♪ mark: i'm mark crumpton. you are watching "bloomberg technology." u.s. officials said today evidence clearly shows syria was behind last week's chemical weapons attack. that refutes suggestions by russian president vladimir putin that bashar al-assad's opponents were to blame. the officials who briefed reporters at the white house said intelligence sources documented that syrian planes carried out the april 4 bombing. white house press secretary sean spicer is drawing criticism and ridicule for comparing syrian president assad to adolf hitler. he suggested that even a nazi

leader would not gas his own people. he was criticized for failing to a knowledge the systemic extermination of jews in gas chambers at concentration camps. spicer later said he was not trying to lessen the holocaust. the san bernardino school at the center of a murder suicide yesterday is closed for the time being. the closure comes a day after a man walked into his estranged wife's classroom and opens fire, after killing her and an eight-year-old student. he then fatally shot himself. u.s. attorney general jeff sessions made a tour of the u.s. when visiting arizona today. he has vowed to fast-track deportations of immigrants in the country illegally, convicted of federal crimes. ♪

caroline: i'm caroline hyde. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, while president trump meets the ceos on his infrastructure plan, silicon valley executives are absent. could they be playing a bigger role? plus, lyft adds more than $1 billion to its valuation. could an ipo come sooner? toshiba warns about its future on the heels of a highly anticipated earnings announcement. we will discuss whether the company can recover. first, to our lead. president trump's message to corporate america, job creation at the top of the agenda. he made these comments at a strategic policy meeting with 20 ceos today. this meeting was focused on trump's $1 trillion infrastructure program and tax policy going forward. g.m., pepsico, and walmart ceos were there. some were noticeably absent for

the meeting where chief executive officers from the high-growth sector, tech. back in december of last year, with jeffa meeting bezos and tim cook, to name a few. how is silicon valley's relationship with the president evolving? here with us is cofounder of elevation partners and my guest host for the hour. it is a joy to have you with us here, roger. first of all, your view on the new administration and their priorities, do you think infrastructure is number one? roger: no, i think staying alive is the only thing they seem to care about. me, the infrastructure thing is a headline, it is not actually planned. relative to silicon valley, so far the actions they've taken are extremely disruptive. the head of the fcc has made it incredibly clear he will be hostile to the needs of consumers, and by extension, entrepreneurs who are trying to create new business technology.

i am not optimistic. i think the opportunities for any president of the united states to build great value through technology are there, but the industry needs help right now. it got itself a little bit of a joint over the last few years. there are great opportunities, but also challenges. the industry is too focused on getting rid of jobs. we are in this weird situation where technically the economy is at full employment, but tens of millions of people feel they have been left behind. i think they really have. i would like to see silicon valley have a new challenge, like moore's law. to create new industries that employ people in good jobs. i think if you have that kind of a challenge, silicon valley would over time rise to that and a lot of great things would come out of it. silicon valley itself created a lot of good jobs. there's no reason we can't do

this broadly. caroline: it is fascinating that the administration has targeted immigration as the key threat, whereas automation is what many feel has been eroding jobs. should we not be looking for a paradigm shift in the way we all work? are you not more of that viewpoint, or do you feel that we need to have everyone fully employed? but what sort of jobs are re-creating? roger: to me, that is the challenge. i look at this in a simple way. the economy requires consumers. consumers spend two thirds of the money. it doesn't work if a large percentage of the population don't participate in economic recovery. the goal has to be to make jobs more remunerative and more for filling so people have more money to spend. henry ford's great innovation was not the production line, it was the notion he would pay his employees well enough so they could afford to buy ford cars. caroline: and then we saw a turn, they couldn't afford the cars anymore and then we thought

