emily: the data of millions of t-mobile customers compromised. ♪ emily: i am emily chang. this is "bloomberg west." sprint said it will cut more than $2 billion in costs over six months but is it enough? german publisher buys a stake as the company fends off a tax threat. i will speak to ben lerer. put a ring on it.

apple applies for a patent. first, to our lead. the data of millions of t-mobile customers, including yours truly, breached. hackers broke into a database run by the credit tracking company, experian, including social security numbers and addresses. in a statement, t-mobile ceo john legere said. i'm sorry i wasn't able to come on the show today. disgusted to see a company like us. to breach data impact. joining me now is ryan wager, a defense strategist. thank you. i am a new t-mobile customer. i am pissed. what exactly happened?

how does somebody get into experian and get to t-mobile records? were they targeting t-mobile? ryan wager: you cannot be sure. the problem is any digital data is in places you cannot see. you have data on another company and you have a perimeter between two companies. you cannot make sure they were going after t-mobile data. and they got out. emily: why would it be t-mobile specifically? why couldn't these hackers get other companies? ryan wager: t-mobile, the amount of information is unique. they have millions upon millions of customers in one location. a very small amount of files. emily: you say you are only as strong as your weakest link. what are the lessons for t-mobile's ceo john legere.

how much responsibility does t-mobile bare? ryan wager: for what they control in their centers. all the way up to the speed of technology on their own. it is a matter of how much did you share with your third parties? to me, do i know where my data is being stored when i am doing transactions? are the other people doing everything to keep up? emily: what about experian? ryan wager: experian needs to take a hard look. emily: experian has been hacked before. ryan wager: more of a social thing where they were tricked. this was actually a breach. they found the weakest link and may have started at t-mobile and worked down like a hacker and found the weakest link. emily: what about me? what about customers? what can i do? are we just vulnerable to the businesses? ryan wager: experian offered 2 free years of credit protection

out of it. we need to be aware of when you are putting data out there, you need to make sure you are keeping track of where it is and if you need to make changes -- emily: how can i know? ryan wager: you have to trust in the businesses you are handing it to. you can monitor your own credit history. if you see things or services you can employ and take them very seriously. once it gets out there, it's hard to erase. emily: thank you. another wireless name was issued, sprint. the fourth-largest u.s. carrier said it plans to cut $2 million in costs and eliminate more -- $2.5 billion in costs. sprint is struggling to return to profitability but the corporate parent is standing by. softbank boosted the purchase of sprint shares.

in august, masayoshi son reiterated his support. masayoshi son: you may think i am being overly optimistic about sprint, as there is no concrete progress i can show you. having exactly the same positive feelings when we turned around the business with yahoo! broadband and i believe i made the right decision to buy sprint and i have no intention to sell it. emily: this is sprint's second round of cuts in a year. last year, it said it would trim 2000 jobs. if you used your credit card since yesterday, you probably noticed swiping is no longer a thing. as of today, all u.s. retailers must be equipped with a microchip reader to process payments. the chip is supposed to be more secure than magnetic strips because it generates new authentication codes making it harder for hackers. joining me now is ellen richey,

a risk officer. you guys have been going through this change. i have gotten new credit cards. i lived in europe 10 years ago now and was using chip and pin back then. it has taken the u.s. a long time. do you have a number on the fraud it will reduce by doing this now? ellen richey: let me start with a number i am proud of. in visa, we have 150 million chip cards in circulation in the u.s. last year, only 20 million. the reduction of fraud will take a while. it is not required for the retailer to implement the chip technology immediately. emily: when is the deadline? ellen richey: no mandate. there is an incentive. the incentive took place yesterday. we have 314,000 terminals up and

running but a lot more to go. in two to three years, you should see the transactions, no more swipes. and then about 60%-70% reduction in counterfiet fraud. emily: what have you been hearing for merchants? our producer said that he went to walgreens and did not know how to pay. ellen richey: it should not be confusing. you can try swiping. you dip your card and insert along the bottom, simple as that. emily: it will reduce in-store fraud. ellen richey: that is right. emily: with mobile payments, what is next? ellen richey: tokenization. we replace the account number with a similar number but not usable for a payment. what happens is if it is stolen? we have this in some apple pay, samsung pay.

if they are used with anything other than your device, they are no good. emily: how long will it take for every retailer to use that technology? ellen richey: it will take a while. the retailer does not have to do anything. we do it with the banks and technology company. no burden to retailers. it should be between 3-5 years. emily: ellen richey, thank you for joining us. ben lerer joins us to discuss why he decided to restructure his company. plus -- apple's next big product, and it is tiny. a small ring. ♪

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg west." it is official, google has reorganized into a giant holding company called alphabet. the search engine will be wholly-owned subsidiaries of alphabet. other units will be on alphabet including nest and googlex. to the german media giant, axel springer, considering a shopping spree in america. on tuesday, it announced a deal to pay $340 million for a

control of business insider. and they took a minority stake in thrillist, a digital company. it is part of a broader $50 million funding round with other investors. thrillist announced plans to spin off the men's e-commerce into a separate company. joining me now is thrillist's ceo, ben lerer. great to have you. i know it was a process and you were looking at potentially selling or a big investment and you decided to split the company. talk to me about the process about that aha moment. ben lerer: it was a bit of a process. when we started, the impetus is we know that a bunch of priorities and we wanted capital. i do not think we were looking to sell, but looking to do restructuring.

as time went on, it was clear there were different investors who were actual partners for each of the 2 businesses. on the media side, companies like axel that had expertise in what we were trying to do and, we felt, understood the business we were trying to build. on the same token, other investors on the commerce side who understood what we were doing. the more time we spent with these various, different financial partners, we realized even the ones willing and excited to invest in both businesses were biased in one way or another. ultimately, we said, let's take money from different partners, and businesses have to operate independently. we are happy we did it. emily: what is your proclaimed endgame? is there a particular media business out there you admire you would like to compete with? what about the same in e-commerce? who do you view as competition? ben lerer: on the media side, i think media is changing really

rapidly. to identify one brand we look up to is tough. i think there are brands like buzzfeed and box and levels of scale we aspire to. and the "gq" and "esquire" that have gravitas and have lasted a long time. there are things traditional businesses do well -- we aspire to -- and some of the big digital guys we are jealous of. we have sort of a -- we have a bunch of plans to go through. and grow there. on the commerce side, we have a massive hole in men's fashion for guys. women's fashion gets more attention like the big brands, gap or j.crew or urban outfitters. companies in the u.s. market are the most popular for people like me and my friends and employees of our companies and people like

that. i think there is a big opportunity to focus on men and a new fashion brand that has the heart of the magazine and the iq of a tech company that uses the internet and data to build a fashion brand that is actually going to feel old school and about creating beautiful products that people love to wear. emily: you said the media business is changing quickly and you see a lot of deals that get done for whatever reason. do you see a future where content and commerce can work together? that vision has not really come to fruition. ben lerer: yeah. for us, we believe the way we approached it has a great result. when we acquire jack threads, it was a six person company and we built it up to a significant scale.

to the point that it has graduated and is on mission and has a soul and needs its own capital. i believe we have this small and emerging content. it has not played out exactly as we might have thought it did in the first place when we started thrillist and we never thought about commerce at all. as time goes on, i believe there is a fundamental difference in digital media that a lot of the traditional mediums. whether tv or radio or print or outdoor, the difference between consuming in those environments and making a purchase is vast. you can consume and buy almost seamlessly. i am a huge believer in brands finding ways or retailers using content to engage. it worked for us. as time went on, we built 2 businesses that were quite different.

jack threads as a fashion brand could easily be successfully owned by a media company but succeed on its own. emily: where do see both of these businesses in the next five years? do you look to sell them separately? are you moving toward an ipo? ben lerer: i am actually not sure and i am happy for a minute not to think about it. after a fundraise, you are in the trenches for a while in deal mode. we have so much we are working on. yesterday we launched jt 2.0 where we introduced our first namesake line, a line of clothing i am wearing head-to-toe, which is jack threads branded. on the thrillist side, rapid growth. hiring editors and content creators across platforms. and i'm sort of excited to put my head down and execute for a

