>> you are watching bloomberg technology. president trump held his first meeting with denmark's prime minister today. the country wants assurances from u.s. at -- euro trade partners in the wake of brexit and nato uncertainty. the white house invited the heads of congressional intelligence committees investigating russia to view materials found by the national security council after reports officials showed intel committee chair devin nunes information links to trump associates. president trump is shaking up his west wing staff. deputy chief of staff katie walsh is leaving the white house after the house health care repeal failed. she will join a nonprofit group.

-- a group supporting the president's agenda. an official says she was not fired. attorney general jeff sessions plans to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants guilty of federal crimes. he will expand an existing program aimed at holding deportation hearings for immigrants serving sentences, then deport them right afterwards. north carolina governor ray cooper has signed a bill to repeal the so-called bathroom law. legislators in charge of policy on public multi-stall restrooms while local governments are barred from passing new nondiscrimination protections until 2020. global news 24 hours a day powered by 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti. this is bloomberg. "bloomberg technology" is next. ♪

i am cory johnson, this is bloomberg technology. coming up, pinterest is after new ad revenue sources. couldn't ipo be next? we will talk to the president of pinterest. dji on latestto aerial offerings. recent moves by the trump administration have e.u. privacy watchdog worried. but first to our lead a positive , day for u.s. stocks. the nasdaq closing at a record high. its longest winning streak since abigail doolittle, what february. happened? abigail: funnily enough, it was a relatively quiet day. the major averages finishing up by .3%, but nevertheless we saw the nasdaq put in that record high. the nasdaq traded up five days in a row. the small cap russell 2000 up six days in a row. that is its best streak of the year. so there is some bullishness.

we take a look at a five day chart of the nasdaq we see that , new record close. and what makes this worth noting is the fact it is the first record close for the nasdaq since march 1. following the nasdaq 100, which put in a record close yesterday. that was on the strength of some tech names. cory: it's interesting because it seemed like the trump rally was showing signs of weakness. do we have other records, as well? abigail: everybody was talking about how the inflation is reversing. now we have forgotten about it. it will be interesting to see if that rears its head. today, yes, we have these record highs. behind the record high for the nasdaq, a mixed bag of stocks including microsoft, western digital hitting a record high, netflix, funny enough not on any fundamental news. apple finished down. but right in the open it put in a new all-time high. ,there is bullish momentum for these higher beta names. the point to be made, you

look longer-term year to date we look at the bloomberg, on top in purple and white, that is the nasdaq and nasdaq 100. both are up 12% on the year, being helped out by tech. bottom in yellow is the dow, up 5%, and the s&p 500 in aqua up 6%. those indexes are dragged by financials, which have lagged over the last two weeks. but tech is super strong. it will be interesting to see whether or not the s&p 500 and the dow can catch up to the nasdaq. cory: it is interesting because of this correlation. you would think without qe you would see more separation between good companies and bad. abigail: rising tide lifts all boats. cory: until it doesn't. pinterest is not a stock yet but that it has set its sights on theyer source of revenue,

have a new program, pinterest propel. the goal is to attract small and medium-size business to the platform. pinterest diversifying its advertising business, maybe getting ready for an ipo. a target of more than $500 million in revenue for this year. joining us from san francisco, the president of pinterest, tim kendall. talk about ad units. this is not understood outside the world of advertising, that standardizing an way for an ad to appear so important. tim: it is useful to understand exactly what pinterest is. it is an apt people used to design their life. what am i going to eat for dinner tonight? what am i going to wear tomorrow? what am i want my hair to look like tomorrow night? what i want to buy this weekend? what i want to travel this summer? its an apt people used to design their life.

and that is a great place to be if you are an advertiser. because when people come to the after they are open-minded and have intent. as a result when marketers are , there, they see great returns. cory: i have no doubt, i think it's really an interesting business because it is a business where people show intent. like google and unlike facebook, where someone says i have a peculiar interest in this peculiar thing, but again, to my point, sort of the notion of the way, what an ad looks like. is there a format that really works? tim: yeah. i think it's content or promoted pins are our advertising unit. the promoted pins that work well are the ones that resemble the organic content on the surface. -- service. the content on pinterest that works well is content that reflects an idea. an idea could be a picture of someone wearing a great outfit, an idea could be a picture of a meal, a recipe that someone cooks.

