Tesla's EVs and US Lawmakers Meet with Big Tech

But will it stay Morgan Stanley, well, it thinks maybe you should be warning about this tech valley last Tesla. One name weighing on the market is Deliveries full short of Elon Musk's own expectations. Will bring you the details. And speaking of Mask, we'll get their latest on its spat with The New York Times as the newspaper loses it's verified badge on Twitter. That so much more coming up, But first, I mean we got to delve into the market moves. When it comes to the NASTAC one hundred.

Of course, we're just saying soaring into a bullmark in the first quarter. But Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson, he's been warning that the rally maybe is overdone. Let's bring in Isabel Lee just to talk about the technicals at play. Some of the reasoning behind Isabel the movement into big tech. It was almost like a search of safety right now, people particularly Morgan Stanley and also JP Morgan saying that might be time to pull back from that trade exactly.

So Morgan Stanley said it's overdone. So last week the tech sector hit the bull market, which means it was up twenty percent from US in December lows. But for Mike Wilson that was just a bit too much, and he said it's just because people were treating it as a traditional defensive place amidst all the banking turmoil. But he still recommends safer areas like utilities like a zoomer sector because he also said that when something hits its trufugh,

the likelihood is it'll just rally back up. So he said he would prefer to see more durable lows before investors piling aggressively, but for now it's kind of an over for him. Hey is about There's one thing, Karen, I've learned in recent weeks around the tech sector. It's one session a market does not make. But we're kind of looking at economic data again. Right, we're still going back to the same discussion around inflation and the FED.

That's exactly right, which is why people are probably thinking that, Okay, you know, that's that's a risk. Assets are rallying because they're like, inflation is over. We'd probably not over, but we've hit the peak FED. We'll start cutting sometimes this year. People have various estimates, but it's kind of bullish overall, which is a risk. Assets are rallying now. Bitcoin is up, It's enjoyed its best quarter seventy two percent or seventy

four percent in the past two years. All risk assets are really up and they're just really enjoying the bounce. And here's some good news for the bitcoin lovers. April is usually a good month for bitcoin, actually even for stocks, and by some measures, bitcoin was up in six out

of the last ten years. Isabelle dig in here because you've been writing great stories together with Aldanna about well, the lack of liquidity and bitcoin, even though we see it's run up in price, Yes, and because there's lack of liquidity, then the prices are more pronto volatility because one big whale or one big move can just pull the price lower or higher, and that's kind of been

the danger in this sector. But for now, especially with the banking termoil, people are celebrating it because this is why bitcoin was made. It's to circumvent all the intermediaries to just put their trust into the thing that they trust and not trust Wall Street. Bitcoin was born right after the GFC, when people were mad at banks, when people didn't trust anyone. So now it's kind of their victory lab but it still remains to be seen whether

the banking turmoil actually push bitcoin higher. It's that's why I love carving the space. You'll never just know why. In particular, I'm gonna be delving into who else is winning amid the bank tim all and wow, we've got a VC name on talking that it's fintech in fact as well as welly, great to have you on all things risk assets. Let's stick with the markets though, because actually one risk asset monkey player in the technology space, Tesla,

well it actually didn't perform particularly well in March. Today it's weighing on the broader indices once again, Led you are the first and foremost person I think of when I think of Tesla. Just dig in a little bit about why we're seeing Musk full shorten his delivery issues even though we see the price cuts coming. Yeah. Yeah, record deliveries in the first quarter of twenty twenty three, four hundred and twenty three thousand evs in the first

three months of the year. It's a modest growth, right. You look at the end of twenty twenty two, four hundred and five thousand, it's about four percent sequentially quarter on quarter, above street expectations. But the bigger picture is that it does not put Tester on track for that fifty percent annual average growth rate that Elon Musk has talked about. It's not enough to show that demand is

still there. There are still demand concerns for the street, right, And one point here is that Elon must talked in the first two weeks of January about demands running at twice the rate of production. You dig into the data kind of seems like demand might have tapered off towards the end of the quarter, even though the prices have been pulled back, even though we've got well then firing on all cylinders, which actually making the autos. What does