while. long-term, i believe there is plenty of headroom in both businesses to grow in the foreseeable future. we are able to be more aggressive of how we think of growth and build something where we can have 2 stand-alone businesses that do not require more capital or require more market capital for a long time. who knows? emily: ben, we like the outfit. for my husband, i hope you forgot the men's fashion thing. thrillist's ceo, ben lerer. thank you so much for joining us on the show. turning to apple -- if you like it, perhaps, one day you could put an apple ring on it. apple filed a patent for a ring computing device which the u.s. patent office published. the patent describes a ring with a touchscreen, computer processor, and i cannot stop laughing and it's rechargeable. and a microphone for dictating

commands and could vibrate with feedback on the apple watch. keep in mind -- this is only a patent application and no guarantee an i-ring is in the work. what is up with the new ge commercials? you know the ones -- they are actually funny. >> surprise! >> we heard you got a job as a developer. >> i work for ge. emily: linda boff joins us with the ge's rebranding. ♪

emily: in today's version of "out of this world," the ridley scott film "the martian." opens.

the movie stars matt damon as an american astronaut. the $180 million movie has humble origins based on the writing of a computer programmer. andy weir dreamed up the story in a series of well researched blog posts which turned into an e-book that sold 35,000 copies. the book deal and movie deal closed in the same weed. the film is projected to pull in $45 million this weekend. all of this in context of the actual market breakthrough this week when nasa unveiled liquid water on the planet. breakthrough.mars when it comes to bringing science fiction closer to reality, nasa is far off.

it plans to send humans to mars by 2030. when you think of general electric, you think about jet engines and the industry. ge wants to shift the image and rebrand to what it calls a digital industrial. what is your news? >> i got a job. i will be a programmer at ge. >> i got a job. >> i love that. >> i will be writing code that helps machines communicate. emily: joining me is the newly named chief marketing officer for ge, linda boff, who played a key role in pushing the company into digital marketing over the last 12 years. linda, thank you for joining us. we noticed your campaign and commercials and laughed out loud. people rarely see commercials at all any more. when we found you as the person behind it, what is your thinking? what is the strategy? linda boff: thanks, emily. thank you for highlighting. ge is becoming a digital industrial company. we are merging software and machines and creating a new category. what we tried to do with the ads is talk to future employee, a

developer. and a developer who will not just be interested in programming and code but making a difference. we had a little bit of fun. as you saw we made fun of tongue-in-cheek other types of apps. you are showing one right now. [laughter] emily: yes, we are. ge makes heavy-duty machinery. what is the digital in the digital industrial term referred to? linda boff: emily, it is all about creating a layer of data and analytics. so that we can not just have the machine but also providing our customers, our rail customers, our energy customers, our hospitals with insight so they can run more efficiently, trains can operate more efficiently.

we can save companies money and predict outcomes. we have built a whole software division and launched ge digital, a division focused on how to enable our machines with the digital knowledge. we have built an industrial cloud, a platform that our customers and everybody in the industry can use. it is a big part of the it is a big part of the transition you are seeing. emily: it's interesting you mention the ads are geared toward future employees. ge is selling to oil companies and airlines, why create an ad campaign that reaches consumers? linda boff: ge is a brand that has been around for 130 years. it is a brand, the sixth most valuable in the world. we impact a lot of audiences,

investors, consumers, customers. it is very important to get the message out broadly. we feel as though folks coming out of school who will love to consider a job at ge. have them think of a place of future employment. equally important are our customers and our investors. a broader message. emily: it is interesting. it is a war for talent at silicon valley. do you really think you can compete for silicon valley talent? linda boff: quickly, i will tell you we published coming out of our minds and machines conference, the industrial app economy will be 2x. i will tell you we have quite a value proposition for the future development talent in this country. emily: interesting. linda boff, ge's cmo, great to have you.

that does it for this edition of "bloomberg west." on monday, we will relaunch at a new time at 2:30 p.m. and streaming as well. ♪ ♪

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♪ mark: good evening from manchester, new hampshire, on a very busy political day throughout the united states. president obama just finished a press conference at the white house where he discussed a range of issues including raising the debt ceiling, funding for planned parenthood, and hillary clinton's comments criticizing his syria policy, which the president dismissed. he said there's a difference between a president and presidential candidate. the big topic as well was the shooting in oregon yesterday and the question of gun control and gun safety.