this europe experiment while the rest of the

Well.

Sure, Yeah, And one of the arguments different kind of engagement.

Over the years, people have asked Marks about this a lot, and what he says I sort of allude to this the beginning is that you know, at Facebook, at Meta, they see ads as part of the content, just as valuable as as the as your aunts or your you know, your friends engagement photos or whatever, which I think maybe strains a little bit of credulity. Of course, it's something you might say if you're an advertiser. But yeah, I mean, the the experience is going to be really different. We

We talked so often about the tech and I feel like the world in general on different in different areas.

That we follow kind of what the EU is.

Doing or the Europeans are doing when it comes to oversight, especially with technology or California, like if you get into climentators of it right right.

Same with tech though with child privacy laws.

So should we assume that this is coming this way at some point or I mean like Washington, Kank she was a speaker or anything, get.

Things done, you know, it's possible. But over the last decade or so, efforts to to really rain in tech have have not gone super well. And there are reasons for that, some of which have to do with the fact that, you know, Facebook is seen by by many lawmakers and and and Facebook has sort of made an effort to present itself this this way as an area, as a national champion, and that you know, whenever efforts

People are gonna be mad about that.

That's not you know, that's not necessarily gonna be popular and stuff. And yeah, and so you know, the tech companies, the big tech companies and and Meta in particular, have been really really good at kind of you know, resisting efforts even during the Trump presidency where he was very hostile to the Silicon Valley in certain ways to rain them in, and I'd expect that to continue.

Well, Max, oh well, I'll just go ahead, Joel.

One more thing. What's the timeline for all of this? Because the EU decision was out over the summer, right, so what's how does this unfold?

We think it's it's a matter of months, maybe even sooner. So I would expect to happen before the end of the year, although if regulators didn't go along with it, I don't know. I suppose it could drag out further because basically, like the regulators have to say that this is you know, an acceptable way to address the court's ruling. And if they said it wasn't, then you know, Meta would have to come back and think of something else.

Hey, Max, very briefly, just in the last minute that we have, you make the point that that also sells some hardware, and after all, it's called metaplatforms. Would they like to sell enough Oculus quest or metaquest threes to offset significantly the portion of revenue they got from advertising.

I don't think. I don't think that's the business model.

I think the business model is to sell these headsets, probably you know, at break even or maybe even a loss. I mean the division Reality Labs, which the main thing they do is make this these headsets, has lost something like forty billion dollars over the last couple of years.

That's a lot of money for face.

So yeah, I don't think this is like necessarily a money making thing.

And when you listen to.

How Mark Zuckerberg talks about it, it's more about creating a new platform to kind of apply the old business model to and I think in certain ways, right, that's the genius of this, of this metaverse thing, if you really squint and look for it, is that maybe they could take the personalized advertising business, the amazing dominance that Facebook has over certain parts of the small and bring it to a new computing platform. And if they did that, of course, it'd be an even more valuable company.

Yeah, where's the decimal point? Another in their favor?

Great story Bloomberg, Bloomberg's Max Chafkin, of course, with Joe Weber and this story. It will be in the new issue of BusinessWeek magazine, out on Thursdays on newstands, already online and on the Bloomberg.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business app and YouTube. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

We're about to go on a little adventure together, and that adventure is going to span seventeen years of music.

How does that sound?

Are you ready for it?

All?

Right?

Everybody? Well, the adventure is definitely underway the right. The concert film released just last week, breaking in more than one hundred million in advanced sales that's expected to double within Weeks. We just talked about that moments ago. We also have talked about just anything. It feels like Taylor touches tim just turns to gold.

It certainly includes the re recording of her albums. And that brings us to a story in the current screen time issue of Bloomberg Business Week. It's on newstands, it's online at Bloomberg dot com, Slash BusinessWeek, and of course always on the Bloomberg terminal. The story by Ashley Carmen. She covers podcasts the music industry creators at Bloomberg News. She's with us right now in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio along with the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Joel Weber.

Joel, can we talk about Taylor?

Yeah, the answer to that question is always yes. I'm just waiting for the screen time Taylor's Taylor edition of Business Weeks, you know, might be a thing. You know, Look, you would be a great guest editor. Noah, Thanks Joel, you're a great editor of the magazine.

You can get too swift to edit this magazine. I will take the week off maybe longer. It's what a force, right, and you know, just a little personal page out of my life. I'll be going to see this movie on Friday. Don't give away the ending. Ending she's probably a billionaire.

But hold on, what's the occasion?

This is great Friday night and I could get tickets like three weeks ago, and I was like, I'm better book this now. So yeah, I will do this hit there on Friday, and then I will take my son and my wife to a movie called The Aras to her. So what's incredible about this is that it just totally has taken I think pop culture and just like taking it to a whole other level. Obviously, what she's been able to do at live shows is one thing. Now

Actually it is not over yet? Yeah, So should we maybe back up and talk a little bit about what the situation is.

