This is Bloomberg Business. Wait 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 Labor Day Weekend podcast. Well another week packed with economic and geopolitical headlines out of Beijing and coming up this hour, we lean into the complicated and vital relationship of China to the US and the world with help from two very familiar voices.
Stephan Seelig is a former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce, and Andy Brown, a seasoned journalist turned consultant who spent three decades in Asia, including in Beijing.
We'll also talk earnings outlook and the corporate I spending environment with Splunks President and CEO Gary Steele, and our BusinessWeek team tells us why deep fakes could usher in the next wave of cyber crime. This is going to freak you out. Also dive into the New City's issue of the magazine.
All of that to come. We begin with actual signs of progress atop the global hierarchy. This is US Commerce Secretary Gina Ramando was wrapping up her trip to China and as UK Foreign Secretary James cleverly arrived for the most senior British diplomatic visit in five years.
To help us understand the diplomatic developments along with the market and business outlook related to China, return once again to Andy Brown, former editorial director at Bloomberg New Economy and former China editor for The Wall Street Journal. Today, Andy leads the China Hub as a partner at Brunswick Group, a critical issues advisory firm. We asked him about the significance of the Commerce Secretary's trip.
The Chinese take Gina Ramando very seriously. They trust her, They seem to have a good relationship with her. They find her pragmatic, relatively non ideological. And this is really quite remarkable given that Gina Raymondo is at the shop end of US economic engagement with China, right She's the one that presides over this proliferating regime of sanctions and export controls and tariffs, which of course this administration inherited
from the last one, and the Chinese finders deeply threatening. Nonetheless, she had a pretty good visit, and her main message was no, no, no, we're not here to kill you. We don't want to put you out of business. This is not decoupling, this is de risking, and that's a very different thing.
Well, what did you make of her comment that she argued that China is driving away American companies by making investments in the world's second biggest economy increasingly hazardous. She said that, Okay, here's the quote, Andy, I know, you know it. We talked a little bit about it yesterday. Increasingly I hear from businesses China is uninvestable because it's become too risky. This is what Gina Ramando told reporters Tuesday when she was aboard a high speed train for
Beijing to Shanghai. What do you investment.
Flows have been flowing out from foreign investment stairs.
Which, she said, the right thing. And that's what they need to hear because quite often in China, the CEOs of the companies that are investing there don't dare speak that kind of truth to power. And so you know, it takes a genie Raymondo to go over there and and say, look, we have a we have a problem, and businesses certainly do have a problem now in China. It's still I think it's significant though the second part of your commentary, she went on a high speed train.
You know, that's that's interesting, right, That's that's kind of a common touch. She hopped the train to go down to Shanghai. The Chinese would have liked that. They showcased, you know, really unbelievably efficient two hundred mile an hour of four and a half hours from from Beijing, which is like unbelievable.
We don't have that here in the US.
What is it about her that resonates so well with Chinese officials, Well, they.
I think they feel that they can talk to her and they're going to get a straight answer. And that really was you know, and she she also you know, she she's she's constructive, right, so I thought, actually, she she handled it in a really smart way. She said, look, let let's start by with confidence building matches. So one of the things that she's agreed on is that the United States and China are going to promote travel right tourism.
So who can disagree that it would be a good thing if more Americans went to China and more Chinese people came to the United States. Right, it builds trust, builds understanding people to people relations. You know, these countries have been separated now for three years under under lockdown. Very few flights. Now, I was in Beijing a couple of months ago. I was actually staying in four seasons hotel. I was the only foreigner in the in the whole hotel. Right,
I mean the airport is half empty. We need more interaction and it's just a great place as smart place to stop.
Well, Andy, talk more about that and give us some anecdotes from your recent trip there, because you've spent so much time in the country. I know this is post pandemic. You went there kind of during the pandemic too, when you were helping with you know, with the Olympics for NBC. But but just give us the differences that you see now based on your recent trip.
Yeah, well it I mean you've got to go. I mean you have to go there to feel this. Oh, the sense you get by talking to people on the street, my friends, people in the business community, people are kind of in shock, you know, I mean I understand this, you know, the the the you know, the consumer confidence has really been shattered. I mean, people I think feel really kind of discombobulated, this disoriented. I mean, what just happened. You know, we went through a three a three year lockdown,
and it was quite painful. I mean, you talk to people in Shanghai, they're suffering from something like post traumatic stress disorder. Right. These are these are you know, middle class, upper middle class families that didn't know if they were going to spend that night in bed in their own homes or be carted away to some isolation center, or if their kids would be taken from them, or if guys in white hazmat suits were going to burst through the front door, you know, and drag them out or
put a lock on the outside of the door. They didn't know sometimes if they could even feed their families, right, And they've been so used to a government that looks after all this, that you know, is focused on growth, focused on on you know, on development, and it just seems like, you know, they're lurching from one blunder to another. And you know, the business business confidence obviously is has has yet to recover, and the and the confidence of
foreign investors. And that's what Gina Raymondo was was speaking to. You know, people got so used to the idea that Chinese supply chains were secure, right, and you could put them all in China. That's what Apple did, the whole lot. And look what Apple's doing now. You know, it's starting at the margins, pulling it out, you know, putting it in places like Vietnam, India. It's all about now D risking.
My question, Andy, is if China is doing so poorly in its attempted recovery from three years of lockdowns, if the consumer is so weak, if the concerns about shadow banks crumbling and not paying people back, do American companies really want to invest in China?