-- saw an unbelievable baling of infrastructure. roger: i would argue that one of the challenges we face in the country we have been doing the , same things now for nearly 40 years, cutting taxes and getting rid of regulations. there were huge benefits to doing those at the early part of that cycle. but i think the benefits have been accruing to fewer people in recent years. it is time to try something different. caroline: universal basic income? would you rather have a net? roger: i don't know, i'm not confident to make that call. but i am confident to say it doesn't have to be the way it is right now. we have essentially -- you saw this week, united airlines with that horrible situation. the last few weeks we have had these increasing pieces of news of wells fargo. those are a direct result of deregulation going so far that companies literally have no regard to their employees -- for their customers, and no fear of repercussions if they treat them badly. in my mind, we have to make

changes. those things aren't working. they are not healthy for the economy to have people treat customers that badly. caroline: it's fascinating, you say incentivize silicon valley or entrepreneurs wherever they might be based, to create long-term, gainful employment. roger: that was the model until 1980. until 1980, companies viewed themselves as not just having customers and shareholders, they also had the communities where they operate. caroline: but doesn't that erode efficiency? roger: why is efficiency the only thing we should focus on? i think it has taken us to where we are today. too much of a good thing. some efficiency is really healthy. caroline: slow it down? roger: just reprioritize. sit there and say right now we , will have a period of time where we reward people for creating jobs and industries.

caroline: trump did, he's trying to get people to -- roger: he is signing up to get credit for jobs created by the people. the jobs are at full employment. there's nothing he can do. what we have to do is qualitatively change of the kind of jobs that are out there. sharing economy is not the answer. people have to have jobs where they can take care of things like health care. i don't know about universal income, but what i do know is universal health care would take away one of the biggest fears people have, and make it possible for the economy to do better than it is doing now. i think right now we have hollowed out the economy, we have eliminated the middle class in ways that are not healthy for public companies, not healthy for private companies. if you want to be a business person, ask the question, is there a better way than the way we are doing it now? the answer is likely yes. caroline: you've got people thinking already. it is great to have you with me. i'm glad i have you here for the hour. he will be my guest host for the day. toshiba has released its

earnings after delaying the announcement twice, and gave a warning about its ability to even stay in business in the wake of a bankruptcy out of its nuclear westinghouse unit. the japanese conglomerate posted a $5.2 billion loss in the last quarter, but they have still not signed off on the figures. jump in with me to the bloomberg and you can see the closer impact of toshiba's troubles. check this out, you can type this into your terminal and see the market cap tumbling 50% since december, more than $10 billion marked off the market cap. we will cover toshiba and the selling of its chip business in this now coming up, qualcomm hour. fires back at apple with a counter suit. case in response to their against the chipmaker. we will discuss where things stand between the tech giants. that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪ caroline: now shares of

dialogue semiconductor plunged more than 15% in a session the , most in 16 years. the firm downgraded the u.k. base, saying there is strong evidence apple plans to replace the chip in its iphones currently supplied i dialogue. they are 75% of their revenue. sticking with chipmakers, qualcomm fighting back after getting hit by a massive lawsuit from apple. the chipmaker denied any wrongdoing and issued counterclaims apple made false statements to regulators, ignored contracts, and interfered with qualcomm's business. for more let's go to ian king, , who covers qualcomm for bloomberg technology.

still with us, our guest host for the hour, roger mcnamee. tense and stormy arguments going between apple and qualcomm. >> what is fundamentally at stake is a lot of money. these two companies arguably led the smartphone revolution and made the most money. now, as things are slowing down, as we are turning from absolute growth towards margins, qualcomm has been the one supplier that apple has not been able to quit. it licensed technology in a very expensive way. whether apple uses chips or not, apple is clearly trying to do something about it. according to qualcomm, it is lying to do something about it. caroline: how do you interpret these battles in the courtroom? roger: i think he had it exactly right.

the stakes, particularly in smartphones, are huge. this is the largest product in the history of technology. you have this situation where you could build, as in the case of dialogue, an entire company off of one component for one customer. that kind of scale we have not seen in a long time. the battle will come down to politics. there is a lot of murkiness around intellectual property law. they are both well-funded and have enormous economic self-interest. i think the law probably favors qualcomm in this, and i suspect the common sense favors apple. they are both going to have leverage point around this.