I mean, I need to start at the beginning. I actually don't know why she how Scooter Brown got hold of these these the rights to this right.

So when Taylor was an up and coming, you know, a known name, she was on a label group called Big Machine label group that.

Was never a thing. She was always known.

To the day she was born, right exactly. Eventually Big Machine sold to Scooter Bron's management company, and so when they did that, Taylor's master recordings went with that deal.

And is this typical, like artists don't have control over these two versions of rights.

Yeah, so okay. So the master recordings, which is the literal like recording of a song, that specific song in this case and in many cases, is owned by her former record label. What they did not own, because she was a songwriter on all of her songs, is the composition, so that is, you know, the lyrics, the note, the melody, all of that. So that set her up when when Scooter took over her records for the first he was doing the rights of the first six albums that she

She was vocal about it, going very vocal about it. Don't want to happen exactly.

She didn't trust him with these recordings, and so when that happened, she decided to kind of go with the nuclear option, which is to re record all of these albums. And she can do that because she still has the rights to this composition.

And so that's what you know, who you don't want to see go nuclear?

Taylor Swift, Yeah and shame they didn't do well?

Right, Yeah, So she has been on this mission to re record these albums. She's released a few already and she's going to be releasing nineteen eighty nine. And you can tell when these are the re recorded versions because in parentheses they'll say Taylor's version that is set to come out later this month.

How different? Sorry, Joel, I keep cutting it. Go ahead, Sorry, when it's Taylor.

You're in charge, You're in charge.

How different?

I'll go scorre stars later.

How different? This is my last question, I've pronest. How different is the Taylor's version versus a I don't want to call it Scooter Brown version of Big Machine version compared.

I haven't just did a you know, twelve year old in your house.

What you wouldn't want to do is listen to the non Taylor's version. If you're a Swifty because then you're only listening to the Taylor version.

That gets into why she's been I think so successful. But as far as you know, did she stick to the original recording style? Yes, like she has really tried to basically recreate those original albums. There's been a couple of tweaks here and there, a couple of lyric change. She's released like new bonus tracks with different artists, so she's added on but no, broadly speaking, like these are meant to replace those original albums.

And she's done really well with them.

Okay, Tim's been mut.

But this is this is where well, that gets to the heart of it, right, because if you're on say Spotify, and you're gonna listen to Taylor Swift, guess what album comes out first? It's the new ones, right, So every time she releases the Taylor's version, the old version goes lower and lower and lower. And you know, the guy that she didn't want to have control of any control of anything, makes less and less money on it.

Well, so actually she so Scooter no longer owns these recordings, we should say Scooter sold them to Shamrock and now they hold onto these But regardless, I mean she wants control of her own tracks, and she has been extremely successful. I can tell you guys a little bit of a stat here. So, as of July one of her album's, Fearless Taylor's version had earned a one point four to

Well, I will say my daughter, who's been a fan for a long time, she's but took that evil Scooter Braun Like it's like, what, how do you even know who Scooter Braun is? And it's just interesting how she has really, as you say, it's an ethical decision in terms of what music you choose to play.

Has she written lyrics about Scooter.

Bron There is speculation.

History of Taylor going scorched earth on ex boyfriends, you know, like Jake jillen Hall once had a career and then became a victor. It's a great stuff of some songs, right like, so so there is this history. Has she gone there?

There is definitely speculation that some of the songs she has written are about Scooter. I don't know that she has ever confirmed.

Or to not.

I don't know.

I mean neither with Jake Jillenhall either.

It's just it just googled that, Like I didn't know they dated.

Okay, yeah, not Scooter.

I don't know.

I'm sorry, where have you been exactly?

No, it is, but you know we've been kind of laughing, not laughing, but I feel like we talk about the financial markets and Taylor Swift comes up, like, it's just whether the economic impact. You know, we were all out of screen time on the West Coast and how many.

Conversations people want to talk about with Taylor.

Swift, like and Beyonce to be fair, one thing though that you know, in terms of what you did, like, she.

Can do this? Can anybody else do this? And other artists have tried.

Other artists have definitely tried. I'm sure we are all not familiar with Deaf Leopard's attempt to re record some of their songs over are you?

I know?

Check?

Yeah, okay, Deaf Leopard had tried to do this. Prince has tried to do this. Other artists have tried to do this. But I would say it's interesting because Taylor's version, Yeah, they're not Taylor's version. And this is also uniquely a era of streaming. So in the past, you might have bought an album once you had it on vinyl or CD or tape, and that was your copy of the

You know what else changes the economics being able to sell out stadiums for one thousand dollars a ticket, you.