You know, Tim, I think it's so important to put this into perspective. China is not collapsing, okay. China is suffering from what some people call the four d's. You've got a demographic crisis, you have a debt crisis, you have a decoupling problem, you have a deflation problem. The headlines look terrible, and it is extraordinary. The Chinese economy is barely growing right now, and the US economy is
steaming ahead. I think it's growing what six percent? A complete role reversal, right, But China is the world's second largest economy, and it's going to be the second or third largest economy for decades to come. Right, it's not going away. I think what we can expect big picture a starting now, a period of slow relative decline. Businesses still must be in China, right, They can't ignore China, and particularly the businesses that are reliant on China for
future growth, luxury, chemicals, auto and so on. In those industries they're pouring investment in. They have to. I mean, you can't be half hearted in China. You've got to be all in because the competition there is really good. So if you're there and you're dependent on growth, you have to invest to keep up with the market. You have to invest in technology so that you're able to compete. And in fact, some of these companies have an aggressive
strategy of investment. It's called in China for China, right, So they're buying local companies, they're investing in technology. If you don't have to be in China right now, you don't want to be in China. If you've never been in China, you're certainly not going to go there for the first time now. And if you are in China, money investment that you might have put into China over and above the need to fuel and fund your footprint there. You're now looking at that money and say where else
could I put it? Should I put it in Vietnam, or in India, or in Mexico, or I might say here in the United States, which is one of the hardest investment destinations in the world right now. I think the way to think about it is that you know, China is a giant, right It is an economic giant. It's manufacturing sector is bigger than the United States and Europe combined. Okay, And this year it's going to it's going to leap ahead of Japan become the world's largest
auto export. It's gobbling up the world's evy markets. It's a giant, but it's a giant with a weak hot Okay, and that's going to make it less mobile, it's going to make it more prone to crisis. But it's still a giant.
That was Andy Brown. He leads the China Hub as a partner at Brunswick Group. More from Andy available on our podcast feed, including his take on Russian President Vladimir Putin's plans to visit China next month.
Coming up more in the US China relationship. From a person who once had a front row seat to their political power struggle while serving in the executive branch.
The number of issues that we're competing on are growing, but also the number of issues that we need to cooperate on are also growing.
Stefan Seelig, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce, joins us.
Next, you're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is Bloomberg.
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 wants us live on YouTube.
There's no negotiation, there is no room to negotiate when it comes to protecting Americans national security, including protecting emerging technology. But at the same time, there's business we can do and there's business to be done.
Those words from US Commerce Secretary Gina Ramando this past week during her multi day trip to Beijing and Shanghai. Now, in our last segment, Andy Brown explained the importance of her stressing the need for improved ties between the world's top two economies.
We're now pleased to welcome in Stefan Sea League, managing partner at Bridge Park Advisors. Before that, he served as the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce. That was during the Obama administration, and we got his perspective on the current state of US China relations and the intersection between geopolitics, policy, and markets.
When I was under Secretary, I spend more time in China than any country by far, and I work to foster the relationship with my counterpart at the Ministry of Commerce to reflect that reality.
But did they rank this relationship as important and do they still? You think today?
For sure, And in many respects, I think they view it as more important because the number of issues that we're competing on are growing, but also the number of issues that we need to cooperate on are also growing. So as their economy grows and as they look to establish themselves as a major player both in political, economic and commercial spheres, you know, their ability to work effectively
with the United States becomes only more important. And I think that's exacerbated right now, Carol, because frankly, you know their economy is slowing, and they're facing a set of economic issues that we haven't seen or they haven't seen in decades. Clearly, China has different interests politically and economically and commercially than we do. And you know what I've always said is, you know, hitting China over the head with a cudgel is not going to be an effective
way to actually make progress. And what we need to do is to look for win win outcomes where there are things that advance our interests and advance their interests, and they're a whole.
Host of those se fun If I may, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about politics, because we were just talking a lot about the importance of that relationship between US and China. The Republican presidential hopefuls the debate last week talked a lot about China. There was a lot of pushback. Is that cause for concern when you see that? I know some of it is all just grandstanding and performance, but some of it is not.
Yeah, I guess, Carol, you know it's really not just the Republicans. In fact, the only thing I can think of where the Republicans and Democrats seem to be agreeing is getting tough with China, and I think there's a little bit of a contest between them as who can
appear to be tougher with China. And I don't think being tough is necessarily always being smart, and so, you know, frankly, I think the conversation that should be about what should we be doing to advance our interests as opposed to what should we be doing just to punish China?
Is that a cause for concern at all?
Well, for sure, especially just as I mentioned, you know, with China's economy being under pressure, I think the last thing we want to do is push them so hard that they lash out and take actions that would be adverse to us, and we get into this, you know, tit for tat because you know, as you've said, you know, these are the two biggest economies in the world, and we can punish each other plenty, and that doesn't really help us.
Would you want to be back in the White House advising well.
You know, look, I think it was it was an honor for you to, you know, do that during the Obama administration, and I think you know, to the extent that you know you are called to do that, I think it's a really hard thing to turn down for any of us that care about our country.
When you're looking at some of the Republican candidates, who kind of stands out in your mind that when you're thinking about the US and China relations as far as what could be a potential viable candidate in that sort of realm.
Well, I'm not sure that that's an easy answer, Chess, because as I've said, I think there's just a lot of a lot of piling on. And I also would say, is you know, what people say on the stage in the you know, primary season is probably not necessarily going to directly inform their policies. You know, if they get into the they get into the oval.
You know.
That being said, you know, I think this has to be you know, on the radar screen for whoever is sitting in the Oval office because of the importance not only you know, geopolitically, but commercially and economically for you know, employment in our country, the success of our economy and our consumer Well, and.
I'm curious to stuff on about your clients and those CEOs that you are talking about, you know, is US China typically top of mind for them? Or I'm curious what is if it's not.
That you know, there's a lot of trepidation about going into China, and I think especially and that really, I think is the purpose of the Secretary's trip, which is to really re establish a dialogue so people can begin to plan, because if the relationship is so uncertain and so voluable, it's very difficult for companies to you know, effectively plan. And if you can't plan, you can't make investments. And so I think, you know that is is just critical.
And especially when you're talking about companies, the curbs that are being put on chip makers, how much of that do you think when you're especially this is companies that have performed very well in the stock market this year. But I mean, when it comes to those types of companies, what do you think that would really mean for them? And when it comes to doing deals with China, well.
Look, it's it's a very big market and we've seen them take actions including blocking you know, Intel's acquisition of an Israeli chip company, which is really adverse to the
interests of a of a US of a US company. Uh, And so that that really is the point about you know, they have the ability to respond in kind I would say, or I will say, some of the things we have done, I scratch my head a little bit, like the bump, the like the recent executive order that that is limiting private equity and venture capital investment in you know, advanced chip making and other sectors. It strikes me that, you know, the one thing that China you know, doesn't lack for
is capital. And so the notion that somehow we are going to constrain their development by not having US investors invest in certain sectors and their economy is not just something that I can easily follow the logical.
