carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. oliver: i am oliver renick. we're coming to you from inside the magazine's issue in new york is inside the headquarters of the magazine in new york. carol: all that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: we are with megan murphy of "bloomberg businessweek." you guys take a look at the potential for a china-u.s. trade war and how we should look at it. not as someone stealing our manufacturing jobs, but as china as an economic might.

megan: it cuts to the heart of this war of wards over trade with china. it frames it in the proper context. donald trump may be right, saying we need to get tough on china. it is the mechanisms he is talking about and the china he is talking about is the china of old. the china we should be worried about this piece argues coherently and cogently as the china that has identified industries it wants to own as china first. china is about making china great again, tech, manufacturing, industrial. they have identified entire industries that they see developing china number one in product, output, and making these truly chinese -- organically up to be the global, dominant provider. oliver: let's talk about someone at the center of everything so far in the administration. he is the chief white house

counsel. in particular, he started coming under the spotlight as michael flynn was removed from the administration. megan: it has been a rocky few days, and is set to be rockier. people have described this as a hurricane hitting washington, and that is true. this white house chief counsel is at the center because he looks at that executive order on refugees before it goes out to make sure it is legal. obviously that one has been denied by an appeals court, so he is -- oliver: is he supposed to be the fixer or what? megan: not a fixer, but someone who looks over everything to avoid legal snafus. he is front and center saying this is going to have legal problems are not have legal problems. this has not been an

administration that seems to be avoiding stepping into this morass. carol: let's get to the cover story, elon musk, and tackles what happens to elon musk when he gets stuck in a traffic jam. megan: this is a great tale, a triumph of journalism. we went in to see elon musk to, he got so frustrated in l.a. traffic that he set i'm going to start building this tunnel underneath the traffic. he talked about the hyperloop. he believes infrastructure is the future. it will be interesting to see how he aligns with the trump administration and getting the funding on that. and that guy wants to do something, he does it. carol: it is called the born company, and there is nothing boring about it. megan: it is a must read. oliver: we did talk to a reporter who interviewed him. max: if you don't follow elon musk on twitter, he is a bit of a loose cannon. he tweets all the time.

in december he was sitting in traffic, getting frustrated, and he tweeted something along the lines of, l.a. traffic is driving me nuts. i'm just going to buy a tunnel boring machine and start digging. most people thought he was kidding. i thought he was kidding, but i sent him an email and said, hey, i would love to interview you. just because i was curious, and he said, ok. so i met him in washington, d.c. and talk to him about digging, and apparently this has been kind of a passion for him for years. he has been talking about this. he has talked about it publicly and to his friends, urging them to start a tunneling company, which is not what you would expect from a guy whose main thing is going to mars. fast cars, it's a very different sort of dirtier business.

oliver: it seemed like a lot of his followers, and beyond having followers on twitter, they in a literal sense look up to him as an edison type figure. a lot thought he was joking about this. max: he is somebody who talks and talks freely, and that is what makes him interesting. i think it is honestly part of the appeal to people. besides the crazy products. as a result, they thought he was kidding. it turns out that there is a hole in the parking lot of spacex, which is his rocket company and his plan is to , expand it and turn it into a tunnel that will be under a l.a. and in the long term, he , wants to build a massive tunneling system with many different layers, and his ideas will be to have these underground transportation networks. oliver: he always has a grand vision, right, whether moving humans up, getting rid of cars in the traditional sense, so is

this for transportation? max: it is for transportation for sure. cars initially, and in the long run, he has ideas about fast trains. we will have this thing called the hyperloop that will allow you to go from a late to san francisco in 30 minutes, so one of the tunnels could be for the hyperloop, but this is for cars. he compared it to flying cars. a lot of people are interested in flying cars. they think in the future you will have your personal airplanes. larry page has two flying car startups. uber has its flying car skunk works. most think flying cars are not going to happen because they make a lot of wind and noise, and if you imagine a flying car fender bender, it could get pretty ugly, so he things we will get really good at digging holes in the ground.

you would never sit in traffic because there will be freeways that are many lanes wide, so in theory you could have way less traffic in place like new york and l.a., and that would allow the city to accommodate more people and you would not have the situation where l.a. is unaffordable for a lot of people because to live close enough to have a job there, you pay a huge amount of rent. maybe if you had a wider transportation with less traffic it would be possible to live outside the city center, which is hard now. oliver: the hole that he dug, it is in the parking lot of spacex. you went to washington dc with him because you looking at a drill. max: the timing of this story was pretty funny. it may be speaks a little bit too his motivations, so he was in washington dc to meet with donald trump, which is kind of a weird thing because elon musk basically endorsed hillary clinton.

he said just before the election that donald trump did not have great character. i am paraphrasing. but after the election, he has made repeated trips to trump tower. he has become an adviser. he is on one of donald trump's advisory councils, and was there for the strategy and advisory form, which has become controversial because of the immigration order days earlier. it shook up, especially silicon valley, but corporate america more broadly. elon musk's view on that was it is better to engage with the administration, even if you disagree with the order, which he does. he is not a full throated

supporter of donald trump, but what he is trying to do, it seems to me anyway, is carve out a middle ground between opposition and becoming part of the trump machine. oliver: turning elon musk's ambition dream into an image was the job of creative director rob vargas. rob: his obsession with tunnels was comical. he did not agree to a shoot, so as always happens, we photoshoped him. oliver: it looks like a caddy shack thing. rob: his expression is very excited since he's so enthusiastic about hole making. oliver: is that like a general photo? rob: it is a general photo. carol: i love that you say that elon musk is boring, but it plays into what he is doing, his latest endeavor.

rob: we thought this spoke directly to the story. oliver: he has made that pun himself because he was looking for url's and came up with boring company. he has talked about this and people thought he was joking, but he is probably serious. rob: now that he has this machine and a giant hole in his parking lot, you know he meant what he said. carol: up next, who the kremlin probably wants as france's next president. oliver: the gates foundation writes a letter to warren buffett. carol: all that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek". i am carol massar. oliver: i am oliver renick. carol: how the kremlin could be influencing key elections in europe. >> russian state media has building up these voices in western countries, a network called russia today, then converted to rt because viewership was not very high, and a news agency called sputnik, the successor of the original soviet press agency. these had networks around the west, the u.s., western europe. rt has an arabic service, glossy tv, internet news services. for a long time, there was a sense that they were not having a lot of impact. the kremlin wanted it as a way to get their message out.

in these election cycles, the u.s., and now europe with elections this year, the netherlands, france, and germany, there has been an awful lot of attention and their ability to impact. oliver: you open the story with a description of how they are meddling in french politics. tell us about their role there. it is fascinating, and they are obviously fueling the flames for public reaction and trying to paint their own picture of how they feel about the candidates. >> right, most recently it has been the french presidential campaign, which has been an

intensely interesting race. russia had originally supported the far right candidate marine le pen, but then also francois fillon, and when his poll numbers started to fall, the centrist who was rising suddenly found himself facing renewed accusations about being a u.s. agent, old rumors of his sexual preference being revived, and those were revived on sputnik, the criminal-funded news network. that issue all came back, and his campaign complained about what it saw as russian meddling in the election. oliver: it is very much sort of a throwback to soviet-era propaganda. what is it right now that makes them feel like the world is

particularly susceptible to having these sorts of insertions of russian media that they feel like they can have an outside influence? >> it seems like they have been able to do this in large part because of broad skepticism and both the u.s. and europe about what is thought of as the mainstream media, the ability of the internet to expand the reach of these things. rt, the television network, has limited broadcast reach, but the ratings are low in the u.k. for example. thanks to youtube and social media and those sorts of things, they can have an outsized impact and put issues on the agenda. they get pushed in social media, and it can get a lot of attention. in the u.s., the coverage was a big focus in an intelligence

agencies report on alleged meddling. there is lots of different sources, and the internet seems to equalize everything, the russian state backed media had an opportunity to get in there with their message. oliver: up next, how president trump's protectionist promises could upend the agricultural sector, and not in a good way. carol: and unions under the trump administration. that is ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

oliver: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek". i am oliver renick. carol: i am carol massar.

you can also listen to us on radio. oliver: and in london, and in asia on the bloomberg radio app. >> the agricultural community is in an unusual situation, one of the few industries that carries a trade surplus. they have a lot to lose when there is a trade war, and they tend to be back of mine. so you have a fear of them being collateral damage. if the u.s. slaps tariffs on chinese manufactured goods, it is not u.s. buying chinese manufactured goods, it is soybean and cotton, and that is where retaliation would take place. oliver: you talked to folks involved in the industry.

tell us where this will regionally have the most impact. >> places along the mississippi or parts of the missouri river, that descartes land agricultural country that feeds into the mississippi river and gulf of mexico, basically 100% of the corn and soybeans is going to china. canada and mexico, so in the more northern parts of the u.s., or even a dairy producer nationwide, you see trade rising with asia and all parts of the country, so this is a nationwide issue. it is strongest in the heart of the farm belt, but even california fruits investable is, essentially all of american agricultural and some weight tends to be export dependent, and all can be affected by whatever calculation takes place in trade. carol: as we talk about these issues, rolling back trade agreements, is we need to understand the numbers and facts involved in the situations.

you mention about one quarter of the u.s. soybean crop go straight to china. china, canada, and mexico, are the top farm goods buyers. these are important relationships. >> it is a relationship that can become undone quickly. the u.s. has always been the buyer of last resort. if other countries have droughts or trade disruptions, you can count on americans to have a stable stock that you can buy. the u.s. is less and less the only game in town. south america, argentina and brazil ramping up their crops. the former soviet union countries now overtaking the u.s. as the leading exporter of grain, so it is not like other countries don't have another place to turn. the problem is they start buying from those countries, that crop has to go somewhere, and instead it sits in a grain bin depressing futures prices.

oliver: there have been instances where they have broken down this trade gaps before. who filled in the gap, particular those commodities in your story? >> the great story it was the grain embargo against the soviet union after they invaded afghanistan in 1979. the united states was using food as a weapon thinking the soviets dependent on grain exports would have to knuckle under. the problem was canada, argentina, brazil did not go along. even european countries started selling to the soviets, and it started helping their markets. we also saw the early 1970's when the nixon administration tried to take up a protectionist strategy.

the u.s. again retreats into a more isolationist stance. carol: in politics and policy, losing a major battle and once considered sacred ground for organized labor. >> it has not been a good two decades, and they are facing the battle for their existence actually. if you look back to the early 1980's, 20% of the workforce was a member of a union. that is now 10%, record low. some of the laws passed in the first month of the year, that is poised to go lower, right to work laws in missouri, kentucky. new hampshire voting tomorrow whether they want to make right to work -- remember, right to work bans unions from forcing their members to pay dues, so

you can be covered by a union and not have to pay dues come and that gets to the heart of how they find themselves. oliver: just real quick, white were unions unable to thrive under a democratic leadership for eight years? was that a policy point of his? they faced the state pushback? >> if you look at the ground gain by republicans that the state level, this is where the action has been. under the obama administration, they lost a lot of ground in core, blue-collar union strongholds like michigan, wisconsin, indiana, and illinois, where we have seen the erosion of their ability to raise money from their members, but to collectively bargain.

carol: what is interesting is that right to work laws, it is happening in traditionally southern states, but not only. >> when you look back 60-70 years ago, right to work looks very similar to your civil war era. it was conservative and in the south, and in the past, then there is a 50-year low where those lines froze from 1964, but since 2011, there has been a big push among anti-union groups to gain hold or roll back union power in core blue color states like the midwest in the northeast, and that is what we are seeing now. there is potential the supreme court might rule later this year, so they do have their backs against the wall.

oliver: tell us about the state of -- because there are people in the story, republicans saying they are terrorizing members, and you have people on the other side saying it is the progress, right to work is like general robert lee moving up the ranks of the eastern seaboard, so what is the middle ground here? why has right to work been able to progress this way out of those entrenched areas and states? >> i think there is a realization inside the unions itself among leaders that their existence is at stake. carol: up next, how warren buffett inspired melinda gates. oliver: and why so many in india are obsessed with watching software engineers suffer. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

oliver: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek" i am oliver renick. carol: i am carol massar. the maniacal killers in india's tech industry. oliver: melinda gates opens up as to what she sees as the biggest threat to global health care. carol: the first star trek inspired cruise. oliver: all that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek". ♪ oliver: you have the opportunity to talk to melinda gates. how did you choose where to start the conversation? megan: they released their annual letter every year, and this year on the 10th anniversary of this amazing gift that warren buffett gave to the foundation, so they wrote their

annual letter directly to warren buffett, here is what we have done with that money. here are the lies that have change, your return on investment, humanity, lives saved, working to eradicate poverty, but that is really what was so interesting about this letter and why we start off that interview talking about how warren buffett has impacted their lives and why they chose to make that decision and how fundamental that investment has an in shaping what the foundation has been able to do. carol: this return on investment, but they have had some great returns with the gates foundation. megan: absolutely. 120 million children lifted out of poverty. our affordable contraception, 300 million women in developed countries with access to contraception. they brought polio down, hoping to get that to zero.

300 million women in developed also less tangible, formation of women's groups that allow stigmatized women, sex workers, and impoverished women, to get together and talk about how to make their lives better. it is impressive work they have done. oliver: what is their main sort of project right now. it is a big foundation. there is a ton of money behind it. what is the focal point? megan: it has always been one of the defining goals of the foundation, to improve access, polio, etc., so that is a focus. one thing interesting about melinda gates is she is focusing on economic empowerment of women through mobile technology and other ways women can drive themselves and left their families and children out of poverty through access to

banking, access to abilities to sell their goods, and that is a big focus, and the foundation is looking at women and girls and how we get better data to take this fight board and how much big data can play a role in that. carol: a foundation this grand, are they constantly thinking about the foundation? megan: i asked melinda that. in the letter, it is quite no holds barred in terms of the experiences they have had. they have seen children die. bill attracted controversy by pushing for the ability to autopsy children to find out why they die after birth. there is a line in the letter where, what they saw as the find their marriage, partnership, and the foundation.

she said there is not a day they don't go by and not think about the work of the foundation, when they think about what kind of people they want to be in the world, what kind of values and how do i want to shape the lives of my children. carol: they have seen both ends of the spectrum if you think about the family and foundation. megan: she has talked about how she had to learn on taking on this public safe. this public scrutiny, and being public on issues as controversial as women's contraception, a political football now, donald trump rolling back access in some countries, they are worried about that and she will continue to attract scrutiny and attention, and her journey is interesting to hear her talk about.

carol: it is interesting what they do outside the united states, but they work in the united states as well. megan: we talk about this feeling, one of the things so interesting is they say the pessimists in this country will be wrong, and here is the reason for optimism. i said, you paint this optimistic because you look globally and see these improvements, how about people who may not be so optimistic? that is why their work here is on education and had we get people to connect with the improvements we have made, the number of children lifted out of poverty, and we are making the world a better please. oliver: why india's media is obsessed with coders. carol: it is to do with the emergence of their own silicon valley.

>> 20-30 years ago, when the information technology industry started to boom, really in the city of bangalore in the south, when fiber-optic cables connected india to the west, so multinational corporations began hiring engineers. tech has brought a time of money to the city. the city has grown faster than any other indian city in the past 30-40 years. the city's infrastructure has not been able to keep pace with the growth, so if you go to bangalore, you will spend most of your time in traffic, water shortages, power shortages, one of the most polluted cities in india. bangalore was once thought of as the garden city, a beautiful green place.

you see tech workers as people who have changed the face of their city and the way they don't like, and that fuels the resentment you detect in the stories about tech workers. oliver: i'm just going to read a couple of headlines. tech wife murdered, very sensational, often violent, is there, you talk about the effects of urban sprawl and the general modernization that comes with the tech industry, but there seems there is a lot of heritage and cultural conflicts in terms of how people in the tech space live their lives. >> yeah, i think tech workers work for companies where they are dealing with foreign clients, get to travel abroad for their work, so you find the tech industry much more global or western lifestyles than traditional parts of india,

where many of these tech workers originally came from. they leave their families quite young to go to school and find a job. there is much more drinking than in other parts of indian society, and so, yeah, i do think there is a lifestyle gap, and some people from more traditional sectors of indian society suspect them of having loose morals, and the stories, they are often crimes of passion, sort of fuel this idea that something is amiss with this modern lifestyle, something not quite right. oliver: up next, the bots taking over england's nuclear waste sites. ♪ oliver: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek" i am oliver renick.

carol: i am carol massar.

oliver: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek" i am oliver renick. carol: i am carol massar. one job most humans would not mind robots take over. oliver: cleaning up nuclear waste sites. >> it is in the english countryside along the irish sea renick. carol: i am carol massar. near the scottish border, 300 miles from london, and it is an old site, the dawn of the cold war, the u.k. used this site to enrich uranium for their first nuclear bombs, but in the race to get the bomb, they were not thinking too much about the waste, so decades later, scientists and engineers are having to piece together

technology to clean up the leftover waste. oliver: so what exactly is nuclear waste? i have not seen it. you did, so tell us what it looks like. >> i did not get close enough to touch it thankfully, but basically when you process fuel for electricity or a weapon, there is a part of it that is not used, and that becomes the waist, and it has to be stored and reprocessed very carefully. some of it can be recycled, and some of it cannot. this site here because it is so old, there is a lot of inventory of stuff that they don't know where it is, how bad it is. you there was a fire there in the 1950's where are a lot of areas were sealed over and left alone for a later date, so they

are turning to robots because robots can get to areas that humans can't. carol: we talk about so many industries, manufacturing and other areas, where robots come in and take over jobs and it gets workers upset. this may be one industry, the nuclear waste storage facilities, where robots may be very welcome by workers. >> not only is this a job humans don't want, it is one that we can't do any way, and so there are different autonomous vehicles, underwater drones going into these ponds where waste has been stored. they are developing this spider-looking device that looks like it can win an episode of robot wars. have six legs and is the size of a coffee table. it can crawl in there, pick up waste, and then take it to a sealed over casing that can be put in a silo, where it would be safer, but this is really nasty

stuff, and even for the robots, it's not a sure thing that they can handle all of the radiation. there was a report out of fukushima this week that one robot did not last more than a few hours in there. oliver: so you have all these robots. it is preferable to having humans in there. that means somebody has to supply the robots, figure out the technology. what kind of market is their for this application of technology? >> the government is spending $2 billion a year, and that is bringing a lot of companies over. one company has drones that have cameras that map radiation areas. another company is building this robot that looks like this spider i was mentioning.

the government is putting in more money because they need to clean up these areas sooner rather than later, so a lot of companies are coming in. carol: a moscow toy store aims to prove the russian stock market is not so bad after all. >> detsky mir is a venerable russian institution that dates back 70 years, and it is basically a children's store. detsky mir means children's world, and they sell all kinds of supplies for children, everything from toys and clothing to baby food. oliver: where do they operate? throughout russia? beyond the country? is it more like toys "r" us or macy's? >> it is nationwide now. they started out at the end of the soviet union basically with one or two stores, but have now

turned it into a nationwide chain under new ownership with several hundred outlets all over the country. they are typically located in shopping malls. carol: how successful are they? i think about the global toy industry, in the united states it has come undone with the advent of online. what is the toy business like in russia? >> in russia, it is doing very well. there are a couple of factors. one is that it is not just a toy store. they also sell other things like disposable diapers and baby food, things that people really need. and also, another difference is that in russia, online sales are somewhat difficult because russia still does not have the infrastructure to make deliveries into a lot of the remote regions. oliver: so that is a structural aid to a company like this. what other sort of trends or

general truths of the russian culture are behind the strength of a company like this? you talk about some demographics, how families feel about their kids there. >> the backdrop of course to their success, and i think what makes it striking is that russia has been in recession for the last two years, so you might think this would be the kind of business that might be hurt, but in fact, it has thrived and expanded, and as you say, there are a couple of reasons culturally for this. one is that russians really see it as important to spend and get good quality products for their kids, even during hard times. there is an old russian expression that roughly translates a as nothing but the good quality products for their best for the children, so i think that is one thing. the other thing that has helped them is that russian birth rates