we will have interpretations of the law around this. it'll be a case people will look at to set a precedent for other things. much as with rambus seven or eight years ago, where there was a huge battle over a similar situation, rambus lost. they didn't lose because they didn't have valley contracts are because the intellectual property law favored their position. they lost because politically, the other people had more power. in this situation, i suspect apple has more political power than qualcomm. >> that is right. a big part of what qualcomm argued today is look how much value we have put into this, look how much we have created. we're not just trying to cash in on some little sliver of an invention. we give you everything we invent and patent up until today. caroline: it's not just the u.s. and not just apple, this is international. south korea is finding them. we see other players coming

after apple. >> and if you take what qualcomm said at face value, that is apple working behind the scenes, going to china, japan, korea, whispering in the ears of regulators and saying, "these are the bad guys." caroline: do we know when the trial will begin? >> not at the moment. i asked the general counsel how long it will take. they said realistically a couple years. roger: it won't be settled there. the fight will go on. too huget of money is to take whatever answer it is at face value. caroline: maybe a decade-long battle. ian king, reporting on all things chips, and roger. coming up, new investors have some raising eyebrows about the timing of an ipo. we focus on the funding and competition with uber, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ caroline: now the ride hailing

company lyft is worth $7.5 billion, up from the $5.5 billion valuation from december 2015. more importantly, who is investing in lyft? new backers include kkr is one of a handful of asset management funds. lyft is tapping a set of investors who have frequently backed public companies or provide funding ahead of an ipo. while the company has kept quiet about its exit plans, they say to go public smart before its competitor, kluber. still with us is our guest host for the hour, roger mcnamee. a man who loves everything around the disruption of transportation. you are a man who has every single app out there for transportation.

do you think this is a wise move by lyft to get bigger players in? roger: i make it in a much simpler fashion. i think they need more capital. full disclosure, i am, through a fund i'm invested in, indirectly an investor in lyft. my observation about the category, the category has deep economic issues. for all intents and purposes, it got commoditized before it got near breakeven. they don't own even the cars or have control over the drivers. what has been shown, at least in new york city, is that it is possible to segment and slice pieces of the market off and compete with lyft and uber by picking very narrow subset of the marketplace. caroline: explain that. roger: there is a company in new york that just goes up and down the avenues, like a jtney. it's very cheap. if you're going from 81st to broadway you can do that.

there is one that takes just drivers five star uber and gives the driver a much better deal than what uber does. so i look at that and say, the consumer value proposition to this point has felt good. the driver proposition has not been good. the unstated piece, how do you replace the cars over time? at the current rate, the assumption is that there is a limitless supply of new drivers. and i do not think that is actually true. has anind, lyft opportunity to have a much better relationship with drivers and i think they would be well advised to find a way to make the whole experience more financially rewarding and to go to the consumers and say, you should pay more for this because our drivers will do better. this will be a better service. consumers have gotten too good a price, which is why this has

exploded and why the math has worked poorly for the drivers. caroline: what is interesting is we have seen the backlash, like delete uber, whether or not it was fair. roger: indisputably fair. caroline: why? roger: i think uber has conducted itself uniformly with a complete disregard not just for the law, but for social conventions. i look at this and i think, it is one story after another, and there are literally no data points on the other side. all these stories can only be 70% accurate and it is still more than enough for people to go, "i'm not going to do that." caroline: if you are a direct investor in uber now? roger: i had three shots and i passed all three times on this issue. starting very, very early. caroline: because of the management? roger: yes, because of the culture. i have a value system.

i have a no a-hole rule. i don't invest in certain types of people and value systems. i'm prepared to give up great returns to do that. it was obvious to me early that uber had a great idea, and could be enormous least successful but , i was deeply troubled by what was already clear in those early days. a culture that essentially not just flaunted rules for the sake of flaunting them, but didn't treat female employees well and didn't treat drivers well. i thought that there were better things for me to do with my capital. lyft has been better. caroline: you can tip drivers, for example. roger: but it isn't perfect. there's a lot of room to make it better. the sharing economy has had this promise in it that everyone would benefit from this. i think that hasn't been true for the people driving the cars. i would like to see that. i think that is an attainable goal.