So in terms of you know, going back to some of the things, is that the folks that you work with, your clients and CEOs on their top of mind, what else you know, in a day where we talk constantly about FED policy, higher inflation, are persistent and sticky inflation, even though it's down a lot in the past year, what else is kind of top of mind?
I would say, there are really two things. One is, you know, is inflation going to be tamed? And what is the FED going to have to do in terms of raising interest rates in the future to make sure you know that happens? You know, are we going and if you look at historical data, you know, you really do have a you know, short window four or five months to really have a good view about what the
economy is going to do. And I think you know, over the next four or five months, folks are not worried about dipping dipping into a recessionary period, but forecasting for a period that is longer than that is exceedingly hard to do. And the question is going to be if they have to raise interest rates, you know, once twice or three more times, which I think you know is not out side of the realm of possibility. To what degree does that have a dampening impact on growth in our country?
How much does China's disinflation actually help the US?
Well, it certainly doesn't help their consumer and it doesn't help you know, their economic engine, which is we've talked about Jess is so important for us in terms of being a buyer of US goods and services.
That was Stefan sea League. He's managing partner at Bridge Park Advisors and a former Commerce Department official.
Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, we go from national security to cybersecurity, which affects both the public and private sectors.
Splunk CEO Gary Steele breaks down the IT spending boom that helps spur his company's big earning speed. This is Bloomberg.
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 elect from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
So, Tim, I don't know if you've noticed quite rally in shares of the infrastructure software company Splunk. Have you seen?
I mean now, I have.
Up roughly forty percent year to date, trading at a fifty two week high this past week and soaring on its recent quarterly update, which came out a little more than one week ago.
Splunk reported second quarter revenue that beat estimates and raised its full year forecast beyond expectations. Analysts called the results solid overall, noting the better annual recurring revenue as well as the upgraded forecast. Let's get more from the man at the helm, Splunk President and CEO Gary Steele. You know we've been hearing a lot about when we hear from companies. We like to hear how you know their customers are doing, because it gives us an idea of
the economy. How are your customers doing?
Yeah, it was interesting. In our second quarter we saw very much the same macro conditions that we'd seen in prior quarters, and so where it impacted US is we saw some hesitation in cloud migrations because these represent new projects that have to be funded and while the ROI and getting to the cloud is amazing, you still have to fund the actual migration effort. And then we saw continued deal scrutiny, so deals elongating or requiring additional signatures.
I think the one positive thing for US is I think we understand it now and I think our team did just a phenomenal job executing within that environment and understanding that, yes, there will be more reviews and more scrutiny on deals, but we executed quite well, really part of the team.
Reviews and scrutiny are one thing, but what about deals falling through?
Again, we saw more consistency in terms of just scrutiny, and I think there was more I'd call it just stabilization. So I think going into the court of people knew what dollars they were going to be able to spend.
All right, So how would you describe then, the corporate IT spend environment generally? Is there a word Gary to say, because I think it helps us in a big way understand kind of what to come maybe for the rest of the year and what maybe is going on in the economy.
Yeah, I think there's there still remains a high level of scrutiny on every dollar being spent by the IT community, and while I think we've executed well within that environment, we anticipate no change. As we work through the second half, we will continue to see this level of scrutiny and hesitations as it relates to us in this category of cloud migration. So we're expecting no change and we and that's how we've thought about providing our guidance for the go forward quarterers.
It's cool talking about you and I got this off your website. Fifteen thousand customers, one hundred and ten countries, Zoom, Intel, Coca Cola, Carnival, Arii, Airbus, and many more. It's it's the world, it's the universe, if you will. So what types of companies are leading the spend though? Which ones might there be some hesitation.
You know, we saw pretty pretty consistent behavior across verticals our business we've had as an exact, but we do a lot of work with the government and governments around the world. That's been relatively consistent for us and a big growth opportunity. Today, roughly two thirds of our business is domestic, one third is international. We continue to see a lot of opportunity working with international customers to take
advantage of the capabilities we can offer. But from a buying point of view, buying perspective, it was pretty consistent around the globe.
Can we talk about what you guys do, because you also have your own AI offerings, which I know you guys put out last month, But cybersecurity company, I feel like that's a big bucket, right, infrastructure software company, big bucket. So just walk for those who might not be familiar familiar with your almost nineteen billion dollar market cap company, which they should be, tell us about exactly what you do.
You bet we help organizations drive digital resilience across their cyber environment. So how do we ensure that they're well protected and they understand what's going on in their cyber environment? This is particularly important as we face new SEC disclosure requirements where you have to notify your shareholders within four days of a material event. We're at the core of helping organizations figure out what the heck happened and how
can you make meet that four day deadline. And then we extend broadly into the observability market meaning worre core to helping organizations keep their digital applications up and running so that their customers can get access to all of those services. So helping them understand if something happens to one of those applications, what's going on and how do you get it up and running quickly, and try to
anticipate those events. Where AI plays a role for US is helping across security and broader infrastructure anticipate things, so trying to get better outcomes faster, so teams can be more efficient in what they do every day. So and for example in the security operations center, just making it easier to operate and get to better outcomes faster without all the manual work.
So with the AI euphoria, how do you think about it in terms of is it really something that this next gen AI generative AI really going to take so many different industries to a different level. It's it's the real mcgilla if you will.
Yeah, No, I'm super enthusiastic about it. I feel like we can deliver much better outcomes for our customers leveraging the power of AI and simple things that we've already introduced. So to use plunk, you use, you interact with it with a proprietary language. Well, with the generative AI, we can give you a human interface. So just ask what you want and we will help you go find it and do it. And so then we generate all that proprietary language on your behalf and you don't have to
have that knowledge or understanding. So our ability to take down the skills required make it so much easier to interact with our product. We're very bullish on that. You know, it's still early and I think there's a lot of hype in the market generally, but I think at the end of the day, we can make a real difference in one who can interact with their product and then the outcomes that can be delivered as a result of that.
And this is a journey. It doesn't happen overnight, but we can continue to chip away at this and make real progress. I think it will be transformational in our industry because we deal with such rich data sets, and in that world, you can get great outcomes from AI.
When you when you're leveraging the when you're leveraging AI for your customers, who are the suppliers that you're using. Are you getting chips from Nvidio? Are you getting chips from AMD?