a backlog of potential of cars sitting around me. Yeah, it's a profitability that's certainly the right days point. Look at the three orange bars four inche bars here, four straight quarter where production is greater than the number of vehicles that Tessa's delivered. One explanation from Tesla is they're still trying to get the mix of where these vehicles are produced more even which results in particularly the model Essent Model X being in transit at the end of

the quarter. You can't consider those delivered vehicles because they're on the back of a truck. Essentially, it was the lowest delivery level for S and X in that quarter just gone going back to the third quarter of twenty twenty one, So something's not quite working there. What analysts are saying is we're worried that actually there is still

demand issue here. Remember Elon Musk has pledged that if there is a deep recession this year, Tessa's happy to sacrifice profit margin because they've got that strong balance sheet and they want to keep up that steady rate of growth.

It's just that we're not seeing that steady rate of growth, and many still worry maybe in some part that he's distracted, right, he's distracted with the other key company that's under his overview is Twitter, and we know that at the moment he's in particular spot with New York Times resulted in the paper losing its verified badge over its refusal to pay for that one important checkmark, joining us now Bloomberg's Asia accounts. Just how important is that checkmark for something

like New York Times the yellow badge. It's critical for an organization like The New York Times to have that badge because it verifies that they are, in fact a news institution. You can imagine the challenges that could arise if another account were to impersonate the New York Times and start spreading false news or misinformation. So it's really

critical that they have that checkmark. I think we point out Caroline right that Bloomberg News has said that it won't reimburse staff to get their own Twitter Blue method of verification. Bloomberg News and its various newsroom accounts does have verification. What's really difficult understand is if you go on someone's profile and hover over the blue check mark, it's either a Twitter Blue account or it's a legacy

verified account that may or may not be notable. They haven't taken the action that they said they would no, and that's actually a change. Right if you were to look a week ago, when you would hover over the badge, you could see very clearly this person paid for Twitter Blue or this person was a legacy verified institution or individual. So it's actually created more confusion and we really don't know. And they haven't taken away some of those like checkmarks

that they said they were Unapril first. They've taken away some, but some are still out there, Kara. One thing we discussed with Elisha on Friday was the idea that also advertisers are kind of not very convinced by Musk. They've kind of fled the platform. Where does this platform stand in terms of its health because you have Elon Musk on the other hand saying we're at record levels of use right in terms of using numbers, Yeah, that's what's

been really interesting. They do have more daily users since according to Musk's numbers, since the last time he released them, but you're losing advertisers and that was about eighty nine percent of revenue, and so Twitter Blue is seen as a way to make back some of that revenue. But their subscriber numbers are also really low. It's less than

one percent I think according to the last numbers. So it's Twitter is in a really challenging position right now and they have to either convince people to subscribe or they're going to have to woo back those advertisers, and neither one of those has really been going well. Do we know any updated numbers on subscribers. I mean, this is the joy of it being a privately held business, But do we know if eventually people will be pushed

to make that payment. You know, analysts I've talked to you and people in industry don't think that it will really push the needle. We don't really know the latest numbers. Again, it is a private company, so it's hard to tell. There's some independent researchers that are tracking it, but from what we know, it's less than three hundred thousand people. We want to thank you staying on top of all things social and I accounts. Great to have you one

once again. Meanwhile, let's talk about another form of social communication. Former President Donald Trump said on truth Social a post that he plans to leave mar Alago at noon today to fly to New York ahead of his historic arraignment Inhattan. Courtroom. That's tomorrow. Make Simone, Foxman is outside of the court house, and Simone, do we know if in that fact he

is on route. As of yet, we haven't seen any reports from the pool that he has actually moved out of Marrow Lago, but we do expect him to fly to New York later today and then come here to Trump Tower behind me, and this is really where some of the political theatrics could kick off. You may be able to see there are some banners behind me. We've seen in the last couple of minutes some Trump supporters walking with banners and kind of lining up over there,

but there are barricades all around us. Then, of course, the big event is when he goes south to the DA's office to the courthouse to be arraigned, expected tomorrow afternoon. Simone, as you say, now, moved across to Trump Tower and looks busy. It looks like people embracing themselves. And this is something that you've continued to report on throughout the show.