caroline: do you think that it is because for uber, drivers are a short-term investment, and in the longer term, the business, do you believe is predicated on automation? autonomous vehicles, or not? roger: maybe. but i look at this and i go, what a cold way of looking at it. that will cost billions to get to if they are going to do their own. caroline: they've got billions. roger: but they are spending billions. they will need more capital to get there. i remember being here at bloomberg doing a show five years ago, and one of the senior executives of uber was here. i took him aside afterwards and i said, "have you ever thought about taking all this capital you are getting and going to the car companies, and say that we are going to do what amazon and facebook and google did? we want a car tailored to our needs. we want to strip out everything that doesn't look like an uber." keyless entry, all the cars look

identical, they do not have to own them, they all have the service contract, they are maintained. they could have gotten their cars for maybe half of what the replacement cost is in the marketplace today. it would have given them a permanent advantage. with the same money they spent to this point, they would own hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cars. i look back and think, that was a missed opportunity. would it have worked out perfectly? i don't know. but it's clear the path they are on now has a high risk of failure. caroline: you think they can go into the market publicly? roger: i don't know. right now, lyft loses almost as much money in a year as it has revenues. that is an equation where historically investors have been gun shy. after snap we cannot be so sure. let's see how these things work

out. the idea behind lyft and uber is genius. somethingion has left to be desired. it is not the fault entirely of the companies, there are just too many people in it. the barriers for entry was too low. having all that competition so early has led to this situation where the consumers get a great value and nobody else does. not the companies offering it, not the drivers. it's hard to sustain that. it worries me. because it was a great idea. caroline: and one that clearly some investors still want. roger: and that's what makes markets so beautiful. i could be totally wrong about this. it may be that they just let a little air out of the balloon and it will be fine. but i like investing at $7.5 billion in lyft way better. caroline: rather than $65 billion or something uber is at. roger mcnamee sticking with me, cofounder of elevation partners, my guest host this hour. coming up, your phone addiction isn't entirely your fault.

we will talk to former google one employee who says the engineers in silicon valley are the ones creating the obsession. this is bloomberg. ♪ >> 11:29 a.m. in hong kong, i

have the latest first word news. china's producers gains slowed february,peak in decelerating for the first time since 2015, temper eating -- tempering global inflation outlook. the commodities rebound weekend. consumer prices jumped 9/10 of 1%, weighted by a fall in food prices. the times are about to change for china's under pressure developers. data suggests a resurgence and property markets and lower

funding costs mean developers are witnessing the first drop in leverage since the financial crisis. they expect more positive ratings on chinese homebuilders this year. saudi arabia may support extending all curbs into the second half of the year. sources say riyadh is likely to support more action to drain the gluts further but it depends on the stance of other producers including iraq and iran. opec pledged to reduce output by 1.2 billion barrels a day, with saudi arabia making the bulk of the cuts. the cartel is scheduled to meet in be in a next month. global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. >> haven buying all the rage in asia. volatility picking up, treasury yields slipping below 2.2%. the japanese stocks are syncing

with tokyo leading the drop in asia, chinese stocks falling after the ppi. losses down 1/10 of 1% after this morning's resilience. southeast asian equities are leading the pack when it comes to gainers in the region. korean stocks are steady up 1/10 of 1% after a six-day selloff. we have the korean won leading the gains in the asian forex. a falling the most against the dollar among their g10 peers. let's look at movers today. shares slumping to a five-year low. telecom plans its own mobile network, down 6.8% for now. sharp writing for the first day in six, investors test out the ability to follow through with turnaround plans. of its valuet 1/4 over the last week.

it is above investors targets. toshiba following a second day. it has fallen almost by half since the beginning of 2016. they released a statement yesterday. it is concerned about westinghouse in that focus. ♪ caroline: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm caroline hyde. many parents are convinced their children are addicted to their phones. but you should be concerned about your own addiction levels and perhaps you are right. former google product manager and the design ethicist says engineers at silicon valley is creating phones to get people fixated. it is a phenomenon called brain hacking. what are the long-term consequences? joining us from new york, now founder of the nonprofit movement, time well spent. and still with us guest host for