So we think about it from a cloud perspective, and so we're going to the cloud service providers, and we're leveraging the cloud service providers to be able to deliver those AI capabilities. We're not directly buying or setting up data centers, we're not directly buying in video chips and systems housing in Vidia chips. We're going to the cloud service providers to get those capabilities.
Look in Amazon Web Services.
Or Microsoft Amazon Amazon. We just announced a relationship with Microsoft as it relates to bringing our native cloud solutions to the Azure platform. And then we have a relationship with Google as well for GCP. So we find demand across those and we're leveraging their relationships ultimately all the way through the chip providers.
How much do those relationships kind of impact your top and bottom lines or give you kind of some window into consistency for growth for your company.
So one, they're very critical. There are critical strategic partners for us. There's two dynamics here. One is we allow our customers to buy through the marketplaces of each of those cloud service providers, meaning you can go and leverage the credits you have for AWS or now with our relationship with Microsoft, you can leverage your Azure credits, so it makes buying easier. And then we work closely with
them to ensure you get a great technical outcome. So you guys asking about chips et cetera, we can make sure that we're well tuned for whatever systems they bring to bear, and how we can make sure that our customers are getting the maximum TCO.
I want to end Gary, just kind of where we begin and getting your view on what the economy looks like, what's your read.
I believe we were going to see the same for some period of time. We haven't built that into we haven't built any improvement into our guidance. And I think that I believe we're in a soft landing mode that we're going to continue to see some conservatism, but we'll work our way out of this over time.
And we'll certainly be watching them over time. Our thanks to Gary Steele. He's the president CEO of cybersecurity software maker Splunk. We spoke with him just after the company's second quarter earnings release back on August twenty fourth.
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Up next, our magazine team picks up on the digital security theme and tells us why some researchers fear AI powered hacks on the verge of breaking out.
The technology is there right now that someone could actually make themselves look like your boss in real time on Zoom call. And that's just utterly convincing. I mean, and it's only going to get even more convincing. And even when there are little, you know, glitches here and there. We all know what it's like to be on a Zoom call or on Microsoft Teams call.
You kind of expect that to be a little.
Drop in in boys, or maybe something going a little bit off.
It's kind of the nature of the video call.
So it could be one of the most convincing social engineering attacks to emerge.
I'm a little freaked out, are you.
Yeah.
Deep fakes are a little concerning to me.
All right, Well, we're going to get into the dangers of the deep faked video call.
We explain it all.
This is Bloomberg.
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.
Welcome, Welcome, everyone to the next wave of cybercriust.
Thank you for the one.
Welcome.
All right, we're talking about something that yes, also has an AI artificial intelligence angle. Some cybersecurity experts have long feared what a hacker might be able to do with AI and video create a convincing version of you know, a corporate executive who really wants to know your password. AI software is now capable of doing this practically in real time, meaning tim a hacker could pretend to be your boss on a zoom call. Does that freak you out?
Yeah, it totally freaks me out. It's a new reality, though, and it's one that's based on deep fakes. With more on this recent BusinessWeek story, we welcome in Margie Murphy, Bloomberg News cybersecurity reporter, along with the editor of the magazine Joel Weber.
There's been all this the hope and the hype for AI, but immediately on the other side of that are also all the bad things that can do. And what really stood out to me on this one was the fact that this deep fake stuff will become the thing that we will obsess about, I think, in the years ahead, because it basically can sneak through and has already proven to be a real pain. So, Margie, what are we talking about when we talk about the deep fake videos and why are people so scared of it?
The thing that's fascinating about this is in terms of kind of cyber crime. It's cyber criminals can use kind of the oldest tricks in the books, which is to.
Just try and convince employees to give them information.
They don't need to hack in or try and infiltrain these systems. They can just literally ask to be let in. And they're doing that using real time deep fakes. I say they're doing that, they could possibly be doing that using real time deep fix and we are seeing it advertised and the technology is there right now that someone could actually make themselves look like your boss in real time on a zoom call. And that's just utterly convincing. I mean, and it's only going to get even more convincing.
It could be one of the most convincing social engineering attacks to emerge.
So have we already seen it start to happen?
So in the case we talked about in this story, it's gals Or a security researcher who I spoke to who had no absolutely no background in machine learning or any kind of AI stuff, and it just took him. He thought, you know, I've been hearing about this deep fake stuff. People been talking about its potential use in this way.
Can I just do this myself in a manner of weeks?
And he did, and he did it really, really convincingly, and he deep faked his boss. We haven't heard of this actually being used to copy a boss and actually be able to extract money from any employees or passwords.
Or have an effective attack. However, Google put out.
A blog saying that they could see people offering these services on forums on hacker forums already, so the appetite seems to be there already. We're just waiting to hear about the first case when company goes public about it.
Doctor us about the chairman of cyber or software. It's that information security company, and how basically discovering recently how powerful these types of attacks could be. What exactly happened there?
It sounds like they're team was on it and ready to freak him out.
Yeah, well so I mentioned Gal as researcher. Yeah, so he works with cyber Arc. And to kind of flip it back to you, Udi.
The chairman mccalady of cyber Arc, he received a Microsoft team's message one morning.
He was that in his office.
He opened it up and there he sees himself on his laptop screen asking him whether he could present himself at a hacker conference showing how convincing a deep fit could be.
And he was like, what is this? What's going on?
And turn out Gal the researcher had done you know, he hadn't even spent that much time creating a kind of mini not a sophisticated deep fake. And he used that to say like, hey, Udi, this is going to be a thing. Maybe we should get ahead of this.
Bloomberg's Margie Murphy with us there. Reader full story online at bloomberg dot com, slash BusinessWeek, or on the terminal. Joe Weber is sticking around for our next segment, and that.
Wraps up our first hour of the weekend edition, holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Ahead. In our next hour, we break down the latest installment of the magazine, a special double issue dedicated to cities from the Big Apple to Nashville to a so called forest city in Malaysia. This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser.
And I'm Tim Stinebeck. Stay with us today's top stories and global business headlines coming up.
Right now, 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've got to.
Treat a head. In our second hour of the holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, We've got a deep dive into our special issue of the magazine. It's out now on newsstands, online, and of course always on the Bloomberg terminal. It's the annual Cities issue, a collaboration between the magazine team and city life.