so, the advertisers that have success have found that when they create ad creative that shows an idea, and again, that could be a vignette of a living room if they are trying to advertise a couch. it could be an ingredient and they show a full recipe. that's the ad creative that works well with promoted pins because that is what works with, organic content on pinterest. cory: what percent is brand driven? tim: they are here to -- i would say pure brand in terms of, they are here to drive awareness and awareness only. it's about 1/3 of all advertising on the service. so, you can imagine a lot of the advertising that we see successful on pinterest is the kind of advertising where they are actually looking for results, looking for new customers that then convert into customers that spent. -- spend. and that is where we see the bulk of the advertising on pinterest.

cory: how are the ad units, how do they work? are they across, really going after really big groups of people, or are they going after individual keywords? tim: there are two types of ads. ads that show up in someone's home feed when they are browsing through ideas, and those are targeted to people based on things about the audience. so, someone might target women who like surfing who live in southern california. and then there is another kind of ad that can show up in search. there is a lot of search on pinterest, because when people are designing their lives they , look for stuff. and one of the ways they can look is by browsing and the other way is by searching. so we have another ad offering that shows up what people search. if i search for chicken recipes, i might get an advertisement for, i could get an advertisement for chicken or adjacent things around that. cory: do you guys have any

notion of, i am guessing the answer is no, i hope the answer is yes, give me a notion of how many ads your users can tolerate? what the right ad load is before the user gets fed up and does not want to see anymore? tim: well, we are just getting started today. i do not think we know the answer to that. i think we have a hypothesis, which is that when users are looking at organic content -- our organic content is from businesses. so, when you are browsing your home feed, assuming there is no advertising, you are looking at photos or pins that are ideas that reflect products and services. so, when we put ads into that feed, they do not stand out, they are not interrupted. no one gets mad. cory: no one gets mad at the ads in "vogue." that is one of the reasons you buy it. tim: precisely. and what we see -- that's good. what we see is the hide rates. you can hide ads on pinterest.

just as you can hide ads on other platforms. the hide rates are 1/10 of the hide rates we see across the industry because they fit. cory: what is the right time for pinterest to do an ipo? tim: we do not talk about the prospect of an ipo. cory: just between us, come on. tim: very focused on building a business. ben has said we want to build an independent company. so, the focus is let's build an enduring, independent company and continue to grow it. and that is about, you know, building a great advertising business that the announcement today is pinterest propel, which is our extension into small businesses, providing a support for advertisers who have small businesses and want to advertise quickly and easily on pinterest. cory: pinterest president tim kendall.

i will let you get away with that dodge. coming up, we have a major player in the world of drones. d.j.i. plans to go beyond recreational with this device. that's next on bloomberg. ♪ cory: breaking news, one of the

biggest tech players in the world, verizon is planning to launch a tv service. new headlines crossing, and internet related tv service. we do not have a lot of details right now, but verizon looking at that. verizon going into the content business with yahoo! and aol. now looking at web tv. drones have become a bit more commonplace for recreational use but the enterprise game is the name of the game for the business. d.j.i., the world leader and unmanned aerial technology, debuted the m-200 series, a drone designed for

professionals. you might use it for aerial data projection. michael parry, d.j.i.'s director of strategic partnership. talk to me about the business. why a business drone? michael: what has been amazing is the entire drone category came out of hobbyists. they started putting it in the air and using it. very quickly they realized, this could be really useful in my real estate business my wedding , photography business. but as you start extrapolating it out into any area where data collection is too time intensive or too costly or even too dangerous, drones have a role to play. we have seen drones being used for search and rescue applications, for infrastructure inspection construction. , that is where the m-200 comes into play. it is a rugged, ready to fly platform that is advanced and the different types of sensor payloads. you can get the type of data that integrates seamlessly with