, the hour, elevation partners cofounder roger mcnamee. this is fascinating. tristan, i was looking at your biography. you left to google in why did 2016. you leave google? did you feel they were not listening to your points of view? >> i think it's an interesting problem. all of these technology companies are locked into the attention economy. no matter what you are building, whether it is a meditation app orfacebook or netflix youtube, no matter what you are making, you are still competing for attention. what i left to create with a conversation about the cost of advertising in the attention economy and whether it is grading the type of world we want to live in, both for democracy, in terms of fake news and in terms of how it affects , children with persuasive techniques with apps like snapchat that go public on networks like this. caroline: who are you targeting

at the moment with your not-for-profit movement and the people listening? >> we just went on "60 minutes." there's a great piece with anderson cooper. people in the industry do agree. it is hard to accept what is really at stake and how to get off the train. at the end of the day, if you are a product manager at facebook, your goal is how you are measured is to maximize engagement. you have to increase a metric life 15%. but all of this increasing of usage doesn't add up to necessarily what we want the world to look like. the world is increasingly persuasive. it sucks us in and leaves us having to show someone the most engaging things, which aren't necessarily the best things for us. roger: good to see you. during the election, actually over the course of the summer, i became increasingly alarmed by my perception that facebook had

inadvertently become a tool that was being used to distort democracy, first with brexit, and then the election cycle here. one thing i discovered in talking to the team there, was initially a reluctance to accept responsibility, to dismiss this this kind of stuff as running experiments. i'm curious, is this something you think can be addressed inside the industry, or are we going to need some kind of regulatory thing from the outside to get the proper attention brought to it? tristan: you are right. we need to have much more attention brought to it. the question is, where is it going to come from? will it come from regulation or because of consumer pressure, when people realize companies are not building products to serve us? they have to serve advertisers. you are right to be concerned about how it was affecting the elections. it's one of my deepest concerns as well. if you think of it this way facebook has a team of engineers , working on the fake news problem that they scrambled to

, after the u.s. election. no matter what they do, how will we know they are doing enough, how will we know it is transparent, and how do we know they are putting sufficient resources especially if it , conflicts with their own business interests? the attention economy i think of as a city of one billion people. but we don't have any public representation. these three private companies, apple, google, and facebook, they run the city and we have been inside it. we need more representation. what does that mean, more representation? roger: it does seem to me one of the challenges we face is that the consumer has no way become aware of what the problem is. i look at the issue of the so-called filter bubbles, particularly around google and facebook where you basically , only see things they believe you like already, so you build these walls that are essentially impervious to all outside influences.

against that they have created add tools that allow advertisers to discriminate. that business model seems to be so successful that the economic argument for the status quo must be compelling to those companies. it's really hard to admit that have caused brexit or have contributed to trump getting elected if your entire business model depends on you having done the very things that enabled those outcomes. tristan: i completely agree. if you look through history, there are often times in history where we discovered that something is morally repugnant but our whole economy is based on it. so it used to be slavery. it took 60 years when the , british empire wanted to get out of slavery, they had to give up 2% of their gdp every year for 60 years. now the whole tech economy is propped up by advertising. it has served us really well and created wealth.

there's a lot of great things that have come from it, but when the costs are too high -- if i'm facebook and i have one newsfeed that has filter bubbles that confirms your existing beliefs, and i have another feed that doesn't confirm your beliefs, if the one that doesn't confirm your beliefs loses engagement, or does not hook you everyone , else will swoop in. so i have to show you the one that confirms your beliefs. with facebook, i'm locked into doing what is bad for democracy. caroline: which stakeholder is it best to target? is it best to target the consumer? is the shareholder, an investor, such as roger here is it to them , to hold the executives to account? is it employees? who could you target with most efficacy? tristan: i think this is a thing we are working out. i love the idea of having more shareholder control and influence when we collectively realize the cost in democracy and children. that's a fantastic way to move to other industries in the past. i think the threat of regulation