The issue takes on a broad look at what the world's urban centers are facing and explores ideas to improve them, especially as the COVID pandemic fades from view. Our network of reporters traveled to some of the world's most famous cities and others you've probably never heard of, with dispatches on the impacts of political intrigue, environmental uncertainty, and shifts in the global economy.
Let's now welcome in the team of BusinessWeek Technology editor Joshua Breustein, who oversaw this special issue, Bloomberg City Lab editor David Dudley's steering the City Lab coverage, and once again BusinessWeek editor Jill Weber.
When we started talking about this, I was like, you know, we don't have to kill our says, we don't need to go big, and Joshua was like, actually, I was planning to do like a full issue takeover, and I have like all these amazing stories, and I was like,
oh my god, this is going to be amazing. So he tested it, and I think, you know, part of the framing that we wanted to look at here is look here we are a couple of years after COVID, although hey, cases still ticking back up and cities are still in that after math, and we wanted to kind of like look at a few of the ways that that's continued to play out and then find some of those really startling, amazing stories that I'm sure we'll spend
a little bit more time talking about, including yesterday. But Josh, where were the places that when you sort of architected and you started from blank white pages and these exercises, like where did you want to make sure that we got to visit?
Yeah?
I think there were a couple of things. For the Last City's issue. Actually, I had written about the idea of trying to build a new city from scratch, and so I know there's been a lot of effort around the world to do this. And on my list of places to look at was a place called Forest City in Malaysia, which is a city that is being constructed on what will eventually be if all goes according to plan for artificial islands, have about seven hundred thousand people
on it. And the interesting thing about this city is that it was all based on the idea that the Chinese real estate market is just booming. It was being built by Country Garden, which whose name you might recognize if you've been paying attention to.
The No, we never talk about it.
China real estate market booming and Country Garden are two things we talk about quite a bit.
Yes, we do go ahead.
So one of the islands has been constructed. There is uh, there's room for not seven hundred thousand residents, but certainly I think in the tens of thousands, and things have kind of ground to a halt. They've ran into trouble with COVID. Now there's serious questions about demand, and so we sent a really talented reporter there to look around, to talk to people, and just to kind of see what is happening with one of these big audacious projects.
Yeah, that real estate element attached to China, and it just really was a timely look at a place that you know, I think we're all very, very curious and concerned about. So David, I want to bring you in because the City Lab was obviously totally instrumental in this. There there was an idea that Josh and I were noodling, and then Josh was like, actually I talked to David and we should do what they're doing. But David tell us about where we went with that initial kernel.
So, yeah, so we had this project going where we were similarly kind of intrigued by and sort of astonished by the amazing kind of energy intensity of concrete production, which is something like eight nine percent of all carbon released in the atmosphere every year, and it's rivaled by steel production, and in many countries brick production, which is
an even older material, is also intensely polluting. And so we had been neeling around with this idea of having a whole series about what we call this Stuff of Cities, which is just sort of a dive into the history and the past and the present in the future of
the most essential building blocks of urban life. And we were able to sort of convert that idea into this really lovely looking kind of print and online pack that looks at not only concrete and steel and brick, but also glass and asphalt and wood, sort of the oldest material of the of the six that is kind of coming back into vogue as a as a kind of economically and environmentally useful building materials for all kinds of skyscapers.
Well, David, I don't want to get too upset since he's really into concrete. But what is replacing concrete?
Well, that's the thing. Nothing can replace concrete. It is it is this miraculous artificial stone that has been a absolute kind of foundational material since Roman times. What we can do is we can we can devise ways of making it a little less polluting and hopefully a lot less polluting eventually. So there are there are techniques to fire it at lower temperatures. You know that the firing process of making cement is intensely kind of energy absorptive.
There's chemical processes that can involved, there's adding more recycled elements, and there's also sort of being a little more flexible about how you use it and using different kinds of concrete for different applications. So what we were sort of fascinated by was how sort of the history of these materials to sort of tracked human civilization and how we are kind of simultaneously in desperate need of more of this and in desperate need of finding a way to
clean up these industries. And each of these sort of industries faces their own different challenges with sort of finding the raw materials and finding ways to make it less destructive.
All right, So we talked about building materials. There's again it's the city's double issue, so everything in it is about cities. It's a collaboration with Bloomberg City Lab Joel Weber. There's a story a column in here by Joshua Green. It's about how GOP legislators are increasingly imposing their economic and cultural priorities on left leaning municipalities, places where perhaps a lot of New Yorkers Californians have moved during the pandemic. Nashville, Tennessee.
What's the latest dispatch from Josh.
So what's really interesting about this one was this, and this was a story that major props to Josh Bruce Dean for collaborating initially on Josh Green on this one.
With Josh Green on this one. But this tension between blue cities and red states really came to a head earlier this year, and we asked Josh to go to Nashville, where so much of this has really been culminating and give us sort of a dispatch because one interesting thing about this is that blue city red state relationship has been actually like an incredible economic arrangement that everybody's benefited from.
But what we're beginning to see is that red states are kind of cracking down and a certain authority on what heretofore been democratic strongholds, and that alliances sort of or a relationship is sort of now in flux in a way that we're going to have to be watching how this plays out, because GOP is looking for more and more ways to pick up not only like talking points that they can launch onto, but also ways that they can affect change, and targeting Blue City seems to
be one of the ways that they can see immediate reactions with.
It's a tension that has always sort of kind of been kind of woven into the landscape. The nature of urban life tends to require a certain set of policy solutions, and there is often a real kind of pushback from community members who don't see those policy solutions as reflecting their values, and that has manifested its way in all
sorts of interesting and troubling ways. It really kind of got weaponized in a dramatic way, certainly in the Trump era, but it's always been sort of kind of humming beneath urban relationships.
Okay, I got one more thing I want to bring up, which as much as I talked about concrete to Josh. The other thing was, look like I want to I want to feel like cities are working, that they have answers, that they're trying to improve people's lives, and that or there are other people who have ideas to fix them. And you know, we started with this idea of real estate a little bit and Pat Clark did this element that we kind of turned into the first thing we
had in ways to fix cities. And obviously we've spent a lot of time talking about the problems with commercial real estate and empty office space. And Pat came up Josh with such a novel idea rooted in a real estate listing that he saw what was the big takeaway that we all need to get hit with.