It does become a technology story in many ways, just the in which news is consume nowadays, well very much because you look at the stock reaction in those sort of conservative social media platforms. They will rose Friday. I think some of the games being given up. Now, what we were discussing is that Trump is using true socials communicate in real time. The rest of the world is discussing this Simon on Twitter. Go back to the basis for what's to come. His lawyer was pretty clear he

will hand himself in essentially, and what process happens after that. Yeah, so essentially we're expecting him to go to the Supreme Court House downtown. There. We don't know actually whether or not he will walk in the front door, whether he's going to try and stage some sort of perp walk that he could use again for those fundraising efforts to

try and paint himself as a victim. But he will go in there, we'll get fingerprinted, He'll likely have to take some sort of mugshot photo, and then he'll go upstairs where this arrangement will take place. After that, he intends to leave New York City pretty quickly though, fly back tomorrow lago, and then there will be a press conference tomorrow evening, and of course at that time we'll

actually know what these charges are. They remain under seal, and surely thereafter we will get Donald Trump's response, we will cover every development here on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg's own Foxman, thank you. Out in the field reporting M and A Monday shares a WWE sliding after Endeavor agreed to buy the company from nine point three billion dollars if that's including debt. WWE will combine with Endeava's Ultimate Fighting Championship to form a new company that's going to be listed

on the New York Stock Exchange, joining US. Now for more Spoomberg's Lucas Shaw, who, unfortunately for him, had a busy weekend. I'm sure Lucas for the scoopman Ari Emmanuel of Endeavor saying they will create a global life sports and entertainment peel Play built where the industry is headed. Where's it's headed? Well, look, they have the biggest mixed martial arts league in the world in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and they now have WWE, which, while not technically a sport,

you know, it's scripted entertainment. It performs much in the same way from a media perspective because people do show up to watch it live, and then the ways it makes money are very similar to UFC. You know, you think about it. In UFC makes money from media deals, it makes money from ticket sales, and it makes money from sponsorships. WWE is the exact same way, and I think they see an opportunity to sort of leverage that combine scale in negotiations with sponsorships, certainly, and then to

find efficiencies and things like staging the events. I think when you think about the media landscape, Lucas, you know, many of the broadcast networks fight over being able to show WWE. Do we have any sense of how things now change, how they expand the offering, how they make

it more digital. You know, it's too soon to know that, But if you look back in time, there was a point where the WWE created its own streaming service and then after a couple of years, decided that that wasn't the best idea and was better to just distribute it via the major players. So it has deals on linear TV with the USA Network and Fox, and then it has a streaming deal with Peacock. The TV deals are coming up, the negotiations or we're actually supposed to start

kind of this past weekend with WrestleMania. I imagine that now the endeavor folks will have a lot of thoughts on what that should do. But if you look in kind of Ri Emmanuel's track record and Mark Shapiro, who's the president of Endeavor, you know, one of the ways they built USC into a huge business because there were doubts people thought that maybe they had overpaid for UFC. Was they struct these huge deals with ESPN, And I think they'll be able to do something similar with WWE,

depending on who the partner is. When I talk about the owner of ESPN, because it's an all important annual general meeting about to be upon us Lucas. Yeah. You know, look, Disney is going through a very strange moment right now, or perhaps an unsettling moment for investors and for employees. You know, they're in the midst of laying off about seven thousand employees. They did sort of one round of that in the past couple of weeks, with much bigger

rounds to come. And then you know, current CEO Bob Iger is both trying to restructure the company and restore faith in it after some of the damage done by his predecessor, Bob Chapeck, while simultaneously thinking about who his successor should be. All Right, Bloomberg's Lucas Shure, who leads our streaming screen time coverage. Thank you. Now, coming up from byte Dance to Micron, Apple and beyond, we'll bring you the headlines that you need to know in talking tech.

Speaking of take a look at shares of Micron. What we've seen Caro in the last four sessions or so is retaliation from China in terms of pushing back on technology restrictions, a sort of tip attack. What the United States is doing. Micron lower by one and a half percent.

This is Bloomberg time for talking tech, Starting with Apple basing a billion dollar trial over its Apple Watch secrets medical devices make a Massimo is taking the case before a federal jury in California this week after claiming Apple used confidential information from two former executives it hired in certain functions and designs of its flagship Apple Watch. We will track that trial. Revenue of TikTok's parent company, Bite Dance surge more than thirty percent to surpass eighty billion

US dollars in twenty twenty two. That matches the tally at arch rival ten Cent and surpasses many internet firms.

That pace of expansion underscores the resilience of Bite Dance this business, even at a time when Washington's threatened to join India in banning TikTok and Beijing launching a probe into Micron, opening a new front in Beijing's chip war with the US and Chinese chip related stocks really advancing amid optimism that they will benefit from the nation's growing self reliance and it's push after Beijing launched that probe into Micron technology, Caroline well from China to the Bay

Area because we want to dig in a little bit more and where you are currently well residing in because it's been hit hard. We know San Francisco by the pandemic. It's had a half time coming back as tech workers just kept working from home. They left many of the downtown perhaps emptier than many would have liked. And now that old school bang run that turned the tech hub into the center of the financial termil has just of

course still hit a city when it's down. Bloomberg San Francisco Bureau chief Karen Breslau is with us for more on what does this mean for San Francisco's future. You've got a beautifully written, really thought provoking peace on the terminal today. Thank you, Caroline. I think the storms that have pounded the city NonStop since January really are a metaphor for the storm of bad news that just has hit this city over and over. I mean talked about

the you know, the bus hitting the city. Obviously, the tech downturn was one thing, but then we had SVB and the shakiness and the banking sector. We have the affordability crisis, a public safety crisis and it is and the fact that this is a city where, you know, return to office rates are the lowest in the United States. So it's just all hit the city at once. It's a triple whammy. We're looking at live pictures facing down the embarked arrow towards downtown. Two key data points, occupancy

and unemployment. What have you learned in our report take, Well, there's a paradox there. Occupancy is a is a really shocking twenty nine point seven percent, the highest anywhere, right, twenty nine point seven percent of those buildings, nearly a third are empty, and yet the unemployment rate in the city is two point eight percent. So that is the paradox of San Francisco. That you have so much innovation self employment startups, and those typically are not company in

those early stages that need these giant officers. I've called this city home for five years now, Caroline has lived in this city. We ask ourselves the same questions, one crisis at a different time. You spoke to the mayor, what's her proposal to fix all of this in the long term health? Well, her proposal, I mean she heard her job is to be the cheerleader, and I thought she she she gave a you know, a noble effort.

What she has talked about relentlessly is diversification. She has always argued that this overreliance on the tech sector is dangerous for San Francisco's economy. Of course she's right, She's not the first person to have that observation, But she wants to attract bioscience, life science. Tourism converts some of these empty towers into housing, which would you know, basically deal with two crises at once, yet is incredibly expensive and doesn't always pencil out, so um, you know in

lord tourists. So all of that is going to take a clean up and a perception that this is a safe and beautiful city, and it certainly is beautiful can't argue with that. It is it's going to take a big marketing campaign to remind everyone of that. And the tourists are back, ye coming, and it feels like and that's what's sort of Also the juxtaposition here is that when you're in some of the areas that tourists are busy, it feels thriving, the restaurants are busy and humming. But

then you go to downtown and does feel emptier? Will somehow the neighborhoods are hopping, well, will they feel even emptier if you're getting meta againting some of the key tech companies doing layoffs as well. I think it is so empty right now, it's hard to imagine, you know, another few thousand missing from downtown. And those employees are also distributed, some of them in San Francisco, some of them are at the company's headquarters south of here in

San Mateo County. But I think what has to happen is, you know, pretty soon as the prices plummet right for this commercial will estate, there will be a value proposition and somebody, you know, some companies will move in the neighborhoods are hopping. We talk about that in the story, particularly around Hayes Valley, which is now AI Valley or

Cerebral Valley pick the brain part. Yeah, but there is action, as Karen Bresler, who leads our coverage to California, thank you know, coming up all things AI experts calling for a whole to next gen development. Europe growing more cautious. We're gonna have all the details. Were quite a big name in the sector, Caroline, this is Bloomberg. I really

care about access and also a reinforcement of bias. But the thing to do is to address these concerns in like a open and transparent way, not to call for a hall to development. Welcome back to Boomberg Technology. I'm Caroline, had a Niel and I made Ludlow in San Francisco. That was Fiction founder Sarah Gaw. They're saying it's important

to keep experimentation open and going in generative AI. Her comment comes after more than a thousand AI experts industry participants signed a petition calling for a temporary halt to developing the next generation of AI tools. One of them Kevin Barragoner, founder of the artificial intelligence text to image generator deep AI, who joins me on set in San Francisco.

Why did you sign the petition? So the petition calls for a halt to the development of extremely large generative models like the GPD five that's in development, and this is an incredibly disruptive technology. We don't even really know what it will be capable of, but what we do know is most likely advanced reasoning capabilities similar to the human brain. So in a sense, this is just too disruptive. I think for the current moment, there's no reason we

should really be building it right now. What's being proposed is a six month halt in order to established a shared set of safety protocols. There are names from all at around the world. How do you make a six month holt happen where all the stakeholders comply. It's an uphill battle, certainly. I don't think even the creators of the letter are overly optimistic. It's a big coordination problem.

But we're hopeful that all the parties around the world will see the benefit of this type of pause, which I don't think holds back technology more broadly. You know, Caroline Kevin is a participant in this industry. Last week we had VCS academics who all basically said the same, This is really hard to pull off six months get

everyone to participate. Can I be Kevin? Therefore, just digging a little bit as to why you, a founder of DPAI, are saying this because could I be led to believe that in some way open ar is a competitive threat to you? Well, certainly they are a competitor, We have many competitors. I don't think it's because they're a competitive threat. And I think that this technology is so powerful it's not going to matter who owns it or even which country it's built in. What matters most is that it's

built at all. This is such an incredibly powerful technology that I've started calling it the nuclear weapons of software. Okay, Kevin, I'm going to dive back from that a little bit because we've had academics like Emily Bender of University of Washington on saying, look, when you are using even the turn of phrase artificial intelligence, it just keeps doubling down on the hype. It keeps reinforcing of you that this

is in some way a competitive to human thought. And then actually, look, this is a worry about disinformation, yes, but the overall power of large language models, it's Basically, it makes sense to usk because we make it intelligent. What do you say to that, to the stochastic power argument, for example, I think they're rather hollow. I think these

models are absolutely intelligent. They're very general, they have advanced reasoning capabilities in many ways that are already superhuman, and it won't be long before they're superhuman and almost everything, just predicting the next word, we might use, hm, that's correct, How is that superhuman? Well, these models they know more than any single human, and they can recall the information much quicker, and then they have very similar reasoning capabilities

to a human. Kevin, you're a signature to Petitian. We thank you for coming on answering our questions. Many of those signatories did not. There is an argument I'm going back to this Is this, sour great? Is this you collectively recognizing open ai is so far ahead that you need a six month period to catch up? Oh? Absolutely not. We're super impressed with what they've built. We're actually huge

fans of them. We don't like view them as a threat. Particularly, we just think that this technology is way too disruptive for its own good in the present moment. Well, quickly, I want to ask you what good has come out of this in the last five days. I think it's a great conversation starter. It's getting the world thinking in the right terms because this is this is not just like creating a new social network. This is a incredibly

disruptive new technology. I would almost like in the global issue, almost like climate change, and that we have like a tragedy of the comments where all of the leading AI labs know they're creating something dangerous, but none of them really want to stop it. Really thoughtful and thought provoking. Thank you Kevin Barragona, his Deep ai founder core signatory

to that key piece to worry about. So the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shock ways throughout the banking ecosystem, and it also prompted many startups to seek refuge in fintech solutions for support. Let's bringing Andrea Lamari from Manhattan Ventures Partners for more on this. Now, and Andrew, how much has fintech benefited or have we had to raise questions about its foundations and well overall ability to

handle some of the inbound Yeah. So overall the world of fintech and startups has really evolved quite frankly a lot in the last few weeks. I would say generally, which is so interesting is that we're facing what many of us VC call the opposite of the sellery effect. So prior to the SVB collapse, liquidity was running rampant, right,

startups were getting funding all over the place. Nowadays, startups are being a lot more cautious around what credit and debit looks like for them going forward, and that readily available capital just doesn't look as liquid right going forward. So jet generally it's a very hard time to be a fintech, but there's a lot of solutions coming to

market that are really exciting. You of course have Clowner on your portfolio, you'll have some other as a fintech, which will you'll win out Because we've seen the inflows to the likes of Brecks and to some of the other Mercury banks, are they the ones that are going to be winning Yeah, So I would say startups generally have an amazing trend of trusting other startups, right. They

all know that they're in the trenches together. The solutions like Klarna Mercury Brecks are offering really good low interest rate products for artups to consider to support their banking and charter that they need. So I think cash deposits are key as well as offering just a really simple solution to those end consumers. A lot of this, though, of course, said it's about confidence, not only confidence in the founders, confidence from the people putting money into these

fintech's founders, confidence from the VC's writing the checks. Yeah, and there is a spectrum of confidence we've had on this program, Andrea, across the bench capital community, many actually saying no, I'm plowing on, I'm writing checks. Areas like artificial intelligence fintech activity. It won't be at twenty twenty

one levels, but it's still there, is that what you're saying? Yeah, So, as the job of a venture capitalist, right, if we want to distill it down to its simplest form, our job is to write money checks and deploy that capital into startups. We can't just sit on it for too long. Though the dry powder is still there, the cautious nature of running a due diligence process has grown ever more present.

And I would say just generally the startup. If the startups are getting the funding, I would say generally too, though it's that they can't just rely on those depth facilities anymore as a backstop relative to what they were getting in venture equity dollars. So, yeah, the vcs are deploying, they just aren't deploying as quickly as you said. Ed later in the program, we're going to be talking about man's return to the Moon around the moon, at least

with artemists too. You were quite early, relatively speaking into SpaceX. Lots of reports at the moment about the saudis looking at investing in SpaceX. What's your read on the valuation of that company and why it's still attractive to you.

So SpaceX overall is one of the strongest companies we see in deploying what is going to be some really Michigan critical launches, and I think generally where the big belief we have in seeing a massive upside potential, though obviously it's still a private company and we have to see where it goes, is their ability to deploy launches successfully at a very high velocity in the coming years.

I think there's a lot of preeminent positivity around Elon's ability to do so, and so far their success rate relative to other companies building mission launches has been much higher and much more repeatable than others. So overall that overhead is still high. They're going to need to keep raising money. We definitely imagine several more rounds of venture funding to go there. But in terms of success and conversion rate to successful launches, it's been elon and we

continue to believe. So when you are at the moment seeing companies having to raise money, a lot of them are doing it either at flat valuations, some of them doing down rounds. We are hearing those of some companies that have cut their valuations from a fourign nine a perspective and then maybe trying to raise them again. I know instacots in your portfolio. What do you make of well, companies that are having to realign the benchmark of how

you value them. Yeah, so I would say generally, right, that concept of the foreign nina or that internal valuation that start upset is something that they utilize to create a price to issue stock options to new incoming employees. Now, initially, when startups start doing that value they do it typically

about once a year. Then, as a company grows and it gets closer to a formal exit event, that valuation and that four ownA is typically done typically more often than once a year, two or three times a year. So what that means is a company like instacart might be doing their valuation reporting based on obviously the reports, we're seeing a lot more than once a year in

that level of frequency. So with that said, we definitely expect companies who experience high growth in quarterly increments or even in half year increments to see that fluctuation in their internal four and A valuations as material things and milestones happen within a company, So I would definitely expect that we see that kind of gyration happen across many of the later stage startups that are doing more frequent four ownin as how close for instacot is an exit? Therefore,

do you think? Well, generally, you know, as I said, the closer you do get to an exit, the more frequent these foreigner evaluations do occur internally. So I would say typically companies that are on the cusp of a one year out to give or take duration do make sense to be doing those valuations at this level of frequency,

So that seems likely. I think a company like Instacart, like many others in the late stage, have really stacked their executive team and their product suite to be ready to face the public market and provide a really compelling narrative going into their IPO. So I think generally everyone's just rooting for them, and if it's not them, then one of the other large late stage companies to come in and be a strong catalyst for the IPO growth this year Manhattan, ben Ja Parton as Andrew Lamar, grateful

for your time coming rust from Frederico. Thank you now. A bipartisan group of US lawmakers is taking their concerns about China to California this week, where they plan to meet with top tech and entertainment executives as well as

with Taiwan President sighing when. The group is being led by Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who chairs a new House panel focused on China, and it will meet on Thursday with some prominent vcs including Mark Andreeson and theod COOSLA, as well as executives from Google, Microsoft and Palenter and Apple Zone CEO Tim Kirk joining us with more. Bloomberg's Dan Flatley out of Washington, folks, out of your neck of the words, gone on the road to my neck

of the Woods. What will they talk about. Yeah, that's right. I mean I think one of the ways to sort of think about this is kind of like a soft power tour. So Congress is in recess over the next couple of weeks here in DC. Lawmakers are looking for something to do, and they have kind of a natural reason to be in California this week because the President of Thailand excuse me, President of Taiwan and her visit

to California this week. So they are there in part to meet with her, but also to sort of do it a bit of, as I said, a soft power tour and meet with some folks in Hollywood, eat with some folks in Silicon Valley, and sort of make the case to them that China represents a real threat in their view, but also to listen to what they have to say and sort of understand a bit more about their market concerns and why they want to be certainly in business in China, and how they're thinking about and

approaching their you know, their upcoming projects and things of that nature. And don do we expect them to mainbe be preaching to the converted. We know that Venokosla has been in Washington for example, with Peter Teal flagging the concerns that they share around China. Yeah, I think there's

definitely going to be an element of that. On Thursday, they're going to be having lunch at Stanford University with some folks that you know may have a more hawkish view on China, but you know, when they're going to be meeting with folks like Tim Cook or Bob Iger at Disney and Tim Cook at Apple, they're going to be talking to people who have really serious vested interests in the Chinese marketplace, who may have a bit of a different view and have the influence to talk to

lawmakers in a way that they may not be used to being talked to, quite frankly, in a lot of respects, because they're going to be hearing from folks who want to continue those business lines into China and are going to be talking to them in a way that you know is going to be sort of informal. So it's not going to be a congressional hearing, but it's going to be i would say, probably a pretty strong exchange

of views down how bipartisan does this run? At this point, I think concerns about China are about as bipartisan an issue as you can find on Capitol Hill. Republicans and Democrats don't agree on a lot these days, but they certainly agree on that. I think that there are some variations though, when you get down to how aggressive some folks want to be. There are certainly no shortage of hawks on the issue on either side of the aisle.