Know, take your family to a tailor, Swift, Yeah, okay, well you're taking him to a movie.

I was able to buy three tickets for like thirty less than thirty bucks each, twenty bucks.

Each instead of three thousand dollars.

So let me do that math for you. And I was like, that'll be Friday at a movie theater. Is good enough for the Weber household. But the other thing that speaks to, though, is like, if you're an artist, now you do those live shows and that is where the money is, right. But for Taylor, it's like all of these other.

Things are also where the money is.

Because she's such a horse, right right. She is the other thing I love about Taylor, which is my last.

Tangent Weather Weber and I love Taylor Swift.

I'm forced to listen to a lot of but she turns her vulnerabilities into the magic that dreads your business that actually speaks to exactly what we're talking about. With the Taylor's version. It's like somebody tried to pull a fast one on her.

It's a story and it's a story that all the fans can participate in. And that gets down to even the friendship bracelets that we've seen people wearing to her shows that came from a lyric that she wrote that fans read into and were like, oh, we should wear friendship bracelets and shows. They just it is a participatory experience. It's not just one of fan and then artists and then the fan consumption. It's actively we're looking for clues from her.

You know, it's like the Chiefs, right, we didn't talk about that. I can't wait for the song, right?

Sorry?

Is there a chance the history Taylor Swift could buy back the catalog?

I mean this point, she's committed so much time to the re recordings, but I you know, I don't.

Know the early stuff, which if you listen to her, right, she's got a different tone certainly early on. So like you do wonder if at some point she wants to own that where her sound was a little different.

I'm just gonna say, yeah.

I mean she has, obviously, as we all have, aged and voice changes over that time. So as much as she is doing what she can to make them identical, of course, there's always going to be moments where you can.

Tell is there any sense of like when the when the next releases will come out, or what the sequence is it always? Is it always chronological or.

It is not chronological? So nineteen eighty nine is next, and then I believe there are yeah, two more after that, and I don't think she has shared what that order will be. I for this story did go deep on Reddit, and there are some fan theories about what the order is and why.

But always theories though, right, yeah, or the like, there's always like all these things abound everything she does in terms of her releases, right or when it comes out or the date and time, like it's crazy.

Yeah, I'm just gonna say.

So, when are you gonna get When are you going to go to the theater?

Carol, find me a babysitter. I'll go absolutely not mine. But yeah, I was gonna say thanks for the invites of the FIDA.

Ever there three seats not together. I was like, Okay, are they really you couldn't get seats together? Mine's off in the corner.

Yes, you know, we just talked about that.

How she's on her way to becoming America's youngest self made female billionaire and one of the few. I'm reading from the story magnet millennials, who hasn't made her fortune from memestocks and cryptocurrency. But you do wonder, like what's her next step, like her power in terms of philanthropy, because she has such an incredible stage whatever she does.

Yeah, I mean, it really does feel like anything she's going to put her weight behind.

Not Crypto famously was like hard.

Yes, right, she looks pretty good in hindsight.

You know what you know?

What is soz?

She said, no, right, that's what.

She produces so much music. She writes so much music she.

Is tim hasn't heard, Yeah, but I meanidding.

And she has so many collaborations with artists who I love too. I mean she's prolific. It's pretty amazing. Like her output is remarkable.

Yeah, no, one hundred percent. And she tends to just drop these albums when you're least expecting them, and I think that also keeps the fans engaged. And she does elevate other voices as well, and has kind of you know, we talked about Travis Kelcey, a bit new her new man who also who is an NFL player, but.

She came along to help him, right.

Yes, But you know, you could just see the ripple effects from her presence on other people. She has been hanging.

Like what the NFL got cool real quick, right.

And she's been hanging out with Sophie Turner, who has her own marital things happening. But it's like she has been able to associate herself with the people she wants to and raise them up in a way that she wants.

I do feel like, you know, right, she kind of relates in this kind of crazy way.

Taylor Swiss World, you're just living.

I'm okay with it.

That's cool, really cool stuff.

Ashley Carmen, thank you so much, really appreciate it.

Covering podcasts, music industry creators at Bloomberg News and check this out. It's in the current issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Our thanks to Joe Weber Tayka Fan.

By the way, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.

Let's get to this story.

Medison Muller is a health reporter for Bloomberg News on the ozempic beach. He writes in the forthcoming issue of Bloomberg Business Week, which is on newstands tomorrow, and she talks about the success of ozepic and what it could mean in terms of some of the rivals story as we said on the terminal though, and also at Bloomberg dot com slash BusinessWeek here in our studio, Madison, So, I mean Blockbuster Drugs, tell us a little bit about the success.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing what these drugs can do. Helps with diabetes, helps with weight loss. Now we're learning that they might help with much more than that. I mean, obviously, we know that there are health conditions that are related to obesity and diabetes. Kidney disease can be caused by diabetes. You know, heart disease is obviously linked to obesity. But scientists and the companies that make these drugs think that there might be even more far reaching effects like Alzheimer's

Okay, I want to get to that in just a second. But let's take a big step back here, because we're talking about medicines known as GLP one receptor agonists. I took that right from your story because.