your work. cory: i went to the colorado oil geologists association conference in denver a few months ago. -- a few years ago. and i saw something in the expo. it blew my mind it was a giant , torpedo, about 8 feet long. i asked what it was. he said we attach this to helicopters. we have to fly over every single oil and gas pipeline in the u.s. to detect for leaks. my god, they spent all that money with helicopters and planes and these giant torpedos. aat is the kind of thing drone can do without all that expense. michael: exactly. we hear from mining companies that have to hire a helicopter, send it across the country to go look at a mine mouth do a volumetric assessment and fly back. now all that can be done with a few thousand dollar set up and data collection can be done with a few thousand dollars platforms that you can do on a daily basis. so, really reduces the workload and as tremendous value to these

companies. cory: when you look at these potential devices, again the physical design of this drone, how is it built differently? is it bigger, does it have longer flying time? michael: so, we have really made the system resilient as much as possible. it starts with the ip-43 water and dust resistance. cory: what's that? michael: it is a category to make sure it is water resistant. it is a robust system. cory: is it more water resistant than ip-42? michael: you have got it perfectly. dual batteries, dual sensor units. the platform knows where it is supposed to be. it will fly stably. cory: are the regulations there for this? are they ready for these things to go into deployment? michael: the great news is the regulators have already said that the drones say they can be put to work. the faa recently released new rules that allow pilots to use

drones for all types of commercial applications. cory: you guys have been behind this interesting notion of registering drones. a license plate for drones. talk to me about that. michael: we know there's 770,000 operators registered with the faa for drone use. the vast majority of them are using our technology responsibly. but the average consumer does not necessarily know that. there are legitimate questions out there about what are these drones doing close to me? cory: there have been stories about drones dropping drugs and cell phones into prisons and things like that. michael: despite the few cases you are talking about, consumers have legitimate questions about what these drones are doing around them. so, we put for the concept of local identification of the drone. basically, like a license plate. you have a number that somebody can look at, register and if they have a complaint they can go to the government and say, what is this person doing in my airspace? cory: that is interesting.

and the government's response has been? michael: they put out a number of tenders for concepts like this. d.j.i.'s just one of the many proposals. cory: terrorism is another concern, right? michael: yes. the system we put into place balances both the ability to get information about drones in airspace but also balancing the privacy of our operators who are using our technology for very legitimate uses. cory: michael parry, congratulations on your launch today. great stuff. coming up, connecting brain neurons and a.i. might sound like science fiction. elon musk is set to make that a reality. we will explain how. this is bloomberg. ♪ cory: elon musk has launched

yet another company that merges artificial intelligence with the

human brain. that is according to wall street journal. neuralink in its earliest stages has yet to make a public presence. joining us from san francisco, matt murphy. he is the managing director at menlo ventures. matt, this is intriguing, the notion of a.i. matching with health care. give me a couple of examples of the way a.i. makes our current health care system better? >> two ways. one of the main things that is happening over the past five years which is a gene sequencer which used to cost $5 million is down into the $30,000 range. you can process massive amounts of genomic data for a disease, same thing with rna. so you have got the ability to do things very bespoke on an individual basis, that is one. secondly, there is massive amounts of health care data that is in electronic form. electronic medical records or

pathway data which shows how hospitals treat the different disease states and every step along the way. you apply a.i. to the data set that comes out of the gene sequencers to match treatments to diseases better. on the pathway side, you can take a look through machine learning to figure out all the way to treat patients differently based on their characteristics and figure out which one is the best treatment for them. that is the way you can create a smart system. cory: i've heard examples, they are saying that a.i. could look at mri's and look at hundreds of thousands of images and a short period of time from many, many patients and start to identify, hey, this this thing looks like this thing we have seen before. you do not have a doctor holding up something to the light. >> exactly. there was a company we invested in back in the fall called clarify in new york that basically is using computer vision for exactly that kind of an application. so, if you think about what

twilio did to allow any enterprise company to use, to put telephony services in their system. clarify does that starting with computer vision. whether you are a drone company looking at crop data or medical imaging data, now you can simply use this api to help you visually determine whether something is a tumor or not and do it at a much more precise level. what happened in the last three years is now machines are better visually than humans at detecting things like that. and that has been one of the many breakthroughs in the last few years. cory: that's fascinating. is the computing happening on site or happening up in the cloud, where for this health care stuff that is going to require so much computational power? matt: that is a great point. as these gene sequencers get distributed out in the hospitals and even food assembly lines to