are going up. russians are having more kids, and again, that might seem counterintuitive during a recession, but the government has done some things. they put in place what is known as the baby bonus. a woman who has a second or third child can get a cash payment of almost $8,000. oliver: up next, dressing room mirrors get smart, really smart. carol: we will take about the first star trek cruise. this is "bloomberg businessweek". ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek". i am carol massar. oliver: i am oliver renick. you can also catch us on the radio. carol: and in london and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. oliver: a focus on oak labs. carol: a dressing room mirror -- that lets shoppers seven sales associates with the touch of his green. here is reporter matt townsend. >> they came around in 2015 by a former ebay executives, and their idea is that retailers have a lot of issues, and one of them is they have fallen behind the web and the things the web can do. the ease of shopping and choices, so the whole idea is let's bring the best parts of the web into the store, which retailers have been trying to do

for a long time but have not been successful. oliver: this new sort of, how do we bring some of that value add from the online presence in stores. it feels like there is no more important question for retail than that right now, how did they bring that into the stores and stay relevant. >> more and more people shop online. that is no secret. the big issue is how do you improve the shopping experience? the reason people don't like to go to the store is you have to wait in line. they may not have your product. interact with people, that is another thing, and there is a lot of advantage to the store. if you can somehow bring the best parts the web into the store, that could really help stores. the first product they have come out with is a solution how to

fix the dressing room. oliver: i like this, because it makes sense. clothing, i don't want to order it blind. tell us about the mirrors they have. they're trying to take those best parts of online and bring them into the store. >> you walk into a dressing room, it knows what you brought in, so let's say you brought into bank pairs of pants and a shirt. that would pop up on the screen. if you want more recommendations, you can hit a button, just like on the internet. people who bought this bought this. oliver: it is all showing up on the mirror? >> just the sort of normal touchscreen. it is pretty, well designed, sort of fits within the framework of the dressing room. you don't feel like you are surrounded by tech.

the next step is trying on the products. is something doesn't fit, hit a button and you can alert an associate to get you something, almost like an uber app, where you send out a request. i need a 32-34, right, and they bring that to you. you will be able to pay inside the dressing room with apple pay for android pay. oliver: essentially eliminating the whole shopping process. >> you eliminate having to call out to a sales associate, or god for bid you have to leave the dressing room to get something for yourself. you can then use your iphone, by the stuff. the associate brings her back and you walk out. carol: star trek fans are taking to the high seas. oliver: we talked about the norwegian pearl. >> these are themed cruises. we talked specifically about a

star trek themed cruise, and these things are widely popular. there are shows like the walking dead. even property brothers has its own cruise. carol: this is a new revenue source for some of the cruise lines. >> it is big business. these cruises tend to happen, but cruise lines are able to charge double what they might not normally get, because fans care about being with other fans. they don't care about where they are going. oliver: we laugh because we are not star trek fans. i will speak for myself. it is very creative because it removes that cyclicality of

their business and you can put people on the ship. they will pay for autographs and all that stuff. >> they had william shatner on board, and is contract stipulated he had to take one photo with every cabin. we don't know what he got paid, but it was not cheap. he was 85 years old and came with his all family. it was awesome. so you have these add-ons. if you want to take an excursion that might only cost $50, it would cost $75. if you want an autograph, $25 to $30. it is basically like a convention at sea. carol: it speaks to the cruise industry finding a whole new audience. >> a lot of them are first time, and a lot get hooked. we interviewed one couple aboard the star trek cruise who have booked a penthouse for the next

one. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. oliver: and on bloomberg.com. i know what your favorite story is. carol: elon musk. just when you thought elon musk was busy enough, he got stuck in traffic and came up with an idea to create a hole that people could go through to avoid traffic jams and created a company called the boring company. he sat down with elon musk. elon musk was like, let's go to kick the tires. what about you? oliver: the story about mirrors and retail. this is a huge industry. the retail industry has been challenged so much by online, i think it is an incredibly interesting story with big implications.

more bloomberg tv starts right now. ♪

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