is another one. although it is very hard in the current environment though there california, in there is legislature you can go to their. that is the conversation i'm trying to create. caroline: fascinating. i am so glad we had it on this show. former google design ethicist, tristan harris, and roger mcnamee, from silver lake partners. wonderful to have you. now to a story we are watching. a top european regulator will likely order yahoo! to make changes after one of the biggest data breaches in history. ireland's data protection commissioner says a probe by her office showed yahoo!'s european union is at least in part to blame for the incident. rules may 2018, companies may be fined as much as 4% of global annual sales. toshiba reports earnings results

after delaying the report twice. this is bloomberg. ♪ caroline: let's turn back to

toshiba. after months of dealing with the fallout from the bankruptcy of its nuclear westinghouse unit the conglomerate revealed little , -- doubts about its future. is the future crippled, or could the sale of its business get it on track? cory johnson joins us along with our guest host, roger mcnamee of elevation partners. talk us through it, you had some wonderful analogies when we looked at the history of this company. cory: it is an interesting business. this westinghouse nuclear power business is so interesting.

they haven't so many problems. many of them of their own making, accounting problems within the firm, a whistle broader was suggested when the books are not right. toshiba was not coming clean on this. they said we will publish financial results even though the accountant won't sign off on it, and by the way, we might go bankrupt. caroline: roger, we were talking earlier about japan's history in chips, and they used to rule the roost. roger: they really did. i will never forget the late 1980's, meeting the vice chair of toshiba when it was just a chip company, at least in the u.s. they were so dominant. the only american company that showed viability was intel. we were out of memory and we were beaten by japanese companies everywhere. he basically said you can get rid of intel, you don't need to be a semiconductor analyst anymore, because it is over. we are tempted to look at

google, facebook, apple, all that way today. what's going on at toshiba gives you a sense that in technology nothing is forever. cory: also they made really dumb bets. betting in nuclear power was just a bad business decision. roger: but big companies make bad business decisions frequently. that's part of what comes with the territory of outgrowing your market. you outgrow your market and basically look for something else that looks like it will replace it, and inevitably they are not domain experts and the thing they buy, so something goes wrong. caroline: talking about japan a long time ago versus u.s. now, we have a lot of activists in shareholders. we have seen a garnering of control. think of the purchase of whatsapp or instagram that mark zuckerberg made.

and, oculus. you think the control is there for shareholders to rein in bad behavior? cory: stocks go to zero every year. there's always a big fraud. there are certainly frauds on the publicly tradable markets. i think it is also important when you look at the problems of what toshiba has done. this nuclear power business is one where the contracts are so long and the construction takes so many years, and the financial guarantees they must provide to customers is so great, that when the company has financial stumbles, they don't have the financial backing. caroline: a thought on corporate governance particularly as we have seen the , snap ipo. people have so much control at the helm of the companies. sometimes you have to back and entrepreneur. roger: i wouldn't count on corporate governance to bail you out of any problem in the united states.

i think in general, corporate governance in the united states is something we pay lip service to, which in reality is at best dormant, at worst genuinely harmful. i think activist investors in general produce bad long run outcomes that they optimize for the short term. you wonder why there are so many people who are dissatisfied with of their lot in this economic recovery. it is because activist shareholders or the people who preceded them went in and slashed and burned and moved out of the factories. they would move to the sun belt, then to asia. that has been with us for a long time. they keep changing names. first it was green mail then raiders, then activists.

cory: nonetheless -- roger: at the end of the day, it is the same thing. someone is out to make a buck. right now. at the end of the day there are times when that is the best strategy for the company. but there are also times when that may be the only strategy for a limited number of investors over a very short period of time. 40 years into that practice, more often than not, it isn't working out. cory: and this is something they put into the release so they cannot get sued earlier even if their corporate governance is bad. caroline: and it strikes terror into the investors hearts. cory johnson, our bloomberg editor at large and roger mcnamee making a great team. up next, we will be talking about internet privacy protections. we will talk net neutrality rules. we are focused on the future of the fcc next. this is bloomberg. ♪ caroline: now on the latest