test for pathogens, you need a cloud service. you need analysis on site and shift the data up to the cloud to do the more sophisticated a.i. the beauty of a model like that if you can see data from all different hospitals, all sources of dna or rna and compare that against the data you have. cory: it is not just a computer. it's the sort of, the storage of the files and the actual learning that is taking place. matt: basically, one of the huge network affects around a.i. is getting the data. if you are a cloud service that is getting data from all over the world from various different devices and can create models based on data, then the model keeps getting smarter and smarter and the solution keeps getting better and better. and that is what a.i. needs is the data. so, it's cheap storage, the cheap way you can move data around today. but it is also having really

inexpensive machines on site on premise that used to not be possible to create that data and -- in the first place. cory: i should've started this whole thing by asking you what a.i. means. the definition is different depending on who you are talking to. is a.i. and machine learning the same thing? matt: a.i., artificial intelligence, is the broader description of the field of computers doing things intelligently. machine learning is more specific in that it means machines are getting the data and watching it and constantly making optimizations and improving it over time. so, it is more specific, but i think most of the really interesting action is an machine learning right now. you need to get the data, watch look for unusual patterns or patterns you care about and then , create solutions. a machine can help create solutions. it is constantly looking at the efficacy of those solutions to modify them and make it better as you go. that is the machine learning part, the constant iteration at a scale and speed that humans could never do.

cory: 20 seconds left. where are we finding the best a.i. people, what school are they coming out of? matt: oh, nyu's a great one. stanford is fantastic. nyu is your alma mater? cory: you look at the notes. michael: matt from clarify is from nyu. there is a huge amount of talent out there. obviously the big five are trying to gobble them up. they have bought 140 a.i. companies in the last three years. 40 of them in the last year. there is a huge arms race for this talent right now because people know this can be a massive differentiator for any application, any business. cory: matt murphy, thank you very much. we appreciate it. still to come, the trump administration has e.u. regulators worried. especially if they do not hold up there bargain. check like bloomberg news

us out on the radio. you can hear is on the radio plus app, light stations in .d.c., new york and boston and the bay area and xm siruius 119. this is bloomberg. ♪ >> i have the latest first word

news. has risen toity its highest level since 2012. 50 1.8, slightly above the consensus estimate, which was itself an improvement over february's mark. they're gathering momentum in the chinese economy. higherpmi also rising, than expected at 25.1. former south korean president

has been arrested on suspicion of corruption. prosecutors argued there was concerns park might destroy evidence. investigators claimed that she pressured big business to pay millions of dollars to a friend in exchange for government favors. park was taken to a detention center where her friend, choi soon-sil, and jay y. lee are being shared. malaysia has released the body of kim jong-nam back to north korea in return for nine of its citizens being held in pyongyang. kim jong-nam was murdered more than one month ago at an airport. two women are expected of using a illegal nerve agent on his face. . they refuse to allow citizens to leave global news 24 hours a day, powered by 2600 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. i am haslinda amin, this is bloomberg.

>> we have japan coming back online after its lunch break. the final trading day of the month of the quarter. what a great one it has been for investors. up 9.7%. china sees that rake up 4/10 of 1%. japan's nikkei index leading those gains across the region. let's have a look at some of the movers we have been watching this session. there is been quite a bit of fluctuation. we had a mixed start to the day. some of the losers on the index in hong kong, china railways, the biggest loser there, down by about 6%. they cut its rating as a downgrade. says its lower dividends do have a silver lining because it is announced it will return to regular

payments. let's quickly look at some of the winners. toshiba one of the better performers coming back this week. a mixed picture across asian markets this lunchtime. ♪ this is bloomberg technology, i am cory jones. concerned about a landmark agreement between the obama administration and the you that protects europeans personal data from u.s. spies. it is called the privacy shield. and it lets u.s. companies like facebook and google transfer customer data from europe across the atlantic to the u.s. and the promise that it will be protected by stricter european privacy laws. since the deal went into effect, donald trump has been elected president and has expanded u.s. surveillance powers. the e.u. commissioner flew to washington this week to seek reassurance the new administration will honor that deal. she joins us from the d.c. bureau.

thank you for joining us. this is a really interesting problem for these companies. many of which are u.s. companies who are operating google, facebook, and the like in europe. explain to me how this came to be in the first place. >> i must say for the companies it is not only interesting but it is absolutely crucial that they have legal certainty when they transfer private data of europeans across the atlantic to the united states. for me, it is important to be here in washington and ask the and the newration representation of the united states, what are the guarantees which we agreed upon in the negotiations of the so-called privacy shield, whether they are still in place, because this is important for both sides. cory: why is it important for businesses? vera: the businesses, to a large extent are dependent on transfers of private data. and they were without privacy shields.

asked to have a complicated way to guarantee the protection of data when they are transferring to the united states. having the privacy shield is for them very advantageous useful, , and comfortable legal arrangement. if i stay comfortable it means at the same time they have to comply with the privacy shields. and as you said, to comply with stricter roles for protection of private data, which we have in the european union compared to the ones here in the united states. cory: can you tell the company's don't worry, we are , going to make sure this will be fine? do you have that confidence? vera: i cannot give such a guarantee to the companies, because it is mainly their task to be compliant with the rules and only through the full compliance, they can avoid being sanctioned.

or having some negative impact on their business. why i'm here today, it is more the dialogue of this new american representation. i had a privilege to speak with davis, who assured me that he understands the importance of also, theields and tasks or the commitments which under privacy shields in place for the state administration. i have to come back to europe with such assurance and to continue working on keeping privacy shields running. allowing us to be sure that the protection of the privacy of europeans is in place. cory: are you still willing to pull the privacy shield completely if you do not get the assurances you need? vera: i can say i have positive feelings. i spoke to mr. ross. i spoke to the american chamber of commerce and the representation of various

businesses, and i had a very good feeling that the privacy shield is fulfilling its main purpose. also, i met yesterday the representatives of ngo's, the watchdogs, which have some concerns about the new trends in the united states, the feeling that there will be more emphasis -- on ensuring national security, which would mean that the protection of privacy will be secondary. i don't have such signs. cory: it is interesting from a privacy standpoint. it seems the e.u. has targeted u.s. companies, google, facebook among others that seem to have a , different notion of privacy, to put it politely. than some european companies. do you feel like in your role as commissioner of the e.u. that you've got a focus on u.s. companies because they do not get privacy, that some of us

think of it differently? vera: when american companies operate and collect, operate in the european union and collect the private data of europeans, they have to comply with the same rules and with the same privacy guarantees as the european companies. so, we do not make any difference. and we are applying the rules and the guarantees of protection to all of the companies. cory: there's also some concern about the types of speech happening on these platforms. hate speech which is illegal across the e.u., and then also, this notion of fake news and the effect that may have had on the u.s. election and what it can be doing in france right now. i wonder where that falls under your purview. vera: of course we have concerns not only about hate , speech and the manipulation of public opinion through online but we have many other concerns

connected with online fear and platforms. i'm also responsible for consumer policies. i wanted to see the same level of protection of consumers rights online and off-line. so, there is a wide range of issues we try to solve in the european union. and we want to do it in a targeted way so that not to hinder any development in the digital sphere and at the same time to filter out in a targeted way the risk which the digital sphere poses for the consumers and for the citizens. you mentioned hate speech. we see that in the european union, extremism and racism and xenophobia is on the rise. so, we wanted to do our best to secure the protection of people through imposing the strict

rules which in fact are prohibiting hate speech online. and we are doing this through the agreement with the i.t. companies, and we try hard to have things under control. this, i must emphasize, for respect to freedom of speech, which is highly valued in the european union. cory: it's valued here as well. it sounds like fundamental -- it is really about cooperation, cooperation between e.u. and the u.s. cooperation between the e.u. and the companies. there is a big change afoot with brexit. does brexit make this more difficult, more complicated for you? vera: of course, we are not happy about united kingdom leaving the european union, but at the same time, they are not leaving europe. they are still europeans, and i strongly believe that not only in the field of data protection

and other spheres we will be able to come to mutually advantageous agreement, which will set the basis for the future strong partnership between e.u. and the united kingdom. cory: really quick, are you optimistic? do you feel like you have gotten what you need, or you still laid -- or you still need to get more insurance is from the white house and u.s. government? vera: at this moment i am positive, but of course, we need to get more information about how the privacy shield is functioning. because this year in september i will publish the first annual review. and i shared this information with all my partners here that i expect them to give us the input and the sufficient information so that we can assess whether privacy shield is for filling -- is fulfilling its main function.

cory: e.u. justice commissioner, thank you very much for your time. we really appreciate it. coming up, we talk about facebook's or early days with an executive at the top level for seven years. the early days of facebook next. this is bloomberg. ♪ cory: we cover facebook in lots

of ways at "bloomberg technology." we don't usually get an opportunity to look back at the company's massive growth and what that was like on the inside. right now joining us is -- had seven years of the company and wrote a book about it called "becoming facebook." i bet this is the only time he has ever worn a tie. have you ever worn a tie at facebook? >> not in the building. cory: i walked into facebook officers when i moved to menlo park i saw these guys that would have been working at goldman sachs wearing sneakers and hoodies.

that part of the culture is not as interesting as what is in your book. what would it be like for me if i walked into facebook? what would that work environment be like? >> the first thing you see is a lot of energy and you feel it. we will talk about coders, designers, those very rarist contributors to making these things be so powerful for users. what you'd find is every person at facebook, your attorney, your marketing person, maybe even a person that deals with their customers, the person that does support for all of facebook's users, is going to be one of the most energetic, one of the most experienced, one of the most successful people at what they do because they are just drawn to what in the book i described as the cult of mission that mark zuckerberg has established. mark is 13 years into what might be a 50 year mission. you feel that from everyone. not because mark makes them do it or say it, but because that

is why they are there. cory: i have a friend that went to work at facebook, he is a true cynic. when i see him around, he says, i want to be a cynic but people there really believe in what they are doing, and it is not b.s. mike: i think it comes from the fact that you can see the product being successful, that what it is trying to accomplish for people, which is to make them feel connected to the people and things that matter to them. if you ask people, as facebook does literally every day 50,000 times to make sure the product is working for people, what is the one word you would describe for how you feel about facebook, it is that is makes them feel connected. of course, mark zuckerberg has made sure he does not just have facebook to do that but also instagram and whatsapp and messenger because he knows there is going to be different ways that people are going to feel connected to the world around them. when you see the product being so successful to so many people in the world, it makes you feel like you are part of something that is working and that is worth it and is making a difference and that is the

reason that so many facebook users use it for an hour a day. cory: i am sort of amazed. there been bumps along the road, products that did not work and issues about privacy, but generally speaking, financially, at the very least this has been , one of the most successful launches of a company in the history of american business flat out. i'm surprised that, i don't know mark zuckerberg, i knew cheryl at google, they have become successful leaders. i wonder what that is like to see it happen. mike: well, absolutely right. what you see with both of them, mark is steadfast in the mission he is pursuing. he has a very clear vision. i used to work at the turn-of-the-century. cory: answer me this story. you have got one of those fly on the wall stories where you got to be a fly on the wall, where andy grove and mark zuckerberg sat down together.

mike: this was in 2009 when nothing was assured. in 2009 we were being told by mark through a movie written by aaron sorkin. he abbreviated mark as socially awkward. we have already scene is not that simple. mark and andy grove for having lunch. these are two silicon valley generations apart but mark at 24, 25 really wanted to go to town on the history of silicon valley. only the paranoid survive, andy groves the bible on management, something market cared about. they were looking at each other. andy, who had nothing left to prove, he had built the silicon of silicon valley was trying to figure out if mark is legit. mark was trying to figure out this guy that jumped off the pages of a famous book. where could they find common ground? they looked at each other over the divide of the generations and discovered they had equal will power to make this superstrong vision come to pass. that is what you see with a zuckerberg.