Yeah, this was a really great insight from Pat. I mean I started bugging Pat about doing something about converting offices into apartments early on in this. You know, it's
something that we've been talking about a lot. It's hard to say something new about it because everyone said a lot about it, and so I kept bugging him and eventually he said, well, I've talked to a couple of people who came up with this idea, Like, why are we trying to make these things nice apartments, why don't we just make them really crappy apartments in the same way that in the same way that in Soho in the sixties, you know, those sweatshops that they turned into lofts.
Those weren't nice lofts, but people, but tastemakers moved in and they loved them. And so the idea is, like, what if we can just make you know, the fluorescent lighting and the gray carpeting be sort of the drafty windows and the exposed brick of the you know, of the Soho of today.
Just incredible work from BusinessWeek Technology editor Joshua Brustein and Bloomberg City Lab editor David Dudley on the City's issue. It's out now online, it's on newsstands and on the terminal. And Joe Weber, the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, he's going
to be with us later this hour. And by the way, josh mentioned Country Garden there, the Chinese developer this week, warning that it made default on it's dead and raise concerns about staying in business after posting a record first half loss of almost seven billion dollars.
Yeah, it's through money. We continue to follow this for the latest just check out Bloomberg dot com you are listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek coming up. We touched on it with our panel just a few moments ago. A political conundrum facing left leaning municipalities in the center of Republican strongholds.
BusinessWeek national correspondent Josh Green details which blue cities and red states are becoming targets for Republican lawmakers. This is Bloomberg.
If 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.
The Republican led states across the south of the United States, legislatures are increasingly interfering in the governance of democratic cities by blocking liberal reforms and often dictating conservative policies in their place.
Left leaning cities like Austin and Dallas, Texas, Jackson, Missus Zippy, and Kansas City, Missouri have all seen GOP lawmakers try to impose their economic and cultural priorities, and nowhere is the trend of state superseding cities more pronounced than in Nashville.
Tennessee, an interesting trend, certainly ahead of a big political year for US here in the US Well, Bloomberg BusinessWeek National correspondent Josh Green writes all about the glaring racial and political divide permeating Music City in the new double issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the annual Cities issue. Josh joined us from Washington while Tim and I were on site at the US Open in New York this past week.
What's happened across the countries that as policymaking has kind of gridlocked in Washington and nothing really happens. The real political battleground who shifted to the states the cities like Nashville, where you have this clash of largely urban democratic cities that are within the borders of increasingly aggressive Republican red states.
We see this across the South, and I think Nashville is the most famous recent example where a lot of the political battles that used to be fought in Washington are now being fought at an urban level as the
two parties really fight to apply their policies. In the past, states had often deferred the city government and take sort of hands off approach, and what we're seeing more and more, particularly in Nashville, is that Republicans are stepping in in order to apply the policies they like, whether it's economic policies, gun control, racial policies, transgender issues, and basically forcing it on what, in many cases are unwilling residents who have
a different set of political views. And it's become a very contentious thing there and across.
The country, Josh, as you right, Tennessee is hardly alone. This type of thing is happening in Texas, in Austin, in Dallas. In Mississippi, Republicans created a separate police force and court system for a majority white part of the heavily black capital city of Jackson, even prompting the US Department of Justice to file a complaint calling the move quote racially discriminatory. Right, My question for you is you use the term battle, but it doesn't actually seem like
it's a battle that Democrats are winning. It seems like Republicans are crushing Democrats at every turn here.
Well, a lot of this is tied up in court, but I think what's happening is is that these local politics are being influenced by national politics and then in
turn influencing those politics in what happened in Nashville. I'm sure most listeners will remember there was a horrific shooting earlier this year at a Nashville Christian school, which led to a lot of gun violence protests in Nashville and a very contentious scene on the floor of the state House where two black legislature legislators were kicked out of the kicked out of the legislature for protesting gun violence
by the Republicans that control it. And it became you know, national news that this heavily urban community which wanted gun control and you know, measures to remedy these kind of awful shootings were being stifled and overrun by the Republican legislature.
An example that I use in the piece is there's been a series of police shootings black men over the past few years, and Nashville had responded by creating a community Oversight board of residents that worked with Nashville police to try and lessen these things, impose remediation measures, and where appropriate, helped to single out and punish the officers
that were breaking the law doing this. This is something that seemed to be working until earlier this year when Republicans came in and said nope, we're not going to allow this anymore, and passed the law that simply abolished it, which upset a lot of people in Nashville who felt like this was working. And it's just one example of Republicans essentially stepping in and applying their values in places
that oftentimes have a different set of political values. And so it leads to the kind of contention and culture wars that we see on everywhere from MSNBC to Fox News. And the fact that in a lot of these Southern states some particular Republicans have such a large majority goes right to your point that yes, it really isn't a battle in a sense that they're being forced to live, as one Democrat told me, under Republicans alien culture.
So, Josh talk to us about the Nashville mayor, John Cooper, because it sounds like politics runs in his family several generations. He is not actually going to run for reelection, talked to us about his frustrations.
So I spent a day with John Cooper, who is Nashville's Democratic mayor. Not a bleeding heart liberal, a kind of a you know, a centrist, pro business, practical democrat with an MBA who used to be a real estate developer and was elected in twenty nineteen on a platform a fiscal discipline in economic growth that he had really hoped would appeal to Republicans and Democrats. And you know, he's what's really happened is that we've hit the culture wars.
I mean, there were you know, there were COVID mask mandates and fights over that. There were fights between state Republicans in Nashville which and want to host the twenty twenty four Republican Convention. And there's been a lot of fighting, even down to the level of fighting over street names in Nashville. Republican legislators tried to rename a street in Nashville. It was named for the late Democratic civil rights icon
John Lewis as President Donald Trump Boulevard. And you know, my sense being with Cooper, I mean, on the one hand, his mayoralty has been a tremendous success economic. Nashville has recovered economically from COVID better than almost any city. The city is growing, it's lively. There are cranes everywhere, people are out and about. It's a great place to be.
