Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - September 24th, 2021

Much of that initial volatility due to fears over the federal reserves plans for tapering asset purchases, as well as the Evergranddad crisis in China. We're gonna get to that in just a moment. That's a story we talked about throughout the week because the news kept coming in on it. Ahead of it. Though a close look at America's pandemic response and how we can prevent the next one because there is another one coming. That's according to FDA's former commissioner, Dr.

Scott Gottlieb. He's got a new book out. We're going to talk to him all about that. Plus we're talking Cisco because the company lines it's sustainability commitments and the CEO of rocket Lab talks to us about a new era of space travel. Plus, it's our Sooner than You Think issue, and it explores breakthroughs on the horizon and everything from broadband to batteries, with our domestic cover story detailing the importance of cobalt to powering our future. It's

all the cool stuff that's happening. It is a lot of cool stuff. Let's get those let's get those batteries here sooner than later. Yeah, exactly, but we need some key components to make it all happen. All of that to come. We begin though with our international cover story on what's been the world's largest property developer and how it's creating a financial stress test that no one wanted. A takeover from our finance team and the editor of the section, Pat Ragneer, who joins us now. Pat Ever

grands massive liabilities. We saw that play out through the global markets. How come so evergrand owes massive three billion dollars in liabilities, which sort of the sheer scale of that has people nervous um and the sheer number of people and entities that evergrand Owes money too. So there's just this kind of like you know, large pile of bills that people are waiting to get paid, and if they don't get paid, if they get paid, it paid

back slowly and in a disorderly way. There's just a fear of the kinds of effects you can have really through the Chinese economy. And of course we we saw it hit global markets earlier this week. But let's take a step back, pad and and and I think because a lot of people perhaps aren't familiar with whatever Grant is despite its size. Um, I feel like it wasn't a household word right this week until this week. I

completely agree with that. So so what is this Because this is a company that is not only in property, but it's in media, theme park take us into it. So it's a property developer, you know. I kind of joked that, like, you know, this is what would happen if you had, um a you know, a financial company in trouble, but you also had a giant uh new estate company or a builder of homes in trouble plus plus the New York Yankees, plus to Disney. Right, so

you know it's got all of these different businesses. Uh, perspective for you. Yeah, but the really key part of the business is that it's a property developer. It builds housing. And when you're talking about a home builder in China, you're talking about a company that has been riding the waves of probably one of the most important transformations in history. From uh, the the urban population of China has grown by and I had to double check this when I

saw it, something like four d and a million people. Right, so, just in in a very short period of time of population, the size of the United States has gone from the countryside to living in cities, and they've needed housing, and there's been a whole apparatus of policy designed to encourage housing to get that housing built. And evergreend rode that

wave and became heavily indebted in the process. And meanwhile, policymakers in China UM has begun to kind of ask themselves if real estate led growth is more risky than it's worth. And now that are trying to you know, they've they've set in place policies that have been meant to kind of who off this change. But you know that's kind of a hard target hit, right You're saying, oh, real estate is risky. We want everybody to take less ards who We're going to start to discourage all of

this activity. But what can happen is what we're looking at now, which is this company is kind of cratering, and the question is will this be you know, controlled creating. So where do policymakers come in in terms of that controlled creating? Do we know at this point what policymakers are going to allow happen to to ever? Grant is it?

Is it going to fail? And by policymakers we mean Beijing, Yeah, the communist right, I mean so, I you know, I think like one of the thing you have to remember is that the banking sector is stay controlled in China and that just gives them more levers then, uh than authorities in other countries have. I mean, they really have some power to uh, you know, order how how debts get disposed um. And plus I mean you know they have they have the power that every country that princes

its own money, does you know. I mean, so they can create liquidity and and they can, but they can also interview very directly in the banking system, right whether or not like what you call a failure of ever grand sort of depends on a question of definition. I mean, you know, because if you have the state intervening to sort of quietly fold the company up, you know, like, on one hand, you may prevent kind of a systemic risk.

On the other hand, you know, there may not be a company that's recognizable ever Grand at the end of that process. But you know, sort of more importantly, you know, I think it's just always a question of a very big thing is happening. They have a lot of power to try to control it, but you just don't know if they're going to be able to do it. This isn't just you know, debt in money markets. It's depth

are owed to you know. Investor Pat a great UH cover story, a great take on Evergrand, which was really no doubt about it, UH, one of our big stories of the week. That's Business Week Finance editor Pat Ragnar and Pat talked about that broader impact of China and what it's doing in the impact on the global economy. For more on that and China's pushed for common prosperity and what it means for private business, be sure to check out to our Monday interview with Bloomberg New Economy

editorial director Andy Brown. You can find that on our podcast feed at Bloomberg dot com. Yeah, a fascinating story. A story mainly takes place in China, but with serious global implications, as we saw a play out this week. Well coming up, a longtime Cisco executive, franct Suitis, maps out her company's ongoing sustainability goals. They've been working on this for years and they continue to ramp it up. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week, and this is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio Cisco Systems to him. They set the company's first greenhouse emissions reduction goal, Wait back and do thousand six. They've been doing this for a long time. Since then, the tech giant has continued to grow its sustainability initiatives and impact year after year after year, and earlier this month, the company announced a new commitment to achieve net zero emissions by and more.

Brand ken Suitis is a longtime Cisco executive whose executive vice president and Chief People, Policy and Purpose Officer. She stopped by this week to discuss this latest round of objectives. First of all, before we get into sustainability, I do want to ask you about the visibility you see when it comes to your business and the company and hiring. What does it look like right now? So we see

a tremendous amount of opportunity. What's so fascinating is throughout the pandemic, we saw so many of our customers wanting to move a little bit more quickly. From a trans formation perspective, we saw that the issues I had been thinking about, they were ready to move. So what that means for us is we see a lot of investment in how they securely connect their thinking about having employees both on site but also working from home, and that's

a different technology play. From a people perspective, this has been one of the most remarkable times. Right now. People are talking about this period as the Great Resignation, and what they mean by that is we see a tremendous amount of people movement as well. Yeah, really important question when we think about the way that people are changing jobs, the way that people are potentially leaving the workforce. I want to go back to something that you said about

the transformation that you saw throughout the pandemic. Do you see this as a permanent shift, with a lot of your customers that their employees could be working from home forever. I think a lot of our customers are figuring that out. So I would say that there's a subset of our customers that absolutely have found greater productivity, they see better employee engagement, and they're going to continue to work hybrid.

I don't see as many absolutes where people are either going to be all in the office or at home. I think they're figuring out the balance. And then there's a subset of our customers that want to go back, and that's something that we really questioned around can we go back? And the reason I put that forward is that employees around the globe are telling us that they want to work in a very different way. I mean, the horse has left the barn right when it comes

to hybrid work. I think it's safe to say that there's probably been tons of focus groups pre pandemic. Can it work? And it not? Maybe we're not ready. I mean the pandemic, we had no choice and it worked. Yeah.

That's why we refer to this last period as not only challenging from a human perspective, but an experiment around work where we've learned a lot, and I think for some companies this question that they had has now been answered and that they can work, they can innovate, they can collaborate, and in some cases they can be even better with this hybrid because they can get to talent

that in the past they couldn't before. Well, how has the talent acquisition process been, how has talent retention been at Cisco? Syste time, you said that some people are referring to this as the great resignation. We hear about the labor struggle that employers are facing right now. Um, tell us what it's been like for you and FED Chief J. Powell talking about it's a really tight labor force.

It is, so we experienced that as well. What was so fascinating was when when we first went into the pandemic, we paused for a few weeks just from a hiring perspective, and we were just kind of getting our legs under us and understanding what this was going to be. And then we had this realization that we were in this for quite some time, and we started the hiring process and what we found was leveraging video, leveraging the interview

processes that we have. We hired like never before. And in fact, I would tell you that last year was probably one of the biggest hiring years that we've had as a company. Amazing, and so many employees have never met any of their colleagues face to face. It's a position. And then I started in October last year here, yeah, exactly, and there's people that he's now meeting. He's like, I've been talking to you, you know, via remote, and now

I'm finally meeting you. It's it's a very different world. Yeah. I had a really funny experience last week where two colleagues were meeting. I happened to be there, and one of the colleagues that we're friends though, even though I'm meeting you for the first time. And so what I would say is for all companies, we do see that there is a reduced labor pool. We're working incredibly hard to differentiate ourselves, to talk about what we stand for, and to attract the talent that really wants to be

with us as well. You were reminding us that's just get a pretty big presence here in New York specifically, we do. It's such an important market for us, so so many of our customers are based here. It's a great place for talent, a lot of the technology as well. We're actually in the process at the moment of remodeling our presence here in New York, and a big part of that is hybrid work and so we're thinking a lot about when you come into the office, how will

you work? And so I think you'll see our presence in New York look very different from what it's been in the past. What do you mean by that? How how is it going to be different? So the biggest differences fewer people will come into the office to work on email or to be in video call. So when you come in now, you're coming in to be with your team. You're coming in to be with customers, and so the site has to be so much more team

centric than ever before. And so you're going to see a lot fewer of the cubes and the individual offices and a lot of huddle space. How are you thinking about your presence in New York in the future in terms of headcount? Yeah, I would say it's uh, it's a really important growth area for us, and so we look at about five key areas across the US, New York is one of them, and so we will continue to to hire and really attract and recruit the best.

You talked about it being a tight labor market. What's the New York labor market right now for the type of workers you're looking for. It just got about fifteen seconds. It's incredibly competitive, and uh so this is a place where the wonderful thing is you see the skills that we're looking for, but you see that the talent has a lot of different options. So talk to us about

the new commitments. Earlier this month, you guys laid it out planning to achieve net zero emissions by twenty achieve carbon neutrality for Scope one and scope to um and that I believe is by so go into it because you guys have been doing this for a long time. What's the difference. What's the new new stuff that we need to know about. Yeah, so I would say we

we have been doing this for a long time. And here's the most important part for companies to achieve these goals, which are really big and even bigger if you're a hardware and software company. Uh it takes every part of the organization to be focused here, and it has to feel like a key part of running your business and not something that sits on the side, because these goals are pretty significant, and so we've been doing this for a long time. The four big areas that we're focused

on right now. The first is hybrid work. As we talked about, we believe that will be incredibly positive for us. The second thing that we're doing is really focus on the reduction of carbon emissions and uh, we're investing in technologies that I think will give us all optimism. Uh there's a company that we invested in called Rama. They actually won a prize with us, and they're doing carbon capture for large semi trucks and that is so important.

The third area that we're focused on is all about renewables and so as an example in the US were renewable electricity several countries across Europe as well, and we'll just keep on pushing. And then I think another element, and this is the most exciting, is we're looking at the way in which we're developing our products which really power the Internet. And one of our new products, Silicon one, is a chip set and what it does is it reduces the amount of energy that our customers use by

twenty six times. And in addition to that, it's much smaller than previous products, so it doesn't take as much packaging. And so when you have this type of breakthrough across your portfolio, it's going to be incredibly meaningful. That was Cisco's executive VP in Chief, People, Policy and Purpose Officer Frand cut suitists still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, civilian space travel is now a reality. You know that, but our next guest says there is plenty of work left

to do when it comes to the final frontier. The CEO of rocket Lab USA joins us. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg e Love in Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. So there's been a lot going on when it comes to

space tourism. I mean, Tim, you've been on the ground seeing it firsthand. Is like the year of private space travel. I mean, you have Bezos, you have SpaceX with the recent civilian mission. Then of course earlier this year you you also had Virgin Galactic exactly. It's definitely feeling like it's taken several steps forward. One company watching this year's spade of recent commercial space missions and the billionaires along for the ride is the launch provider and space systems company.

It's called rocket Lab USA. Well, its founder, president and CEO Peter Beck, joined Carroll and Shannali Bassk to outline his company's plans for customer growth, as well as the risks and rewards of civilian space travel. Check it out. It's super exciting to see kind of this new era of space exploration, especially by civilians. But I think it's also important to remember, you know, it's still requires a

bit eire to to go to go to orbit. Um, so I'm looking forward to the day where that those barriers are broken a little bit more and in space traveled by by humans is a little bit more frequent and achievable. Peter, maybe you're going to explain the significance as well of what this particular mission means with SpaceX

and the people that they are traveling with Yeah. Look, I mean it's an incredible achievement by by friends over its space X and you know, you know, an all civilian crew is you know, is a wonderful next step. But you know, we're we're focused kind of on you know, the next the next step is actually providing resources and services from all that down down to Earth. So well, human space travelers is incredibly exciting and inspirational for us. All um, you know, we actually rely on space for

a tremendous amount of their everyday life activities. Yeah. I feel like you're the practical side of it in terms of space, right, And there's no Business Week has done stories about there's a ton of tiny satellites that are already up there in air, up there into space. I guess I should say, tell us about the work that you do, who you're working with, and I am curious about how much of your contracts and work you do is military versus kind of commercial. Yeah. Absolutely, so. I

mean we're an end Win space company. So you know, we operate a launch vie call called Electron. It's the the second most frequently launched rocket in the United States behind space X, and we deliver all kinds of customers.

It's about fifty percent government fifty commercial. So we're flying missions obviously NASA for the Row through to We flew a small satellite for a series of high schools in Irvine, California, So just about every customer and you know you satellite, you could you could imagine really what's what's the future in terms of spaces role as it pertains to Earth, because I think there's still a lot of mysticism and and and a lot of questions out there about you know,

what space ultimately means for Earth going forward. Human space flight is one important element, as we've mentioned, but I think little people realize how reliant they are in the everyday lives today on space infrastructure. I mean, if you call up a pizza and the pizza gets delivered to your house, well, actually, if it wasn't for GPS, your

pizza might not get delivered to your house. It might be called the most basic things are enabled by a lot of space infrastructure, whether it be communications or weather and as we mentioned GPS, but it's kind of like that hidden infrastructure. You know, it's infrastructure that you can't go and physical and touch or even see. So it's just kind of magic. It's just always there and just

using it in your everyday lives. And that's kind of the focus for us really is, you know, how can we build that infrastructure in orbit and use that to really provide services to all of us down here on Earth.

I think with the space industry, you know, we've got some really great applications that everybody is familiar with, like communications and GPS, but you know, the access to space into orbits has really only been broken down relatively recently with SpaceX and rocket lad So we're really just at the beginning of what you can do in space and how that's going to improve and change everybody's lives down here. Well, where do you see the industry going in the next

ten years then? Yeah. So my AURBUE is kind of um UH an intervien space company. So you know, we do launch, we also build spacecraft. You know, we have contracts with NASA to go to the Moon. We've got a couple of Mars missions um and of course a number of commercial missions on all butit and I think continuous time, the really large space companies are not going to be just launch company NES or just satellite companies.

They're going to be into in companies where you are you own the launch showing the spacecraft, and you may even own the applications on all ward as well. Um, I think that that's what it's going to look like in the future. Hey, twenty seconds left? Is it Elon Musk? Is it Bezos? Is it Branson? That continue to dominate? In your view? Just quickly from your vantage point, just

got about twenty seconds. Well, I mean, certainly Ellen is supposed to be written with, but don't don't count down the underdog rocket Lab detsil I say, all right, Well, investors certainly aren't because your stock has been on a tear up more than fifty so far this year. Great to check in with you, and I hope we can get some more time with you in the future because this is certainly an area I know we like to talk about. That's rocket Lab USA founder president and CEO, Peterback.

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up next, Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on lessons learned from the ongoing COVID crisis and his new book, Uncontrolled Spread. Why COVID nineteen crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic, because folks, there's going to be a next pandemic, according to Dr Gottlieb and so many more. That interview coming up.

This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Dr Scott Gottlieb he is, no doubt about it, one of the constant and consistent go to voices throughout the COVID nineteen pandemic. He's had a front row seat to the health crisis. He's former commissioner of the f d A. He's on the boards of Alumina, Tempest Visor, and more.

He's also Resident Fellow at the Conservative Thing Tank, American Enterprise Institute, and a healthcare investor at New Enterprise Associates. He's got a new book out, Uncontrolled Spread, Why COVID nineteen crushed US and how we can defeat the next pandemic. We began by asking if the US could have done things differently when the crisis first began nearly two years ago. One thing we wanted to know if the nation had shut down early on in the pan Emmick, Let's say,

for three months, really shut down, federal mandatory shutdown. Would we be in a better position today, And I'm just talking about the US for a moment. Yeah, I don't know that. UM, if we had implemented the stay at home order a lot earlier would have made an appreciable difference, and I don't think it would have been warranted. Certainly, once we knew that there was very dense spread in cities like New York, we should have implemented the mitigation

they stay at home recommendations earlier than we did. So we were a week or too late doing that in cities like New York. But the bigger problem was that we didn't have the ability to actually diagnose the inspection. We didn't have a diagnostic test employed at scale. It was it was something we could have done if we

had proper planning. UM And because we didn't have a diagnostic test, not only did we not know how much spread was underway, So we were lying to the scope of the spread and we didn't know the true nature of the threat, and that's partly why we shut down late.

But we didn't know where the virus wasn't there were parts of the country where COVID wasn't spreading yet, where we didn't have to implement the population wide mitigation, where we could still use test and tracing if we had a test employ to try to contain the spread, rather than telling everyone they had to stay in their homes. UM. So that the lack of the ability to actually figure out where the virus was but also where it wasn't led to the wrong policy decisions. Who made the right

policy decisions at the time. What countries led the way, what countries are still leading the way. What's a good example of what we should have done. Yeah, at the time, South Korea, I think UM had probably the best initial response. I mean every country has gone through waves of infection and made mistakes along the way. UM. The US has been disproportionately impacted by this. This has been an asymmetric risk the United States. I think we've made a lot

of a lot of mistakes along the way. But South Korea, early on when the virus was first identified in China got together their private industry, their their diagnostic manufacturers and promised them in a very efficient process that they got into the market, started to manufacture diagnostic kids at scale. They promised that they would be purchased by the government UH, and they also stood up testing sites. They started to lay the foundations testing sites, and they actually put pioneered

the use of drive through test sites. The first draw through testing sites were in South Korea. Because they were able to deploy diagnostic testing at a massive scale, they were able to identify their early infections, get people isolated, get people in quarantine UH and keep the country from becoming epidemic. The the epidemic really never took off in South Korea. I mean, they had subsequent waves of infection one D one seven and eventually a delta variants started

to spread later on. But South Korea was on a similar trajectory of Italy and was able to contain it. Dr Gottley, why didn't we treat the warnings of a global pandemic that have been out there for years, so much so that there was a pandemic playbook conceived of during the Bush administration. Why wasn't that already in place. You've been on the inside, You've been involved in government on and off, I think since roughly two thousand three.

Why didn't we have the follow through? And I'm curious the conversations that you had about this look, we had a pandemic playbook, right, We had prepped a pandemic contingency. In fact, the government had run a stimulation called Crimson Contagion just before COVID struck, which was a simulated pandemic. The problem is we had always prepped for a pandemic involving a flu. We never envisioned that a pandemic could be caused, certainly by a coronavirus. We never envisioned anything

but influenza. And the playbook that we had written for flu wasn't fully applicable to a coronaus coronavirus or many things that were different about this virus and about any coronavirus that don't make the kinds of continguencies that you developed for flu um widely applicable for So for example, flu has a short incubation period, meaning that when you're exposed to it, you get sick from it pretty quickly,

and typically you're not compagious until you develop symptoms. So trying to diagnose people who are asymptomatic carriers of the flu isn't a sufficient First of all, they're gonna, once they're exposed, are gonna become sick very quickly, and you're gonna be all identify them because they're going to have symptoms when they're contagious. They have symptoms with a coronavirus with a long incubation period, there's more of an opportunity to get someone diagnosed before they go on to spread

the virus. And we also know that there's a lot of asymptomatic transmission with with the coronavirus with COVID, so it's more important to have a diagnostic test employ we are screening the population. So a lot of the things that we thought about that we're planned for flu weren't applicable.

They do want to push you a little bit, Dr Gottlieb about what were the internal conversations you were having at your time uh in in the government when it comes to hey, folks, we gotta do something more serious. We gotta make sure we've got the right things in place. Yea. At the time that I was in government, we really didn't have our eye on anything but influenza. So how

did we miss it? How did we miss it? Especially that since there's a lot of vaccine hunters that are out there that we've talked to a bunch here at Bloomberg. They've been looking at this and seeing things that are out there that could be significant problems. Yeah. Certainly, back in two thousand and five, when the pandemic planning first began, that's when I was involved with it, we were really worried about a bird fill each five and one. At

that point, coronavirus has really hadn't emerged. But after Stars and mirrors both emerged, we should have had the awareness that the coronaviruses were on the march, they were becoming more pathogenic, they were starting to threaten humans, and that a more contagious variation of stars could come along and threatened the entire globe. Really, what we should have been

focused on is a broad category of viruses. Viruses that replicate through urna because the virus that replicates through RNA means that it can undergo rapid mutation, and viruses that

could spread through respiratory droplets or aerosols. So those two features, viruses that replicate through ourn a and spread through aerosols or what make of give a virus the qualities that could create global contagion, And if you're looking at it through that lens, you're looking at that broad category that includes inpuenza for sure, but it also includes coronaviruses include nippovirus. It broadens the universe of the potential threats that could

be the next pandemic. Dr Ghalib, you dedicate this book to your three daughters. Uh, you're a dad, and I think that a lot of parents listening right now want to know about risk tolerance and about the way that you are behaving and the way that you want your family to behave during a pandemic when perhaps some of kids are not vaccinated and some kids are old enough to be vaccinated. Uh, what is what are you doing with your family right now? What is safe to you?

It's not safe to you. Yeah, Look, my kids are not vaccinated yet. They're not old enough to be vaccinated, are under the age of eleven. They will be vaccinated once they turn twelve and they're eligible. I think a lot of the residual anxiety that people feel, people who are vaccinated feel right now around COVID is the risk that they're going to bring an asymptomatical modlely symtomatic infection back into the home, put their children at risk, or

an elderly um parent at risk. Someone that they might be caring for who is a more significant risk of having a bad outcome from COVID. I think once the vaccine can be extended to children, a lot of people who are vaccinated themselves and don't feel personally at risk and COVID, that they feel reasonably confident that they were to get infected, that they're going to be protected from a severe outcome. I think they feel more confident about going out and about, and that's why I think a

lot of people are still cautious. People who are vaccinated probably overestimate their risk. In some cases, they're probably more protected than what they perceived. People are unvaccinated, quite frankly, I think are underestimating their risk. They're probably a much more risk and COVID than they perceive. But I think a lot of the residual anxiety people feel around the virus is around kids, and hopefully we'll have a vaccine

for children very soon. And I have to be quite honest with you, Tim, and I talked about this every day with doctors, UH and the medical community. I think there is a feeling like I got the Visor vaccine, I got the Madura vaccine, like there is a feeling that one is better than another. You've got a huge audience right now, a global audience. I mean, what do you say to them, how do we understand especially as we continue to see studies out there, officials, regulations you know,

come in about these, uh, these vaccines. Yes, it's not what the data shows when you can pull any one study and try to make a claim that one vaccine might be slightly more beneficial than another vaccine in terms of its long term efficacy or the absolute potency of what of the effective says delivering. But the totality of data really shows that these vaccines are interchangeable and and all of providing durable protection and they're all doing their job.

They're fulfilling the original premise. Remember the original premise of these vaccines, with that they would protect you against severe disease and hospitalization. And all the vaccines are proving very effective at that. I think something really frustrating to a lot of people right now. Dr Gottlieb is, uh, there's still you know, you write about the lack of real

time testing and available testing. Even almost two years into when we first discovered this, I still walk into a drug store and I cannot get a Binance test right one of those from Elliott Labs, and I can't order them online this the availability is still not there. So you write about it in your book How to Prepare for the Next Pandemic. We're still not getting through through this one right now. We're still not learning the lessons that we should have learned almost two years ago. Now.

The problem is that we didn't. We didn't scale the production of the tests that consumers prefer. What consumers want are at home tests that they can deploy themselves that are easy to use where they can get a readable

result right in the privacy of their home. A lot of the tests that are available in the market that aren't selling out are the ones that either require you to send the swab off overnight so you don't get an inscontinuous result, or you have to upload some data that the test reads out to get a result on your iPhone and therefore you're boding the result to an authority. People want to be able to test themselves within the private theory of their own home and make a determination

what they do with that result. And those are the binets now tests to your point, which is selling out, the Luomera tests, which isn't available, So the test that consumers want are the ones that aren't available. I think companies probably miscalculated and didn't fully appreciate what consumer preferences would be. But the reality is that this is a completely new category. The whole idea of making at home tests available to diagnose patients for infectious diseases, that's a

new category. That's former FDA commissioner and board member at the gene sequencing company Alumina, also the big farmer company Fiser. He's also a healthcare investor, and of course his new book it's out now. It's called Uncontrolled Spread, Why COVID nineteen crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic. That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser

and I'm tamst Out. Of that coming up in our next hour, our next wave of critical technological advancements well there within reach. We're going to explore some of them, including the race to mind more cobalt so we can produce better batteries to power us into the future. That's our domestic cover story. It's all part of the Sooner than You Think issue, plus Peter Teel's singular legacy in

Silicon Valley it definitely continues to grow. A new book by our own Max Chaffkin explores the tech entrepreneurs vast influence in California and Washington, d C. As well. This is Bloomberg. 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. As it happened, Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes

Tim Stinovin on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, I'm Carol Messer and I'm Tim Stanova. Plenny Head in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including our own Max Chafkin on his just released book, The Contrarian, Peter Teel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. Plus how Amazon's most prolific fulfillment center is using robots and algorithms to ship out more than one million packages a day. Also, the White House has planned to bring high speed and

access to rural America. First up this hour, our domestic cover story. It's about the search for a better battery. It's part of our sooner than you think issue. When we look at the latest achievements in technology that are changing the way we live across the globe. Change is already happening to do that. Let's bring in at Jeff Muscus. He's a features editor at Bloomberg business Week. Lots to

discuss with him this cover story about Drake Bennett. Jeff, let's talk about batteries and specifically what goes into them, cobalt. I don't think a lot of people think about that when they plug their phones in, or if they have an electric car, plug their car into charge it. Why is cobalt so important to battery production and where are we're finding it? Thanks guys, Yeah, I'm proud of this

one by Drake. Cobalt is one of the most critical elements, along with nicol and lethium and and full of other rare metals that go into our phones. And we'll go into the next one point to billion electric batteries that we need to replace the world's internal combustion vehicles. But it's also one of the more conflicted medals on the planet.

Most of the known reserves flying under Congo countries, you know, plagued by corruption and frequent wars, and we're mining often occurs in dangerous, deadly conditions and not infrequently is done by kids. You get into um or Drake, I should say, gets into this story and says, you know, there's kind of two ways of looking at this. We need more cobalts. So there's either finding more cobalt, most of which, as you said, is in the Congo, or figuring out how

to use less. That's kind of the two ways of looking at it. That's right. And uh. For this storage Rake went both to the lab at University of Texas at Austin, where the team of people, some of whom have been working on this problem for decades or I feel like they're they're getting close to cobalt out of the batteries to some degree or or perhaps entirely. And he also jetted up to the far Arctic North where people are trying to figure out how to find cobalt

smarter and without having to rely on exploitative labor. So what happens. First, do do we figure out a way to to develop high quality batteries without cobalt, or or do we figure out a way to mine cobalt in a in a in a way that is sustainable and and and doesn't involve conflicted areas. We kind of got to do everything at once. The problem is so urgent because solving the climate crisis require requires solving the battery problem,

which requires a large degree solving the cobalt problem. UM. People are sort of trying these two tax and a few others simultaneously. Some people are trying to recycle cobalt out and spend batteries at a better rate than we properly can right now. Other people are rethinking or processing to try to make that more cost effective. UM. And some people are trying to u do deep sea mining on the on the ocean floor, which has its son

environmental consequences. But UM, these two approaches finding you know, a smarter way to find cobalt in the ground, in ways to build batteries so that you you don't need the cobalt so much, and it seems like the most promising. Hey, Jeff, I do feel like there's a theme, at least for some of the stories that are in the sooner than you think issues, and that has to do with scarcity. You're talking about scarcity when it comes to cobalt for batteries,

um also increasingly scarce. And I want to get to another story in the issue by Liz Done is water. Let's talk about we learned a lot about water arrogation as a result of this story. LOSES piece focused on micro drip irrigation from a company in in Israel that now is making its way into the parched American Southwest.

There's also, you know, like this battery story is based on a technology that we've sort of, you know, known for decades, We've we've needed some version of and that now you know, now that every summer is the hottest on record, and California's experiencing record wildfires every year or

two is becoming much more urgent. Um And so this piece, which focuses on a kind of trip irrigation that has been largely theoretical for most of the past century until the addition of this tiny plastic widget, it seems to make it all much more cost effective. Carol mentioned the theme of scarcity. You touched on it, and we're also talking about the scarcity. I think this is going to be surprising to a lot of people listening. It certainly

was to me, but more than a hundred million Americans. Jeff. As Austin Carr points out and in his feature about broadband Internet access, million Americans do not have access to high speed internet, and I'm curious what what the US government is doing or finally doing, in order to try

to get these people connected. Well, the good news for the those hundred and twenty millionaires so Americans is that there are tens of billions of dollars in the biden omymous spending bills on the table right now that would go to finally closing the digital divide and bringing these um people into a meaningful version of the twenty one

century digital world. Problem that Austin found is he towards the Arkansas Delta, is that, you know, that's still a price tag that might fall short if we're talking just about extending, you know, fiber optic cables from the telecom companies to everybody's house, and so what some small telecoms

are doing throughout the the Americans, South and elsewhere. As Austin writes in the piece, UH taking more of a kitchen sync approach to UM plant relays on the top of tall radio towers, or UH use wireless networks that can extend um the equivalent of cabled people who I can't get it. There's a lot of moving parts to all of this, and as you said, Austin gets into all of it. Hey, listen, Thank you so much. Bloomberg Business Week Features editor Jeff Muscus. You're listening to Bloomberg

Business Week coming up. Machines are running the show at Amazon's flagship fulfilment center, and they're forever impacting the jobs of humans in the process taking care of it all robots and algorithms. We go inside the e commerce giants test lab that chips more than a million packages a day. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Robots and algorithms they are taking over, Tim. They're probably

coming for our job as well. I hope, I certainly hope not because I don't bosses, please don't listen. Uh yeah, but are they as delightful as you? Carol? Probably not. Definitely start talking about the bf I for facility where machines are literally running the show. Bloomberg News Technology reporter Matt day takes us inside the massive facility along with

Bloomberg business Week editor Joel Weber. The significance of this is that this was the first fulfillment center that was able to process more than a million packages a day, and so obviously that, you know, once they optimized that, it was like what else can we take it? Um and And the secret to that, though, as Matt has revealed, is that there's a lot of algorithms. There's a few robots, and the humans work for all of them, right, Matt, Yeah,

that's right. Honestly, the starting point for this story, I met a guy who used to work at Amazon, went and jump somewhere else. He said, Man, I'm doing so many things that I never had to do back when I was at an Amazon warehouse. It just automated all of that for me. Well, tell us more as you walk um BF I four, which is this massive fulfillment center outside uh Seattle, tell us about it. Did you

go visit it? Yeah, it's the place I've been a couple of times over over the years writing about Amazon. You know, as Joel said, they'd love to have folks in the tours. They're really proud of the facility. It's just a big exurban rectangle side the fifteen football field to go in, and there's this kind of low hum. But the weird thing for me is it's kind of quiet.

Everybody's sort of in their own station. You know, most people, probably by number, are are putting something in a shelf um that's brought to them by a robot, or recreating something from a shelf and sending on down the line. Um. You know, a couple of thousand people a day just you know, doing roughly most of them the same task over and over again, whether it's picking something off the shelf, putting in a package, and taking orders from from a

smartphone app all time. What does your instinct tell you about a facility like this when you walk inside it and you see it, does it seem like, given the number of packages it's able to process a day, does it seem like more people should be there? You know, it really does. Um that the places is a there's a low hum, but it is kind of, you really quiet, like you would you would assume, hearing figures like a million packages the day, that there'll be more more frenzy.

But Amazon's just got it down to such a science that everyone's just sort of, you know, quietly going about their business that at their station, um, quietly working for algorithms and robots. So what is the human toll of that they even told that, Well, it's it's you know, working in an Amazon warehouses often an unpleasant place and has been been widely reported. Um. Amazon's productivity tracking systems

are a real precise right. They can tell when you're working, They can tell when you put down the scanner, you know. So if you're in one of these frontline jobs, there's always this voice you know sometimes that it's just literally account countdown clock on your workstation telling you, um, you know, exactly what they expect you to be able to do. And Amazon, the very aggressive company, sets that target real high. Um.

So that's that's the life for the front line. But one of the things that interested me, especially given that that story is so well known, as so, what the heck to managers do in this construct? Right? If if these people are working kind of self directed, what what are the people you know, at the top of the pyramid in a building like this, what do they all do all day? Well, they need to manage a lot more people, right do um? And and a lot of

what they do is HR essentially. You know, they're they're trying to take it the best out of people. They're trying to troubleshoot when something goes wrong, you know, just because again all of the software whizzes that Amazon have taken taken things out of their hands. Right, they don't do um staffing planning at a at a granular way. A lot of you know, warehouses in any company will do right. Most places you go to work and you know the boss or the schedule tells you where to

go here, the schedules gripped up by by algorithm. Right, there's just so much that's been taken off their shoulders kind of with the aim of getting getting this this thin line of managers to effectively manage thousands and thousands of people. Just real basic question. What's b F I four stand for? What? What is that? So it is a reference to uh an airport in Seattle called Boeing Field. Every every Amazon building across the country takes its name

from from whatever the regional airport is. There was a big question I forgot to ask during the edit confessional. But you get to know how the sausage is made. The other thing is you know, obviously this is somewhat of the secret weapon for Amazon and allowed them to really become such a dominant company. But how does this automation compare with you know, the Walmarts and the targets of the world that that compete with them. Folks are

definitely closing the gap. Um. Amazon has you know, built a lot of its technology, It's bought a lot of its technology. We read about their their similar acquisition of a little robot maker called Kiva back in twelve that gave him a real big head start. Um. But companies, you know are imitating what Amazon does and they are closing that gap. Right. Amazon's biggest advantage a few years ago was getting things out of these buildings as fast

as they can. You know, today they're looking for for secrets also so well, just because you know, the targets of the world, the Walmarts of the world are are kind of taking their cues from Amazon's roboti sized fulfillment and imputment in their own operations. Not from a financial perspective, the ultimate goal for for any company that has this many employees is to reduce the number of employees because they're so expensive. Help us see into the future and

Amazon's ability to actually automate nearly everything. Amazon has a set aside. Full automation has a long term goal. Um, it's something there their technology teams and their robotists are working towards. I think realistically they don't see that as practical for a long long time. Um, but that doesn't

mean they can't get savings along the way, right. We we talked to some folks who had entied into their key acquisition and said they saved something like on labor costs in the first implementations of their their robots come to people, um operating methods. So there's there's definitely a lot of costs that that Amazon can look to reduce, you know, without going kind of that that dream of of a fully automated to samably that doesn't require any any humans at all. So how much better has this

stuff gotten with with practice in time? Is there any sense of that? We do know that how to call it? In an a five or six year period, they were maybe three times as fast. Right, it's date of the art warehouse. Um, you know, roughly a decade ago was doing something like three hundred thousand items a day. As

you mentioned, kicking us off. This facility can do them billion plus that that stat though, I put an afterston that's getting a couple of years old now, so it would not surprise me at all of Amazon is setting a new threshold and just just isn't quite ready to brack about it yet, all right, So to be feared or imitated or both, it's certainly both depending on depending on your line of work. But yeah, they've definitely reshaped

warehousing in their image with this kind of technology. That's Bloomberg News tech reporter Matt Day along with the editor of the magazine, Joel Weber. Check out Matt story. It's featured in the Sooner Than You Think issue still to come on Bloomberg Business Weeks um startling data on the number of Americans who lack high speed internet access. You

heard Jeff Muscus talk about this a little bit. What some small telecoms are doing throughout the the American South and elsewhere is taking more of occasion sync approach to plant relays on the top of tall radio towers or uh use wireless networks that can extend um the equivalent of cabled people who We're going to get more of that story and what the Biden administration is doing to

change all of that. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nine team, and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week and so as your Heart.

Earlier from our features editor Jeff Muskist, one of your twenty million Americans are currently without access to high speed internet in the United States. It's a number that the Biden administration is really trying to bring down with some help from the private sector. Tim The story is featured in the Business Week Sooner Than You Think issue, and the man who wrote the story is Bloomberg News tech reporter Austin Carr. He joined us to help us understand

the country's digital divide. It's just a different world than uh the Internet have have experienced versus the Internet have not you Where I went to in the Arkansas Delta, which is about you know, a couple hours outside of Little Rock, very remote, very rural parts, high poverty rates, low density population. And you know, only recently one of the internet providers I talked with had just turned off their dial up internet which they had been, you know,

charging fifty cents per hours. It's just a different world. You don't realize that they can't stream Netflix there, they can't do Zoom, they can't book a COVID appointment if they don't have internet access. And so what I want to show with the story is what it looks like on the ground as Washington considers tackling this digital divide with the Infrastructure or Spending bill, which is making its

way through through Congress right now. It is through the House as well, and they're considering spending tens of billions of dollars on broadband deployment subsidies and giving us potentially the best shot in many years that a really narrowing the gap. And the big debate is how do we actually do that, what technologies do we invest in? Uh,

what's the best bang for our buck? And a story shows what it's like, what the reality is like in places like rural Arkansas and what you saw in the cat Skills of how much it takes to actually close that divide with infrastructure on the ground, Well, how much

does it take? Because in order for my friends, and I'd actually spent a lot of time on Saturday night talking to them about this because this is the first time I had visited them in the seven years that they've lived up there that they had high speed internet. Every other time they've relied on a satellite to actually get them internet access, and they were capped at fifteen gigs a month, which is really nothing. I mean, people use fifteen gigs a month, uh in a day if

they're streaming something high definition or in a couple of days. Uh. And and I wonder about the way that technology has changed because they actually got cable laid down, which is very expensive. But you see companies like Starlink Elon Musk's satellite company being able to offer potentially lower cost solutions. So what's the technology needed here and how much has it cost? So if the Arkansas Delta, that the big debate is how much do you spend on fiber, which

is the gold standard. That's what you have with every high speed internet pretty much and every your wealth or urban part of America at this point, um or do you invest in sort of a riskier technology like Elon Musk's Starling satellites which orbit uh lower part over the

Earth and zap coverage from space. There's five G home Internet, which is sort of a home based version of what you get from say T Mobile or a T n T or Verizon UM or their fixed wireless tools, which like Citizen Broadband Radio service, which is actually what a bunch of the local Internet providers in Arkansas are using

these days. Uh. It's a wireless spectrum historically used by the U. S. Navy to to sort of beam radar transmissions, and the SEC has repurposed that spectrum for commercial use, allowing local players to sort of beam Internet coverage using radio antennas, which sounds kind of old school, but it works for up to six miles. It's not as fast or reliable as fiber, but it gives decent speeds and costs a fraction of physically wiring up every home in America.

And so that that's really comes down to this cost benefit analysis of in rural In rural Arkansas, I'm told it can cost fifty thou are more to get a fiber optic cable uh laid into the ground, and that's not including trenching costs or construction, etcetera. Um, And so how much are you willing to invest in that versus a far cheaper but maybe less reliable technology that might not be relevant ten years, that might need to be eventually replaced in fiber. Hey, Austin, what's the what's the

other side of this coin? Here? The the economic cost of not having these more than one million Americans connected with broadband internet? What is I mean? Yeah, it's a it's a tragic cost. I'm not sure if it's it must be difficult to quantify, but it's something that the reason there's been more emphasis on this subject is because

of the COVID nineteen pandemic um. You know, prior to to the pandemic um, you know a lot of folks that it said that any infrastructure bill that came up, it was always about investing in roads or bridges or railroads. And when I talked to the Rural Broadband Association, they just kept saying, Hey, it's also in addition to roads

and bridges, it's also broadband. And that didn't change the Congress's perspective on that didn't really change until the COVID pandemic, when suddenly they realized employers couldn't have people working from home because they couldn't access zoom, or kids couldn't work from home and do their homework because they didn't have

uh Internet access. But that that's why this is this debate is really coming to the forefront right now in the Infrastructure Bill of trying to solve that digital divide, because man, we saw that during the pandemic that the US is just not prepared for a remote society. That's

Bloomberg News Technology reporter Austin Carr. So many images at the beginning of the pandemic when kids went to remote learning, of kids, you know, outside of McDonald's or as Austin talked about, outside of community center because that's where high speed internet was. The image of kids having to have fans on them because they were outside in hot weather. I mean, it's it's a stark reminder of where we are as a country when it comes to the digital

divide exactly. It's definitely too a must read. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week coming up, We're gonna welcome in Business Week Features editor Max Chafkin, who is at with a new book, The Contrarian Peter Tile and Silicon Valleys Pursuit of Power. It's all about the PayPal and Palentteer co founder and his rise to power to become one of Big TeX's most influential figures. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg

Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Billionaire investor, technology innovator and disruptor and Trump supporter. These are always to describe Peter til You might recall last week's cover story. It focused on the Silicon Valley star, and it was an excerpt from a new book out by Business Week

Features editor Max Chafkin. It's called The Contrarian Peter Teal and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power, An inside look at Teal's rise from successful entrepreneur to big tech power broker and Max joined on the day of the book's release. Check it out. You know, it's it's kind of a

cool time to be having these conversations. Um. You know, last week there was this kind of series of stories about Facebook, you know, all these Blockbuster wall street journal stories, all the ways that Facebook is kind of and maybe to put it gently, maybe ignoring their responsibilities to society and UM And I think, you know, teal as this long time Facebook board member, longest serving board member, is

a good sort of way into that. Well, you know, you bring that up, and you remind me of really the beginning of your book, which talks about the way that technology has changed, especially in the context of the way we think about it. I think you wrote the Silicon Valley was supposed to save us. Yeah, absolutely, And I think that that is kind of maybe the key

to understanding a lot of these UM stories. So back you know, fifteen or twenty years ago when Facebook in particular, but a lot of these stuff, uh Silicon Valley companies were really small, kind of these insurgent, you know, troublemakers. You know, there was this attitude of like, you know, the rules don't matter, We're just gonna do our thing. And and you know, the face Facebook model famously puts this, um you know, uh whatever, it's it's all about disruption

and and stuff. So so I think that that attitude has kind of been spun forward, and these companies now are are basically being held to account for for that attitude, that the embrace of disruption as an as an end for its own sake. So I want to go back to that. I remember when everybody it started coming out that Peter Teal was kind of buddy with Donald Trump, and we started seeing the pictures of it, and it was it was kind of a wait, what moment for me, Like, wait,

these two guys get along, what is the relationship. So there, it's it's hard to know exactly what the relationship is. But but but let me give you a couple of of points. I mean, Teal was, um, you know, the first, you know, big deal business person to support Donald Trump. If you look down the list of you know, kind of speakers at the Republican National mentioned in T sixteen, there are some big business names, but they tended to be kind of from real estate or from kind of these marginal

industries where Trump maybe had a relationship. So you had, you know, the UFC guy, you had Tom Barrick, you know whatever these are. The is are big, yeah, the pillow my pillow guy. Um, but Till kind of brings an added level of stature as this big deal venture capitalist. Now that got him on the inside. You know, he is not characature logically, if that's a word, he is not. He doesn't have a lot in common with Trump. He's

very introverted, he's not boastful. On the other hand, the thing that was core to Trump's candidacy, I think, and to Trump's appeals this idea that he's going to say the things that the elites are afraid to say, and that that is something that Peter Teal has cared about

all his life. And you see it in his sort of business dealings, um, you know, he he has embraced these companies that are all about disrupting the status quo, you know, kind of messing with existing institutions, and in his political dealings where he's kind of embraced these, you know,

basically provocateurs. Max, I want to talk more about politics in just a second, but I want to get an understanding for how Peter til the Peter Teal that we see today, the Peter tell I think that a lot of Americans met for the first time during the Republican National Convention and he spoke there in support of of of then Canada Trump. When what was that the point that he became that Peter Till. Yeah, I mean it built over you know, a couple of decades, and it

it kind of started. I mean, you know, you go all the way back to his childhood. I do in the book. I mean he was you know, smart, introverted guy, bullied as a kid and and kind of um basically pours a lot of that grievance, maybe you would call it into this kind of activist career at the Stanford Review, which was a right wing newspaper he started at Stanford

in the eighties. Um, there's a lot of this going on. Um, you know, at the time, there were other it's it's pretty similar to like the Dartmouth Review and the and the Cornell Review. They're a bunch of these kind of

conservative bomb throwers. And Til does something almost very odd, which is then sort of after bumping around um in law and banking, goes to Silicon Valley and and starts PayPal and then the pay and then these PayPal co founders, many of whom came from the Stanford Review, Um, basically you know, joined in with him and and they and they they become this kind of disruptive gang of of of troublemakers and and of and and of you know,

world builders, people who are investing in the most interesting, most profitable, most powerful companies, um and and what and as he's as his profile raises, he you know, he's he's still involved in that kind of conservative, you know, political world. And I think that's what we saw, you know,

at the Republican National Convention. Teel speech, you know, while not necessarily very polished, I think is a really important moment, you know, both for like the history of the Trump presidency, but also as like, you know, the first openly gay person to acknowledge that at Republican Convention. He got a

round of applause um. And also his critique of Hillary Clinton in support of Trump was kind of a very smart formulation that I think was useful to Trump, which is that Trump is somebody who's going to blow up the system. The government's not working. And and I think Teel you know, served a really valuable person per us both the Trump and to the Republican Party. Which is kind of interesting day where we talked to Bill Ferries covering Joe Biden at the u N where Biden is

kind of disrupting some of those old relationships. We thought it we could get back to normal. We continue to kind of see that out there and force I wonder what Peter Tail's all about. What's his endgame here, especially as he you know, he's a disruptor, and yet he's back in political candidates. That feels like a much more traditional route for a leader. So I think he's got kind of two endgames. Tell um we're as we're talking about,

you know, during the break. You know, he's a he's a hedge fund guy at heart, and he wants to find good investments and and you know, and optimize his portfolio and continue to grow his network. So he's continuing to invest. But but of course, unlike a lot of hedge fund guys, um Til also has a political project. And I think the political project is very much in line with his work as an investor, and that's kind

of what makes him interesting. It's fairly unusual, although not of course unprecedented, because that's very similar to what like the Koch brothers did um for for at least for a long time. Now. What he's doing now is trying to cultivate what you might think of as the post Trump wing of the Republican Party. So so these are people who voted for Trump, who are really into Trump is um um and and who want to see it continue.

And and Peter Teal is one of those people. I mean he he has, you know, embraced the ideological component of Trump is um if not totally. You know, Donald Trump and the candidates he's backing. So they're two big ones right now. One is Ja d vance and who's running for senator Ohio, and the other is Blake Masters,

who's running for Senate in Arizona. Teal has given ten million bucks to each of them for each each has a superpack and they are really running as kind of ideological extensions of Peter Teal's worldview, Like their their positions are very much in line with his ideas and also

some of his business priorities. You know, it's j. D Vance, uh, not too long ago put out a statement, you know, in support of crypto and it's it's kind of interesting that in Ohio populist supports crypto um and yes Teal supported Trump, and yes, Trump kind of left the White House, you know, in not under the best circumstances, of course, a pandemic and insurrection. But Teal, in a weird way, I think is in an even better position now than he was in both Masters and Advance you know, kind

of work for him. Masters is is still an executive at Teal's hedge fund, at the family office that that manages Teal's macro investments, and still works at the Teal Foundation. Jade Vance worked for Teal. They've invested alongside one another. Um. You know, these men may or may not lose. But the sort of Peter Teal as a behind the scenes power player that is going to continue. And I think you know, he could play a really big role, um, you know, in terms of shaping the direction of the country.

And you know, potentially beyond that, is that his legacy beyond business, I mean from from Stanford to to pay Pal to palanteer uh to you know, before that suing gawker, Like what what what's next for him? What's his legacy? Yeah, I mean I think I think his legacy is this again, that this far right conservative project, which includes, um, you know, hawkishness on immigration, like that's that's a big part of it. Um. It also includes the kind of nationalism um, which again

is very strange for somebody as a libertarian. UM. But and and and probably most importantly it includes you know, the elevation of these you know, disruptive companies. I mean you brought up Palentteer. That's a great one, and Palentteer has grown tremendously over the last um five years. You know, it's it's it's on its way. If if it's not

already becoming one of the main defense contractors. Got to ask you would Peter Till not be as interesting if Donald Trump hadn't come along and you hadn't seen that relationship in your view, no, yeah, percent, if he had just stayed a Silicon Valley guy and just continued to be you know, the investor in Silicon Valley. I mean, we talked about investors all the time. They're really interesting.

But of course it's it's when you cross over into the economic into the cultural realms that I think and political realms that that it gets super interesting. Um. Now, what I will say though, is I think that that backing of Donald Trump was almost inevitable. I mean it Teal is not the only Silicon Vale guy we're seeing

engage politically. You know, we're talking during the break about Reid Hoffman, Um, you know, huge Democratic donor and also of course, a good friend of Peter tells um and I think these companies, you know, we're seeing you know, Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, they're all having to engage more with the US government. So I think in some ways Teal was just a

little bit ahead of the curve. He wasn't you know, these guys are all going to be playing this role, and they're going to be forced into it, almost whether they like it or not. Because when you get this big, you know, regulators get interested and and then you know, companies will do what it takes to defend their interests. That's Business Week features editor Max Chafkin on his new book, just released this week. It's called The Contrariant, Peter Teal

and Silicon Valleys Pursuit of Power. Catch the entire conversation with Max. You can find that on our podcast feed. That wraps up the weekend edition to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks a lot for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovk. Be sure to tune into our Bloomberg Business Week Daily show. It's Monday through Friday and starts at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily broadcast. Find

that on YouTube just search on Bloomberg Global News. Also check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find it at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. It's great for weekend listening. I'm just going to point that out. Bloomberg Business Week also available on newsstands right now, also at Bloomberg dot com and on

the Bloomberg Terminal. You can also see me at Bloomberg Quick Take available at Bloomberg dot com, slash Qt and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. Have a great weekend. This is Bloomberg