But the Republicans tend to be a little bit more aggressive in terms of what they want to do, the Democrats a little bit more circumspect. But as we saw with TikTok recently, there was a hearing on that on the Hills. I'm sure you remember a couple of weeks ago. It goes pretty deep, and it goes across both parties, Blue based down flatly. Thank you, Caroline. Speaking of Tim

kirk sly had caught my eye this Monday morning. The front cover of GQ magazine Silicon Valley's quiet visionary Tim Cook GQ Magazine, not known for his style, perhaps as Steve Jobs, was really interesting. Read a guy starting his day at five am, going through emails from customers the gym, and then running the biggest tech company in the world. What do you make of that? Do tell me, you're only halfway through the article because it's quite a long, it's endlessly long. But the point of it is he's

so understated. Yeah, you know, we know very little about the man. He's not a big social media user ala Elon Musk or something like that, and someone who was always very upfront the saying doesn't feel normal. He's often been feeling like an outsider. But I think what was interesting was the way in which he was totally surprised by the journalist perspective that people might scatter when he

walks into a room. He clearly still has that approachable nature, people wanting to sit near him, not being intimidated in some way. Well, there was an anecdote from Eddie Q, who leads the services, saying that he has four faces. He'd be brilliant at poker if he played, And I think that says everything. You never quite know, even to his closest allies in that company, what he's thinking. Maybe we should ask for a game. I'm quite into poker

at the moment. Meanwhile, coming up, we'll bring you the details on the first of NASA's new mission to the Moon, with the astronauts just being named this morning. We're on that next and now earlier we are discussing AI. So let's just take a quick look at Baidu China. The skepticism we're just talking about, of course going to Capitol Hill,

Capitol Hill lawmakers coming to California to talk China. But there's also skepticism around the power Baidu and it's chat GPT competition of course, the only bot will it really be able to substantiate some of the run up in the shares that we've seen of late down percent of the day. The Agremberg NASA's name, the group of astronauts it's sending to venture around the Moon on Artemus too.

It's the first crewed mission on NASA's path to establishing a long term presence on the Moon, and we'll launch in November of twenty twenty four at the earliest spoon bags. Lauren grush is out in Houston. Was the announcement. Who's heading to the Moon? Lauren right, So it's actually a

really star stutted crew that announced a name. Today. We have two mission specialists, Christina Cook and Jeremy Hanson of Canada, and Christina's with a NASA astra and then we have pilot Victor Glover and Commander Red Wiseman, and just some notable things to point out about this crew. Christina Cook will be the first woman to go to deep space, Victor Glover the first person of color to go to deep space, and Jeremy will be the first non American

astronaut to go to beeB space. So it's going to be a very historical mission for sure, historical performing on a Luna fly by. We understand schedule for next year. Just tell us where we are in the process of well getting back there, right. So last year I was at the Artemis one launch, So that was the very first mission, the main big mission in the Artemis program, which is to get back to the Moon, and that one tested out the main flight hardware that will be

sending humans into these days. And now it's time to put people on that hardware. So now that that mission went well, we're going on to Artemis two and these four astronauts will ride inside NASA's O'Ryan capsule on top of the massive SLS rocket and that will take them around the Moon and back to test it out ahead of the historical landing that will hopefully happen sometime this decade. Right now, it's scheduled for twenty twenty five. We'll see

if that happens. But eventually that will be the landing on the Moon. So unfortunately these astronauts won't be howd you now in the service book, they'll still be paving a really important road with the ash shot ahead. Lauren great speaking with you. Try and call down tern of course, Texas, Lauren Grush. We thank her, and I mean not the only bit of aerospace news upon us. It feels as

though we're talking SpaceX earlier with Manhattan Ventures. And also that looks like there's a competitor on the scene right end when it comes to SpaceX. Hanwa am I saying it right? Hanwa Aerospace bringing the South Korean's first commercial rocket and it's a pretty ambitious target. Yeah, so they want to match SpaceX in price, getting payload to orbit at the same price. But this is really fascinating because

they are borne out of arms sales. This is an aerospace conglomerate essentially that's making money selling arms to Ukraine in that conflict and putting the proceeds back into space exploration. Ambitious, but this is a sector Carr that we're going to cover increasingly because it's not just the money that's going into it, global interest taking off. Knew you'd get a pun in there somehow, And what a joy to be reconnected once again back on the show that this edition

of Bloomberg Technology. Yeah, and there is a lot to recap. Don't forget the podcast wherever you get your podcast, Apple, Spotify. I heart Bloomberg so much to discuss this week in the world of tech. This is Bloomberg