But on the other hand, it is in the crossfire, this culture war where Republicans are trying to do everything from takeover the airport to the sports authority to cutting
the city council to fighting over street names. And it's striking to me politically because throughout most of my lifetime, Tennessee actually had a reputation as being a very practical, mind minded, bipartisan state where it was sort of an example, like a positive example of what the political South could look like and how people of all backgrounds could work together. And now here we are, and that's been completely flipped on its head, not just in Nashville, but in cities across the country.
All Right, Josh, so talk to a little bit more about what's going on in Nashville, why it's happening, and bring in if you would, John's brother, Jim Cooper, who was representing the Nashville area in Congress for sixteen terms. You talk about when a plumber comes to visit, it's like the political divide was so in your face. I mean, you see it when somebody feels differently or strongly politically.
John Cooper, the mayor, comes from a famous Tennessee political family. Their father, Prentiss Cooper, was a Democratic governor of Tennessee back in the nineteen forties, and his brother, Jim Cooper, is somebody I've known for decades. Had represented Nashville in Congress since about nineteen eighty two as a centrist blue
dog Democrat with a reputation for bipartisanship. Well, last year, the Republican Legislature re drewmandered his district, chopped it up, and apportioned it among three other conservative districts, which essentially forced him into retirement. And it's a great example of just the win it all costs mentality that is now like eclipsed what used to be the kind of practical minded bipartisan cooperation that had marked Tennessee politics in the
eighties and in the nineties. And you know, Cooper was the one that had said to me, you know, we're in a situation here where we're almost like a colony in Republicans who don't live in Nashville, who have different views than people who live in Nashville, have come in
and forced us to live under this alien culture. And it has caused a lot of grief and contention on everything from as I said, you know, gun control issues, police reform, and oversight to even the name of the streets, whether they should be named after republic plis or Democrats. And I think the distressing part about it for people in Nashville is there's really no end in sight to this contention that anyone can see.
Thanks to Bloomberg Business Week national correspondent Josh Green, the full conversation is available on our podcast feed, and that Josh's story is the very first one featured in this year's Cities issue. You can find that online, on newsstands and always on the Bloomberg terminal.
Still to come. On Bloomberg Business Week, we go from the modern American city to an ancient one on the other side of the world.
We delve into the complex case of the West Bank's Jericho Gate development. This is Bloomberg.
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 New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
We continue with our coverage from the double issue of Bloomberg Business Week it's the annual Cities issue that we've been talking about, in which our reporters span the globe to bring you the stories affecting modern urban life.
Among them is a piece about a real estate boom emerging within the Palestinian held West Bank, where Arab Israelis are purchasing luxury homes in Jericho and adding a new dynamic to their complex relationship with other Palestinians as well as Jewish Israelis.
Taking us to the development known as Jericho Gate is once again Bloomberg Business Week editor Jill Weber and Bloomberg News Israel Bureau chief Ethan Browner.
Of course, the West Bank is occupied, militarily occupied by Israel, and it is no fun to live under occupation. It is a difficult situation for many. But what I learned is that despite that, there has been a Palestinian business class that has decided to build vacation villas with pools, for there are several hundred some thousands of Palestinians who
can afford it. And now the complicated thing here re is also that there are three kinds of Palestinians involved, those who live under occupation in the West Bank, those who live in Jerusalem, which is a kind of occupation, but they have special IDs because Israel considers all of
Jerusalem it's capital. And then there are those who are Israeli Arabs, who are citizens of Israel, and all three populations have grown wealthier, I don't want to say wealthy, but wealthier in the last twenty years, because Israel has become very, very wealthy compared to what it was generation ago. And therefore there is kind of a room for vacation homes for people who live nearby.
Now.
The other thing that's so interesting is that the Israeli Arabs were not really mixing with those of the West Bank for many years. Now they are And one of the questions the story raises is what that might mean politically in the future.
Can we just take a step back and just talk about the development itself and what's inside the walls and kind of what surrounds it.
Sure, so this is just outside the city of Jericho, and as Joel mentioned, one of the very oldest cities in the world, lowest city on the planet as well, and just near the Dead Sea. And so you have a whole group of Palestinian developers who created villas with walls around them, typically three bedrooms, three bathrooms with a pool, pretty big pool fied by ten meters. And these are vacation homes that sell for a quarter of a million dollars, which is a pretty good price in most places for
a vacation villa like that. And there is a big development around. They're still building it, but the plan is for going to be a couple of three or four malls, a water park and other kinds of tourism things. So the idea is to make it a real a place of attraction for people visiting from within Israel and palestinin areas and from outside.
There's an incredible quote in your story. One of the subjects says, Jericho is booming despite the checkpoints in occasional war. People can make money here.
That's right, that's right.
I mean, what is the looming threat of war described that?
Look, I mean there have been is there, you know, there there is tension. I mean, nobody wants to live under military occupation. So there are young men who are armed who are go after Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers, and then the Israeli army comes in and tries to
quote unquote restore order from its perspectives. So there in January there were there was a shooting at a restaurant where Israeli's go and the Israeli military went into a refugee camp near Jericho Gate and killed five guys, and the course of trying to restore the situation to the
stems quo ante. So that's what that means. And at any given time there could there have been two so called intifadas uprisings in the last forty years, and there could be another one in theory, and that's what that's what the mayor means, the mayor who said these At the same time, there is money to be made, because there is a lot of money slashing around now, partly as a result of Israel's wealth and partly as a result of some sappy business folks who are decided, listen,
whatever happens, we're here. And that's the other interesting aspect here, right, that these developers and business people who say, look, whatever happens, we're not going to go, so let's just build and make sure that whatever happens in the end, we have someplace nice to live.
So talk to us about that. The fragile piece that it's all sort of built on ethan because sure, you can build stuff like this and you can develop it, but like underneath it all, you know, as you kind of mentioned here, I mean, there's some real fragility that it's all built on.
That's true. There is increasingly less and less of a chance that there will be an independent palace to the end state Israel is very powerful and has turned to the right. It has decided mostly that it is not especially interested in helping the creation of Palestinian state. At the same time, you have millions of Palestinians, several million who live in the West Bank without full rights, and
would not be surprising if they were to rebel again. Now, the situation is that Israeli military does maintain a sense of order in the place. It isn't so easy to rebel against Israeli military. But as you said, it could happen again. At the moment, the kind of occupation that Israel is engaged in has seemed to have kept down any genuine full time violence as opposed to what has happened in Godz that we're talking about, justin in the West Bank. But you know, until there is some kind
of political horizon that makes sense. There's always a risk of violence, and that's what those guys are talking about.