tech funding board, a real estate firm is gearing up to be canada's first tech ipo in two years. the company issued regulatory filings according to people tuesday. familiar with the matter, they are seeking to raise around $94 million or a valuation of $750 million. shopify was the last canadian tech company to go public. shares nearly tripled since then. europeanantime, a cable giant is planning an ipo of its u.s. business. founder is looking to exploit stock market gains to fuel stock market functions. they did not offer details on how much of they were selling or what the valuation would be. altice usa was formed with two u.s. acquisitions. it cost more than $26 billion, -- billion. sticking with the united states,

a new fcc chairman has made no secret to the fact he would like to undo net neutrality rules of the previous administration. specifically repealing the title to designation that gives fcc supervision of internet service providers. according to some reports, he has already begun sketching out ideas to do that. still with us is our guest host throughout the hour, roger mcnamee, cofounder of elevation partners. you started off this hour by saying you were worried about the news that the fcc made about privacy. will it hurt entrepreneurs? roger: simply put, we live in an era now where -- let's think about media, whether music or movies. streaming services are becoming much more prevalent. in music, they dominate. increasingly, they are a huge factor in television programming and movies. when you think about it, though -- those services are very concentrated.

they are only a handful of players. if you were to take the net neutrality rules and eliminate them now, you would essentially be locking those people in place. the entrepreneurs who create content and entrepreneurs who might want to compete with of them would be at a massive disadvantage. the thing about pai that is so disturbing if he has an unerring preference for the largest incumbent players over absolutely everyone else. i don't know if you saw the thing they are talking about, no more cell phone usage after the plane lands. that kind of stuff is needlessly antagonistic toward consumers. i don't understand the thought process of the whole administration. they operate in this idea that business doesn't need customers and it doesn't need customer satisfaction to produce better outcomes. it doesn't make sense to me. caroline: are there any business opportunities from some of these unwinding's? i'm looking at the isp providers

who are now able, theoretically, to sell our data and viewing habits on the internet. many say the rise of the vpn is upon us and we will start to see more private internet service providers coming to the fore. are there any winners out there? if we do see a tailing back of net neutrality? ajit pai himself said he still wants to keep the fairness in there. roger: i think that is baloney. i don't think he has interest in fairness for any other than a handful of major players. caroline: why? roger: why do they have a muslim ban? why did they needlessly blow up a bunch of empty buildings in syria? i don't understand anything these people are doing. it's not thoughtful. it is not based on evidence. it's not based on consumer needs. it's not based on any desire to make consumers happy. i find it deeply, deeply disturbing. the sale of consumer data

without consumers' permission, without any ability to opt out -- in whose interest is that? caroline: but they weren't being -- the isp said do the same for google and facebook, have been -- have them regulated to the same extent with customers data. roger: to be clear, i would be fine with that. i think that would be a much better solution than opening it all up. again, we just got off with tristan harris. the use of consumer data by social networks and google has produced some really unfortunate outcomes. i think our refusal to accept those as lessons to learn from them is causing great harm to our society. when you harm a society, you are harming the economy. caroline: how do you put your money to work? how do you put your voice to

work at the moment to be able to see a better outcome? roger: those are two different questions. on money, right now i'm about 70% in t bills because i'm terrified. not to say the market can't go up, but my risk tolerance is lower than it was. at the margin each action taken , by the government is harmful and the responses in my world, the tech world, they have been pretty lame. i still own apple. i still own facebook. i still own it yelp. i own stocks, but not very many. i am highly concentrated and mostly in t-bills. in terms of influence, and trying to help companies. i've been working with facebook directly to say, hang on there's , a way to do this better. to their credit, there are people in facebook trying to do that. it could work out. caroline: it has been wonderful

to have you throughout this hour. roger mcnamee, founder of elevation partners and silver lake partners. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." ♪

♪ yousef: neil politics dominates the market and tillerson flies to moscow. president assad will top the agenda. some big bond offerings to look forward to. they seek one and a half billion dollars. issef: earning season something and the -- stunning and first quarter -- quarter profits are climbing 12%. reports that saudi arabia