and the willingness to let go of things that weren't working and to also make adjustments. and to play defense before defense might be necessary. we always talk about how important instagram is now, the rolet is playing in continued leadership for them especially against snapchat. back when he bought it it had 10 million users and zero million dollars of revenue. that is why mark is such a successful leader. cherl -- cheryl is doing a fantastic job running business and privacy. they are one of the greatest ceo-coo's tandems ever. and i got to see andy grove and craig barrett up close. that is why facebook works. cory: it is a fascinating story and i'm glad to have you share that with us. his book is called "becoming facebook." thanks a lot. apple, amazon, google, several of the biggest u.s. corporations sticking to pledges to fight climate change despite president trump's executive order on tuesday to gut the obama

administration's environmental policies. was giants said that order "we believe that strong clean energy and climate policy is like the clean power plant to make renewable energy supplies more robust. while also supporting american competitiveness, innovation and job growth." bloomberg caught up with new jersey senator cory booker. no relation. take a listen to what he had to say. >> a lot of republican senators, congresspeople who represent world, red state areas, they want broadband penetration as well. they want their kids to have access to the information superhighway as well. a lot of things they are doing in this phase, you might think they do not have bipartisan support. folks, i amy fighting for new jersey. in my state, broadband penetration is important.

this is america, we should be leaders in places like this. cory: facebook says controversial cofounder of oculus palmer luckey is out three years after mark zuckerberg bought his company for $2 billion. that story next. ♪ cory: at&t is building the first

nationwide network for emergency workers. the project will create 10,000 jobs, it is called the first responder network authority or firstnet. it is an independent agency in the commerce department. they will contribute as much as $6.5 billion in incentive-based funding. the latest tech revolving door, facebook says the cofounder of oculus is out. palmer luckey is his name. his role of the virtual reality unit had been in flux in recent months. he secretly funded a conservative group focusing on anti-clinton memes during the election.

after facebook lost a lawsuit for allegedly stealing trade secrets behind the oculus vr headset. sarah joins us. who is this guy? sarah: palmer luckey for a while was the face of oculus. there is an iconic photo of him on the cover of "time" magazine jumping into space, that was widely ridiculed. he has been on the 30 under 30 list. he has become the wunderkind who at 19 years old built this in his garage, or at least that is the story they told in the early days of oculus. since then, the company has been distancing itself from him. he really was not that involved in the day-to-day at oculus. and he had these other interest, as you mentioned, the anti-hillary memes. and he was testifying in january in this lawsuit. and facebook is not saying why

he left, but certainly there is a lot of controversy around his tenure. cory: there was this anti-hillary clinton meme. talk to me about that. sarah: he was funding a group that would create these little -- cory: fake news? i'm serious, was it fake news? sarah: yeah. i mean, some might call it that. it was memes that framed hillary as the criminal version of her. sort of the alt-right version of what hillary -- and palmer apologized in a post right before the oculus connects conference, the big developer conference that they hold. and he actually did not even attend that conference because he did not want to be a distraction. he said he was doing it for fun , these means because he thought , they were hilarious. and then he said, yes, i realize this might have made some people uncomfortable.

cory: if you see that ridiculous "time" magazine cover, you can see that on twitter. you put it up and i retweeted it. it is truly ridiculous. thank you very much. we appreciate it. ford has agreed to hire 400 blackberry employees to help the automaker with self driving -- wireless technology and maybe self driving cars. the move to reduce costs in one quick swipe. for ford to build its own team. they announced a partnership in october. on fridays show we will cover blackberry's earnings. john chen is part of our coverage. one thing on the bloomberg terminal shows you different revenue streams for blackberry. the white line that goes way up and way down on the tenure chart that is hardware revenues , for blackberry surging and collapsing. but so did services. software, the blue line at the bottom trying to pick up.

that is the story of blackberry in a chart on the terminal. we will talk about that tomorrow with john chen. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ >> it is noon here in hong kong. former south korean president has been arrested for corruption on the concern that she may destroy evidence. she is accused of pressuring businesses. she is being held along with her friend. a look at china. pmi's. pmi. manufacturing pmi coming in at 59.8. an improvement from february. nonmanufacturing pmi rose to a two-year high.