I find a book every time you talked about that.

I have no idea what that means either. How do these things work?

So GLP one is a gut hormone, and when scientists first discovered it back.

In the eighties, they were like.

Okay, cool in rats and in rodents that we see that this stimulates glucose and it can bring down insulin levels. But it wasn't for years, I mean really until like the last few decades that we figured out, Okay, this is a drug that can help with diabetes. Beyond that, this is a drug that can help with weight loss, Like this wasn't. I was talking to Daniel Drugger, who's one of the co discoverers of the GLP one hormone, and he was saying that, like forty years ago, we

Why is it so revolutionary, Like why is it just such a different yea of drugs? It seems well, I think the potential. Like I spent to Tim before you got in, I'm like, is this just going to solve everything that ails us?

I think?

I mean when it comes to weight loss, Like for years scientists tried to find something that was actually effective for weight loss, and like we've had drugs over the years for weight loss, I mean fen Fen people probably remember, which was ended up being not so good, horrible, yeah, and actually linked to heart problems. But there are other drugs that are on the market that are just not super effective. And this is the first time that we've really had something like this.

So it has to get first of all, the drug approved for all these different uses, right, and that's something that the drug makers have to go through. Safe to say, though, one of the things too, when you look at a drug like this, it's expensive.

Yeah, talk to us about that. Yeah, that's a hurdle.

Yes, that's a hurdle.

And that's sort of one of the things that could impede these this expansion into other usages because the drugs are over one thousand dollars a month, insurance is not covering them widely. Right now, that's something that's sort of still gearing up. Ensure is our kind of like, oh is this worth it?

Is it worth us?

You know?

Is weight loss?

They're still trying to decide if weight loss is actually like worth covering.

Is it something that is it not?

Because as you said at the top of our segment, Madison, I mean over like, obesity contributes to so many ailments in this country.

Right and so I think that, I mean that's part of this too, is the drug makers they think want to prove that it that treating weight loss helps with all of these other things.

So much hinges off of that, like how many times did you go to your doctor?

Are you right?

You think about just healthcare talk in general, like if you can lose weight, that it usually leads to a better health outcome for you.

But what if and Carolyn and I were talking about this before the break, before you got in here, actually does it lead to habit changes? Like let's say, you know, we've a big part of the conversation has been when it comes to the weight loss side of this has been what's happened to companies that have come out and said we're concerned that people will eat less. Fast food companies, snack makers. We've seen share slide if snack makers as

So do we know?

Yes, they might lose weight, but if they're not making those those healthy habit changes, are we still going to see the long term benefits from not being obese?

Yeah? I mean that's a good question. Like that was I was just telling you both.

I was just at you know, the annual Obesity Week conference in Dallas with all of the top obesity experts you know, Eli, Lilly, Novo, Nordisk, they were there, and that was a question that was being asked, is sort of like, we have these drugs, they work really well, what do we know about long term you know, weight management, healthy lifestyle changes, Like there's sort of still this question mark of what comes next and whether people are going

And long term effect.

If it's if you have to take the drug forever, yeah, to keep the weight off, right.

Like we don't do we don't.

We don't really know the long long, long term effects, do we, Right?

Yeah, I mean these drugs have been used for twenty years in diabetes, and so we do know that they're safe. But the problem is that with the shortage is happening right now, like people are just going on and off the drugs all the time, and it's it's not good.

I mean, why if these drugs have been used for twenty years for diabetes, why are they just catching the moment of weight loss?

Yeah, I mean they've scientists have kind of known that there was this weight loss effect, but it's really only sort of taken off and like entered the public consciousness I think recently.

Like it's crazy. So it's it's pretty amazing.

And obviously with the success of wigov, which is Nova Nordisk's you know, higher dose ozempic that's used for weight loss. Specifically, all of all of the drug makers, biotech companies are now trying to sort of like get a slice of this.

Uh ten seconds. Are they going to make a pill version of this?

Yes, that's what they're trying to do right now.

Unbelievable.

But you think about all the clinical trials Alzheimer's sleep apnea.

Like it's like I said, this is alcohol use disorder.

I mean, is this the drug that just cures it all for us?

We will see, all right.

Come back soon. That's an incredible story.

Madison Mueller something we talk about all the time, but you really kind of put it all together if.

We told you she's on the ozempic Bee.

She's health reporter for Bloomberg News on the ozempic Beat.

This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast of a Little Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcast. Listen live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal