Frank McCourt Readying US TikTok Bid, Google's AI Announcements

From Marhart where Innovation of Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.

This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.

I'm Caroline hein And at Blouemog's world headquarters in New York, and.

I met Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.

A new bidder emerges for TikTok.

We sit down with the Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt to discuss us.

Will bring you the takeaways from Google's annual IO Developers Conference, an.

Open a eyed chief scientist who played a key role in Sam Altman's Auster Pole's departing the company. We'll discuss that and so much more throughout the hour. At first, that's checking on these markets. There is a macro playbook happening, and it is a cooler CPI print being digestif by the market that sends stockston record highs, record highs on the NASAC, recordize on global stocks. More broadly, the SMP, the stock six one hundred over in Europe also getting a lift because people start.

To factor in that. Maybe we'll we'll get those rate.

Cups from from the rev Federal reserve tenure yield, therefore diving down seven basis points.

Bond's rally yields full.

Move on because the dollar is down, and what does that mean Crypto is higher? We're seeing a real risk on field to today's trade. We're up almost five percent on bitcoin, but ed, what are you looking at on the micro Okay?

So Google alphabet shares higher for a second day. We will go later in the show to our reporter that was on the ground, new AI, back search, new iterations of the models. Clearly investors like something in there, so

Microsoft hier percentage one.

I put it in there as a proxy for open AI, which we'll discuss later in the show. But it is higher Caroline by a percentage point, very big AI focus in a crowded field.

Right now, it is crowded.

And there also we're being crowded for newsflow right now, particularly when we think about this world of social media, the future ownership of social media, and a key player of course that needs to be divested or indeed be banned from the US.

We want to discuss TikTok now.

Welcome our Bloomberg TV and radio audiences worldwide to join the project. Liberty founder and m Court Global Executive chairman and billionaire Frank McCourt, who is building a consortium to bid for social media at TikTok's US business.

Frank, welcome to the show.

And how much money do you actually have to be offering to TikTok.

Well, it's too early to know how much the TikTok is going to be sold for or if it's going to be sold. We happen to believe it will be sold and we're betting on that. We don't have the information yet though on what exactly they're selling or peak as the financial statements, so we can't really tell what the price will be. But one thing that's important, Caroline, is we're not interested in the algorithm, so we're interested in actually an alternative web where people own and control

Frank we will discuss later on that.

I think the technology plan that's important given that the algorithm is essentially put on an export ban list by China. But I'd be grateful in the first instance just to go through some of the mechanics here if that's okay. For example, have you spoken to TikTok or Bite Dance. Have you spoken to the US government about this bid?

Yeah, we have not spoken to Byte Dance or TikTok. We have spoken to a number of other actors in this and have been encouraged to move forward with this approach. Remember this is this is putting forward an alternative vision for how the Internet operates right now, whether it's bytown, whether it's TikTok rather or our own US platforms. Our information, our data, our personhood actually is scraped from us aggregated by these big platforms and they apply algorithms to it.

Frank, you mentioned other actors.

I'm conscious that the sequoiir in general Atlanta take, for example, our US based firms that sit on the cat table of byte Dance.

Do you have their support in your bid?

It's too early for me to make these statements. We've retained Google Tyme Securities as our advisor, along with Kirklin and Ellis as an advisor to put together all the pieces of this bid. But let's be realistic. This is early in a process. It's still very noisy. We don't know exactly what byite Dance will be selling. They've filed a lawsuit reso lay, so they're fighting this, but I am confident at the end of the day, they'll either have to sell or shut it down, and we don't

Terms of use of one platform.

I don't think this data should be in the control of any one person, one company, or a Chinese communist party. I think it's important that we shift our mindset now and shift the paradigm from the Internet we've been living with, which is doing real harms and it's undermining democracy, it's ripping society apart, and of course we're hearing more and more about the harms toed children. Let's build a better version.

We are with Frank mccaun of course, a project and Liberty found I'm a Cork Global executive chairman and across radio and TV. We're discussing your potential bid for TikTok if indeed TikTok is to be sold, and that is a big if. But all of this sounds philanthropic. Want any money back if you're going to be raising billions millions of your own potentially on the line here, Yeah.

Of course, I think it's interesting that it sounds philanthropical to you, because I do think it does have the potential of being one of the biggest impact projects of our lifetime. But this has to have commercial components to it to be realistic. I mean, this can't be some alternative internet that is, you know, better, better architected and healthier for people, but no.

One uses advertising. How will you make money back? Is this subscription based all of the above?

Let's think of it this way. Once you unleash the power and the innovation and the invention of a data sharing economy, we're going to see ideas and models that far exceed what we have today. Right now, all of this is tied up in just a few companies just a few platforms. Let's unleash the innovation of everyone and unleash and have the value sharing proposition be a bit different. So, of course there'll be commercial users limited only by our imagination,

Frank, sorry to interrupt you. There's a recurring question. I think Caroline would back me up that I've been very consistent in asking it, which is, there are one hundred and seventy million US users of TikTok, and most of them quite like using it as it is. Is there anything you can tell me about the product plan or your engagement with the existing user base that would convince that one hundred and seventy million that they'll want to continue using it whatever happens.

Yeah, of course.

This is the key to the transaction, is for them to be excited about migrating to this new model of the Internet, let's call it, where they own and control their data and where they participate in the value. So the user experience has to be every bit as easy, polished and fun as it is now. But we wouldn't users be excited about actually being in charge and actually participating in the value.

And so this has to.

Be seamless in terms of the user experience, but the underlying technology will be far far better the design of the technology putting them in charge of themselves. So of course it needs to be done in a way and where the users are are as excited or more excited about the new version. But remember right now there's a risk there will be shut down. So we don't want

Frank we use wheres like consortium or even like coalition. There are a number of people people who have raised their hand about doing something with TikTok's US assets. Steve Minuchin, former Treasury secretary, and Eric Schmidt, one of the Google founders, kind of top of mind. Have you spoken to them and proposed, for example, that you will just get together, bring your intellectual capital together in one bid.

No, I have not, and I do want to distinguish our bid from what at least I understand their bids to be about we don't need Saudi money to do this bid. Right, We're not talking about the same type of architecture where we just replace you know, Chinese ownership with another ownership and then we have a continue to have a centralized, autocratic, surveillance based technology where we're users, data is scraped and aggregated.

And so forth.

This is not Our version is not a top down approach. Our version is empower the users. Empower people and make this a people's bick. Make this something where individuals have agency and choice and power return to them. The harms that we're seeing with the Internet. And this is not limited to TikTok right. Our own platforms are built with the same model of scraping data and exploiting it. Isn't

And frank, you've got people who are at the forefront of that argument about the harms of social media, height being one of them. With the anxious generation, it's all I see on social media at the moment. David Clark, so Tim Berners Lee who helped create the World Wide Web.

However, this sounds like.

You need crowdfunding Ultimately, how if you don't need Saudi money, what money will you need when you get a price point.

I think there'll be a combination of private capital, public what i'll call it public capital, and people's capital, so.

It will be crowdfunded.

Well, crowdfunding has an implication, right, I don't think we're necessarily raising money on the Internet, so that's not.

What we're talking about.

But look, we've brought in Google tem securities to help organize how we raise money. This should be the investors here, should be abroad, should should really reflect the broad coalition we're trying to create here about reclaiming the Internet right and using this as an opportunity to do that. So I would imagine in addition to private capital, there would be pension funds, endowments, foundations, philanthropies that are interested in a return, but not only a return on their capital.

Kitchen an impact thought leadership there from Frank mccork, Project Liberty founder and a Cork Global executive chairman, with thank him for his time and his views on the.

Bid bleep blop, bleep blop rap peop blue people bop. Time to get up, you silly little nerds way out.

That was DJ Ribia at the IO Developers Conference, testing out Google's DJ mode that Google recently added to his Generative AI Texts.

To Music tool.

Google also rolled out a new search engine that includes responses written by AI.

Bloomberg's Judy of.

Love was at the Google Developers Conference under the Big tent at that rave and joins us for more. Let's put the DJ performance to one side for now. The big news I think was AI powered search.

That's absolutely right, and this is a real seed change in goodle search. For the past year, Doodle has been experimenting with generative AI overviews, but that wasn't a special test version of the product. Now they're rolling out generative AI overviews in mainstream search, so all users in the United States will begin seeing them this week.

Julia Love, who was inhaling and all the hype man and all when it comes to Google Io, we thank you so much for joining us and setting us up into a conversation.

Now from the investor.

Perspective, Ioka, Yoshioka is with us Port Radio manager and Wealth Enhancement Group, and Ioka, what did you make of ultimately Google wanting to basically outshine what open ai I put out there yesterday?

Did they manage to do that?

Have they managed to convince us that they're not in some way behind in this race but actually leaving it?

Sure?

I think they did a great job this year showcasing their capabilities with artificial intelligence, and really, you know, all the different types of ways that they are redefining what search really is for all of us, whether it's the overview portion within the traditional part of search, or just being able to use your phone and the video screen in order to do a search music, and all the other ways that search is evolving, I think is what was on display yesterday.

Okay, the stakes are pretty high right. You know, I was reflecting earlier in the show that the stock is up for a second day. But I think back to kind of some of the gaffs that the alphabets had as well in demoing it's generative are tools, and how that's impacted the stock. Do you think they've done enough to convince investors for the long term that that, yeah, we got this on a consumer facing or business facing AI.

You know, I think the landscape is rapidly evolving, and so I think it's difficult to say whether or not this is whether Alphabet or Google is really in that poll position. At this point. With AI, it's clearly got a much bigger competitive landscape than what was traditional searches competitive landscape, and so we'll have to see how this evolves over the coming months and years.

Many feeling on the street that they've regained the AI initiative here, many a consumer excited by how much better Gmail is going to become, for example, and many excited that maybe Google Glass is coming.

For a reiteration and a modern day take.

But I'm interested ultimately as to whether this actually adds to revenue, adds to future profitability for a business when they're undercutting on a price perspective significantly, open a eyes.

Offering absolutely, and then you know, the cost of all of this AI integrating it into all the different programs that they will have, all the different offerings that they'll have, is still going to continue to increase, and we saw that with the most recent quarter and their increase in

Kuren mentioned something really interesting, which is hardware's kind of back and Meta and the ray bands is coming up every week on the show. If you're an investor in a portfolio manager, do you sit your desk in the morning and go, you know what, I've got to get the research desk on this hardware thing.

On the hardware use case of AI.

I'm not sure if I'm cool enough to you know, you get all of the hardware, whether it's Google Glass or metas Arabians. But you know, I think everybody's looking for that next killer sort of technology, whether it's hardware or software, and you know, that's the portion that I think everybody's still looking for when it comes to generative AI.

Also, I think many forget that there is a weight on Google's shoulders here. They cannot roll out products in quite the same fast pace as a more startup version of a generative AI bid is at the moment because they've got billions of users and.

Already we've seen them rush.

Many would say the image generation side of the equation and look at the well, the backlash they got for that with Gemini.

How much are you.

Frustrated though, by the fact that they're talking up a lot of things that then sort of leave for our imagination as and when they're going to be in our hands.

You know, it is a level of frustration when it comes to the overall communication from Google. I think they are in a rush because they're in a position to sort of protect what they have and the pole position that they're in regarding search.

So, you know, we'll.

See if they've kind of been able to refine some of that going forward. I think the most recent Google Io yesterday really showed that they were at least able to refine it from last year, and so we'll see if that continues next year.

Yako Yoshioka, portfolio manager at Welfare Enhancement Group, I think you are cool enough come back on the show.

Bring you Meta ray bands with you. Thank you?

All right, We'll watching shares of Sony as we had to break investor friendly policies coming out overnight, authorization of a buyback plan that's been universally around the world. Something investors have cheered stock at one point nine percent overnight.

This is Bloomberg Technology.

It's time for talking tech and first up, the Yemeni government says they're holding back repairs on a key internet cable that's been damaged in the Red Sea.

This comes as the.

Government conducts an investigation into the cable owner's alleged ties to Huthi militia. The cable operators, Telly Yemen, controlled much of the damaged cables that connect Europe to Southeast Asia. The Yemeni government has notified twenty Global Group members of the probe into Tell Yemen's supposed associations with that group. Plus Alphabet's YouTube has blocked videos of a Hong Kong protest song in the city, just days after a local

Listing for the city since February.

The company says it intends to publish a registration dock with the London Stock Exchange, but did not disclose how much it plans to raise CARROC.

Meanwhile, let's just shift our attention towards well a key founder Andreill founder Palmer Lucky about how his AI and autonomous systems are actually changing on the battlefield. We've been speaking to him, not only here on the show just last week, but Bloomberg Original's host Emily Chang caught up with him to discuss his mission to tackle legacy defense contractors and the challenges of scaling a defense teching in Nicorn.

Just take a listen.

Right now. He Androl's very much in a high growth stage. We've done a lot of things that I'm very, very proud of but I'm very aware of the fact that we are not a profitable business. We are living on borrowed time, and so it's hard for me to come and feel like I've made it when I know that anyone can raise money from vcs, buy a really big office and feel a full of people. The question is are those people building the right things and will those things pay off?

You can catch more of that conversation on the circuit with them any chang tonight six pm ET on Bloomberg Television or go stream it at eight pm.

On Bloomberg Originals from New York.

From San Francisco, It's the Bloomberg Technology.

Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Ed love Low in San Francisco.

And I Hied in New York.

Let's get you a quick check on these markets, because we are at record highs votes and that is because the macro picture is one of inflation, somewhat calling the CPI print was what the market wanted to see and we're likely to see therefore record highs. The close for at the moment, then ask that one hundred the NASGAC and indeed the S and P five hundred global benchmarks at record highs two the sci Or World Country World Index up nine tenths.

Of a percent and a new record.

And I'm looking at bitcoin, all risk assets doing well in the idea that the Fed might actually cut this year, that being factored back in by the market, and we're up more than five percent on bitcoin as the dollar goes lower.

And move on to some of the individual movers.

Well, A key player that's helping the benchmarks from their key points perspective is in video. We're up more than three percent. Helps when you're worth more than two three trillion dollars. But it's also notable that we're actually gaking some thirty F filings this morning and a lot of more people actually upping their stakes in in video. Remember their earnings come out next week Monday. Dot Com you Sean and on this ed on the call. It's a small company, but it's a big move. So we used

Maybe just maybe we're going to be bought.

By KKR they're putting in their twenty two billion euro bid. They're trying to get the EU on board with this. This is all about sort of the phone network ultimate of Telecometalia. So at the close, we're up more than two percent over there in Europe for this particular player.

But what are you looking at?

Ed A big story that broke pretty late yesterday, and that is open ai chief scientist and co founder Ilia Sutskiva is leaving the artificial intelligence company, a departure that basically ends months of speculation in Silicon Valley about the future of who is a top AI researcher, someone that played a key role in the brief ouster of Sam

Was going on.

But he's one of the original founder's, former board member of open ai, and he's saying I'm leaving the company. I guess do we know why? Specifically he's leaving open ai.

So he didn't say much about exactly why he's leaving. But you know, we know that basically since the brief ouster of Sam Maltman, Ilia Satskuber, who was once you know, a very.

Common figure in the office, has not been.

Seen as much.

There is a lot of speculation, rumors about well, what's going to happen with Ilia?

Is he going to leave the company?

And so, you know, internally, I think it wasn't so much of a big surprise to many people that eventually Ilia would leave. Now what he's going to do next, he said, going to he has a new project and he'll share details in due time.

So we're all waiting to see.

Ultimately this comes down what was thought was a difference in opinion of the ultimate way you build generative artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence for the good of humanity. Is that what's underlying here a philosophical philosophical difference, or ultimately that there's other things that need to be built at this moment of great exuberance around the technology.

You know, I think it's really hard to say. What we do know is that Ilia Setskiv is someone who was working at these issues kind of at the intersection right of ethics and AI. He co led the super Alignment Team is what they call it there, which is all about how to make sure that AI is aligned with human values. So you know, of course, this is someone who's interested in the social implications of the technology

And also others leaving in his wake will have more to report out throughout the day. I'm sure Blueberg's Sharan KAfari thank you for breaking it down on that key departure coming from open AI. Now, let's just stick with artificial intelligence and turn to the growing legal backlash against companies as they experience rapid growth. Now, also how you can harness generator AI in the legal sphere too. We can have both of these conversations at the same time

Your platform is used by some of the top US law firms. It connects with a three thousand gators with new cases.

Basically, you're facilitating over ten million dollars in litigation HeLa as if lawyers weren't busy enough, you're finding ways in which there can be well group lawsuits. Broad interesting at the moment that we've just seen one versus the US government on the behalf of TikTok happening great.

First of all, it's great to be here, and I also want to say about justice intelligence in general. So the question regarding where their lawyers are busy enough. Our mission is to identify impactful cases that have a lot of both social and an legal impact around issues that are basically harming consumers, businesses, and employees. We're mostly focused around privacy issues, consumer protection, climate, environmental protection, which is super super important, and we're harnessing AI to do.

So to identify socially impactful.

Data. How does the AI technology work?

Yeah, So we are in a very interesting intersection between looking at legal data and event data, which is pretty much anything that can happen on social media or events happening online. And the way we do so is we look at tremendous amounts of legal data, which are cases, case law, regulations, new laws are coming in and understanding what are the fact patterns that the case law is talking about.

And how those events take action on everyday life.

Is this underpinned by specific LLM or someone else's AI model or is it something you built yourself.

Yeah, So the process is heavily infused in LMS, which is agnostic to what kind of LLMS that we're using, because it's a multi process. It's a multi step process which takes into consideration, ingesting the data, understanding what it is, and basically extracting the type of legal story or the legal phenomena that we're taking into action. So a lot of people assume that legalies is basically a different dialect of English, and they're correct to do so.

And this is the kind of intersection that we're looking at.

Where it's.

Yeah, sorry, I mean to interrupt, Guila. I I suffered three three years of law school and legal went in one air and out the other.

Please continue your answeert Yeah. Yeah.

And and as a non lawyer myself, just as a tech person, I am fascinated by by what kind of how can we align this type of language and make it usable for for consumers and for the people where often most of the legal violations that happened to them, they can happen pretty much in every kind of type of service or or or product or business that you're interacting with, And there is a constant fight over our attention.

Yeah, and this is and and this is what we're trying and trying to.

Build where we were consumers don't have to be worried about their rights being vito later or even the quality of air around them is deteriorating because there's not enough focus and not enough there's not enough power to the consumer to understand.

And to ingest that amount of data.

And on the other side, lawyers, the lawyers are only now starting to develop the intelligence gathering skills that are required in order trying to stand the full picture supported by facts and generally create more impactful cases.

Yes, we've already heard some of the issues of hallucination when it comes to looking back at previous contracts, previous cases via the use of generative AI and sometimes and making them up. But Gila, I'm also interested that I can't imagine there's too many lawyers out there, too many companies out there upset that their contracts are.

Being used as training data.

There's an awful lot of artists out there right now, an awful lot of creatives out there right now who worried about their own creations being used in large language models. How much you're seeing that as an area you're waiting into.

So I think the discourse around AI and the concept of originality and the owners of the content is a hot topic and we should discuss it from multiple angles in a way that we want to keep encouraging originality and humanity and content creation around that so people will keep innovating rather than just replicating replicating content.

That is doesn't have much impact.

I think that also from from the legal perspective, a lot of high margin task work, just like contracts, will be scarce and the focus will have to shift to different kinds of tasks that require the core human impact and the core human.

Seed that is required to create such a task.

So I think in the next in upcoming years, we're going to see maybe different ways to compensate content creators and having a more more clear and transparent way of how this data is going to be used in terms of hallucination. How we solved it at Darrow is that first of all, we are validating we're being the content that we're creating, because we are very, very focused on creating a trustworthy insight based on our sources, and also we are also providing the sources for our clients to

Heila Hiatt, CEO and co founder Darrow and Darrow named after Clarence Darrow, the nineteenth century lawyer from the Midwest who represented trade unions in all those whole profile cases.

Thank you so much.

Now coming up, we're going to be joined by the CEO of Chime talking a little bit about fintech and discuss the company's new offering.

More details than that next carot.

Yeah. Meanwhile, I just want to shine a light on some Lucashaw reporting ed because Netflix apparently going after some key NFL game around the Christmas time.

Once again there's foray into live events. This time live sports is an interesting take.

We're just down five ten percent interestingly on Netflix on the day, but they're likely to air two NFL games this Christmas Day and its largest push into live events.

That's something of their technology.

Chime the fintech, known for its fee free banking services, is now offering consumers the option of accessing as much as five hundred dollars of their paycheck before they arrive. Let's get more on this with Chime CEO Chris Britt, who joins me here in San Francisco. So it's interesting because you're offering the option to do this for free or if you want it instantly, two dollars, and you'd imagine that those that take up the offer would veer to the free side.

Maybe not. What's in it for you, guys?

Well, Chime is all about helping everyday people unlock financial progress.

We do that with a fee free checking.

Account and a host of services that help people with short term liquidity and credit building. And what's in it for us with this new service called my pay is that consumers would sign up for Chime get direct deposit and then, you know, if you think about the way payroll works in America, most people will get paid every two weeks, and so with this service, now any point along that journey towards your next paycheck, you can access a portion of your paycheck up to five hundred dollars.

Bring them into a broader sort of ecosystem. Things are difficult right now to read on the consumer. So if you think about those that might be inclined to take advantage of my pay they may also be under financial duress. Right, So is there a technology in place that you guys use for risk as esment for example, if somebody's eligible to do.

This, oh for sure, and I couldn't agree more. You know, it's something like sixty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, so that doesn't mean everyone's under financial duress. But usually around the next time that your paycheck is coming to your account, you probably have a low balance situation. That's where banks oftentimes take advantage of consumers.

So for us, giving people access to.

Their payroll at an earlier clip is just a huge unlock for them and is extremely helpful with them getting, you know, getting through the next paycheck.

It's a new area of banking services that has been popular elsewhere. Chris And has sort of fallen into a legal gray area from a consumer protection perspective. How are you working with consumer rights screups, how are you working with government to.

Ensure that you are above board at all times?

That's a great point.

Actually, this this whole category, it's referred to as Earned Wage access or EWA.

It's an emerging area.

There's a number of companies that have popped up, and the regulation in the area is still still sort of a work in progress. So we are sort of monitoring that closely. We are in regular contact with regulators. But we've actually launched this product not as an EWA product, but actually as a credit product, and we've done it

Something else that is still work in progress is potentially you becoming a public company.

Now.

You said back into some of the company was is IPO ready as it can be? And you're assessing how the markets look for the first half of twenty twenty four, So Chris, how do they look?

Are you coming soon?

The I think the market's actually looked pretty good, and the business looks pretty good.

You know.

We ended Q four of last year is the number one most downloaded banking app in America. We have over million monthly transacting actives in the account and using our Chime accounts, and the majority of our members are using us as a primary direct deposit and every day spending cards. So the business is performing extremely well. We actually had

So Chime's been really interesting to me.

Some of your team know that they're here with us, but you had this twenty five billion dollar valuation in twenty twenty one, and the valuations come down. That's not unique for your story. Are you kind of happy about that? We've seen down rounds or low evaluations set you up quite well for whatever future you decide well.

Valuations are always a moment in time, right, and they always fluctuate to some extent. We haven't done a new financing since twenty twenty one, so it's clear, you know.

What the market reported valuation to be fat right.

You know, we don't think too much about that.

We're sort of heads down, just focused on executing and not thinking too much about a specific valuation. But I do think that the overall reset in the fintech category has been a great opportunity for us.

Well, some companies are trying to.

You know, figure out where they might land or you know, merger opportunities or needing to raise money.

We're extremely well capitalized.

We have close to a billion dollars of cash on the balance sheet, so we've been able to work not over but close to a billion dollars of cash.

So we've been able to stay.

Aggressive and grow market share in a period of you know, disruption for the category, and I think that's been good for us as a market leader.

Chime see, Chris Breys. Just great to have you back in the studio here in San Francisco. I really appreciate it.

Talk art for a moment because Christy has just managed to pull off a one hundred and fifteen million dollar

Now, a spokesperson told Bloomberg.

That Christie's continues to work with an additional team of technology experts.

We're determining the scope and the impact of this incident.

Ed okay, and who better to talk about cybersecurity than Steve Stone, head of Rubrics zero Labs, which recently put out its latest report called the State of Data Security Measuring Your Data Risks. And I take this very seriously, Steve, because so many CSOs, CISOs CIOs watched this program, and the conclusion of the report of those you surveyed is that almost all of them are suffering direct emotional psychological in from cyber attacks.

I found that to be astonishing.

Yeah.

Well, first, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and excited to engage their audience. And I think the emotional impact was one of the things that really jumped out at us, and I think it makes sense.

What are we talking about here, emotional impacts. So I think there's a few things.

I think the first is the vast majority of more than sixteen hundred senior leaders both in IT and security we engaged with, you know, more than ninety percent of them reported having an emotional or psychological impact that ranged from losing sleep, fear over losing their job, or fear of their teams losing trust in them. And so we see that consistently year over year, and I think it really speaks to how this affects us as individuals and not just as businesses.

Let's talk about how it affects businesses, to though, Steve, and how these cso CIOs are trying to get a little bit of bed, better sleep by putting precautions in place.

So I think that's the great question. That's the endpoint.

We can talk about the problems all day long, but the real goal is reducing risk. And as we did this research, a few things jumped out at us that really impact that risk reduction and change that dynamic. First, organizations have to be prepared for a contested recovery. You see it in the news all the time. We've seen it for years, really consistent touch point. You've got to recover your data. You have to be resilient, and the attackers know that and they'll do their best to stop it.

This is everyone's problem.

State very quickly, we're to stand the show there must be a growing threat. Therefore what are they facing from the other side of the table.

I think the growing threat comes down to we're creating a risk surface area that we're not paying attention to, and that comes down to sensitive data.

So if we look at healthcare, healthcare is in the news.

There's not a unique threat to healthcare, but we see outsized impacts of ransomwa against healthcare. Four hundred percent more sensitive data is impacted in a healthcare intrusion than in other industries. And that's not because it's different. It's not because the threats are novel. It comes down to sensitive data. And so when we look at how we change this, we've got to start with where those impacts actually are.

Very briefly, Steve, is it many the US where you're seeing the anxiety?

Is this global phenomenon.

We're seeing it globally.

There are really consistent trends across all regions, all industries from a threat perspective, where we see the changes in impacts really come down to industry unique aspects.

Steve Stone taking us through the industries implicated, the individuals implicated.

We thank you so much for some of.

The tactics to deploy Steve Stone's head of Rubric Zero Labs on.

All things cyber.

Meanwhile, that's all things done on this addition of Blue med technology.

ED.

I know I should be paying attention.

I am, but during that conversation a load of CIOs and CSO has added me on LinkedIn, so we know they're watching. And if you have any reaction to Seeve, get in touch with us or recap the conversation in the show ED with your social I don't get distracted.

This is on the ground reporting.

Check out the podcast recap that conversation with Steve and all the others, particularly with Frank McCourt Jr. And his new bid for TikTok's US assets. You know where to find the pod. So many of you listening to us on your way to work, on your way home, and your lunch break, all around the world, and we really appreciate it. From SF and New York City, this is Bloombo technology