Talk a little bit about the politics, though, that's really where I want to go and understand how this could have political implications.
And maybe be a stabilizing force, right to see, that's right, you know, the movement of this wealth into it, that's right.
So we have, of course, the most right wing religious government in Israel's history is it is a government under Benjamin Sanya, who that is not dedicated to independent Palestinian state, trying to limit and possibly annex some of that land. So there's that now internally in terms of the millions of palestin Is the two million Palestinians who are israel As citizens and the several million who live in the West Bank. Let me step back for one second. The
region is not an encouraging place to live. If you are an Arab and you look around at Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and you say to yourself, I'm an Israeli Arab. I mean, I'm very unhappy that I don't have political independence. On the other hand, everything around me is in many maybe far worse. But so maybe there will be some kind of accommodation internally for bi Palestinians internally to somehow come to terms with the with the Jewish state of Israel.
And I say this is because the two million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. On the one hand, of course they can't. It is it is a Jewish country, and that is, you know, not something easy for them to embrace. On the other hand, the bourgeoissification, the middle classification of Israeli Arabs over the last generation has been remarkable, lightning strong. They all go to university, they are filling Israel's occupations, including high tech.
And and so.
On the one hand, it is sort of scarier to be an Israeli Arab than ever, and on the other hand it is easier to be. And those parallel lines are aspects of Israel that you see all around. Israel is both richer, more more advanced, and heading toward weird medieval forces at the same time. I'm all at the same time, we.
Cover markets and we have investors, business folks, they take risks. Who's the developer who has taken the risk.
In this The brains behind it is a man named Samir Huli Lay and he's a fascinating guy who killed those of you listening will read the story because he's a sixty five year old Palestini who was in politics and ended up in private enterprise and has this vision.
Got got to purchase in fat millions and tens of millions of dollars worth of land from a particular clan, and then you know, started to sort of engage sixty two separate Palestinian developers to create the villas and so on. So I mean, he and he, you know, he's the guy who says in the story, I realized in the end that, however this ends up, what's the point of having a flag over a garbage stop? Which was an
amazing quote. I thought. So he said, you know, we need to resist, we need to build, and that's how we're going to look forward. Politically, We're not going anywhere. We're not gonna win on the battlefield right now. But this is what I can contribute, and I was very moved by that.
That was Bloomberg News Israel bureau chief Ethan Brawner, along with BusinessWeek editor Joe Weber, another must read from the annual Cities issue.
I could have just talked and talked for him. To just hear more about what's.
Going on there. Ah.
Yeah, that was a great interview.
All right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming out. We focus on a new priority of modern engineering known as daylighting.
Why natural sunlight goes hand in hand with a psychologically uplifting experience, especially for school kids.
This is Bloomberg. 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.
Extreme weather this week with the southeastern US feeling the wrath of hurricaney Dahlia, Florida was the first to start digging out from the storm's aftermath on Wednesday. By the any, Dahlia had weekend to a tropical storm, even as it brought heavy rain across Georgia and Carolina's caused billions of dollars in damage, left hundreds of flights grounded and thousands of people without power.
Climate change, we know impacting everything increasingly will stressing our infrastructure. We see that impacting investing, taking a lead on decision making and strategy. So With that in mind, it's kind of where we wanted to start with Our next guest, Kim verver Hiling, is with us. She is president of National Buildings Practice at STV and Engineering and Infrastructure firm.
We talked last October from our broadcast at NJIIT and so we are delighted to have Kim back with us, and thank you for giving a bit of a leeway because we did kind of want to start with you that. I am curious the conversations Tim and I both are about what you are having within your firm about climate change, the impact and how that might be in terms of future building, future construction, infrastructure build out, how we maybe have to be dealing with it and thinking about.
It absolutely well. Climate change is integral and we're thinking about it on every single project. Obviously STV a lot on the transportation side, but we also do a lot and the building side, and so we're all always thinking about while we're designing or renovating, how are we going to be making sure our buildings are energy efficient? How are we thinking about and impact the climate as well as resilience.
Kim I was talking to a colleague of mine and Carol I don't think I told you the story, but we were talking about he's looking for a new place in Brooklyn and he was on the first floor and he asked about flooding and you know when the sewer's back up, because it's a normal thing when it rains now and the super told him, Oh, don't worry. We'll give you these special doors that you put on the bathroom when when it rains, so the overflow stays in the bathroom and doesn't come out of the bathroom.
See the sand bag.
How wonderful.
Yeah, how wonderful.
Right, not a solution that's right well, and obviously those structures that are already in place, it's about prevention, but we want a design so you don't have to do those sorts of things right that we have the right infrastructure in place so it never comes to the point where you have to in those those flood barriers.
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Having said that, you know, one of the other things that you guys think about a lot is bringing the world into buildings and making kind of you know, bringing nature into environments. We work in an incredible office where there is tons of light, tons of glass. People walk in and They're like, this is where you work, and I'm like, yeah, it's pretty amazing because I've worked in a basement studio in a New York building where there were no windows and I
had no idea what was going on outside. That is also a big part of what you guys do and thinking, whether it's schools, whether it's correctional facilities. Talk to us a little bit about daylighting.
Yeah, so in daylighting is really the idea that you're letting natural sunlight either directly or indirectly into a building, but you are correct daylight and is one of our top design philosophies, irrespective of what building type we're looking at. And I think for those of us during COVID when we were scrambling to create offices in our home, we realized if you were in a space where you weren't getting daylight and you weren't also having that connection to nature,
it really did impact your mood. And so when we think about daylighting, especially on the educational side, it does help improve both student health and we've seen that it impacts student achievements, so math and reading scores directly. And conversely, if you don't have that amazing daylight come in. We have discomfort which can reduce learning, and it's also detrimental to mental health.
That was Kim ver high Leigue. She's the president of National Buildings Practice at engineering and Infrastructure firm STV. That's full conversation is available on our podcast.
Feed, and that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week on this Labor Day weekend from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday starting at three pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio and on Sirius XM channel one nineteen.
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Have a good and safe Labor Day weekend. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.
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