leaving every competitor, threat and challenge outmaneuvered. comcast business outmaneuver. >> welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i am taylor riggs. jason: i am jason kelly. taylor: we have an exclusive interview with the ceo of snap. we looked to air france and the turbulence it is experiencing with a new ceo. the cover is all

about harley and their request to recover sales. jason: it has been called out in various ways by the president of the united states. its main challenge, appealing to millennials. taylor: they are having to go abroad to get those buyers. is about harley davidson and how the company has been trying to transition into a new phase of its life span. getting new riders, younger riders, not necessarily american but obviously, the company is famous for and its core group is forl baby boomers who ride fun on the weekend or cross-country. i had to take -- hang out with them. taylor: what was that like? i want to know about who they are now because they are a very iconic american brand and known for being a nationalist all-american with a very certain demographic. claire: harley davidson has been around since 19 know three. it is the only u.s. older cycle

company that has been in operation on that time. second longest competitor has been defunct since 1953. motorcycles in both world wars, elvis presley wolk -- wrote of them, people knievel, the terminator. they have become this iconic american brand and the image we have of the harley-davidson rider -- there are a couple of them. a little nuanced, but they are the baby boomer weekend riders and the leather jackets then the outlaw bikers who andme famous in the 1950's 1960's. the harley groups, we feel like those -- they feel like those guys give them the bad name but for those who are not into bike or culture can't tell the difference. nicer,out with the law-abiding weekend riders and

for the most part, their version of motorcycling is called touring or cruising. you ride long distances, and they just went out on a weekend, lovely, went to a bar and had some drinks and burgers, and that is what they do. younger people don't tend to ride motorcycles that way. jason: how do younger people ride motorcycles? claire: the shorter answer is that most don't anymore. that is the overarching problem, but obviously, people do. there are adventure bikes, which you can take on road or off-road. people like racing. essentially, harley became known for these long-distance rides and that is what they do best or had been doing best, but millennials are in their 30's, they have a lot of debt. those bikes are expensive.

the highest price ones are up to $45,000 averages $15,000. jason: as you point out in the survey, more than an iphone. than andefinitely more iphone. and this is not a primary vehicle. this is a secondary vehicle that you are writing for fun. you are essentially buying another car on top of what you drive. time,nials don't have the the money, they are just not as interested in it parked -- partially because of the biker stereotype and that has been a real problem for harley for a while now, but became a real problem during the recession. jason: we are here with the creative director. chris, great cover this week. harley davidson, very clever. chris: we had all this imagery to work with with harley. you have the bikes, the bikers. ofgravitated to the idea

playing with the biker vest and we took some of these classic andey patches or motifs flipped them to be morally -- millennial focused or where hardly needs to push its audiences to keep selling bikes. image looks very classic harley davidson stereotype and then when you look the individual patches, it has the future growth where they need to be with the millennials. together fun putting what the different pieces would be. it was a fun project to work on. forn: it must have been fun everybody to work off each other and try to one up each other on idea.st clever the eagle with the avocado was my favorite. cover, yoully on the get one good joke and this one we had several. europe,oving over to you had fun turning a classic

french phrase on its head. chris: yeah, and this came from one of the editors. different bunch of laugh lines, but this worked best with the story. we had beautiful photos on the tarmac at charles de gaulle and the whole thing came together. taylor: those are real future words. -- french words. thank you so much. next, a pair of legal bombshells dropped at the same time this week. the follow-up may be considerable for jump -- trump and the gop. taylor: while the job market is hot, pay isn't. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek."

taylor: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am taylor riggs. jason: i am jason kelly.

you can find us online at businessweek.com. jason: in the remarks section, trump biographer tim o'brien talks about what a disastrous tuesday it was for the president. jason: paul manafort, convict did in virginia, michael coincidently in new york. taylor: we spoke with matthew philips on what this means politically, going forward. >> this was a buzz when the indictments came down. bloomberg was first and we got eight guilty out of eight team -- 18. the question about whether the prosecution will want to retry this. not long after that, we got another big buzz around the coding deal. when you look at the way the white house has been defending it self, it has been preparing molar for a year plus -- robert mueller for a year plus. michael coinstar has come not

out of left field but been fast tracked in a way that has taken people in the white house but surprise -- by surprise and members of the media. there was a sense things were getting to the point where he may get arrested to -- soon. it had been a few weeks since the tape he alleged the office.t talking in his something felt imminent. it wasn't necessarily a plea deal we were expect. in -- expecting. the ramifications are massive. taylor: what are those ramifications as it comes to the midterms? changet of reaction or in strategy from either the gop side or the democratic side? >> let's think of the rate -- legal ramifications of this first. the legal ramifications are still a little unclear because the doj has this memo out there

that basically says a sitting president cannot be indicted. yet, what if the indictment was issued under seal? speculationot of about how this could be addressed from a legal standpoint and what jeopardy this puts the president in. we think about previous political and legal crises that come out of the white house, mainly with bill clinton and richard nixon. twoad these two threads, narratives. one being political and the other being legal. they were deniable from the president's trophy point on both counts until it touched -- standpoint on both counts. until they touched. this was the week they touched with trump. you want to talk about the legal situation, whether his legal team is up to the challenge. ofre is not a lot of sense

confidence right now in his current legal team with giuliani. there is the sense he has not been well suited by him. there are also political considerations to be made and the impact on the midterms. changes the conversation, particularly the one the democrats are having. in house races, but also senate races. i want to talk about the difference between the way chuck the senate might have some of his candidates in the senate facing tougher elections in trump country, might be a little shy to dive into issues of impeachment. versus nancy pelosi and how she will direct her troops in the house where this might play better in blue parts of the country. jason: what about the gop? how do you sense they will react. as you say, we get closer to the midterms?

way they can activate their voters around this and get the base out. and basically say if you like our guy trump in the white house. if you like his tariffs, his tax policies, what he is doing on immigration, for example, he is under threat for impeachment. to stick around, you have to get out and defend these district is, these seats in the house and certainly in the senate. it becomes a deployable issue what we sides, because got this week was the first time we can go from the theoretical threat of impeachment to actually the tangible one. economicer the section, taylor, a very hot labor market wages aren't moving. it stands to figure almost certainly in the midterms, as well. taylor: "bloomberg businessweek" dove into major industries where

you did -- would think wages would be growing, even though they are not. on anwanted to drill down industry level into three areas we knew about wages not going up. that led us -- we looked at all the data, got them together, and that led us to childcare workers, construction workers, and truckers. those are three industries where we consistently hear folks say there aren't enough people but pay has been really stagnant. taylor: we talked a lot about the trucking industry and the heightened cost the industry is facing, so what did you learn in that industry, for example? consistentlyas baffled everyone, i think, because you hear so many stories about folks not being able to find workers, folks driving up prices and then when you look at trucker wages, they have not been going up. offound there are a bunch structural things that have been

holding back trucker wages from the way folks lease their trucks to the simple fact that it has taken a long time for trucking companies to become comfortable raising wages as a way to attract more workers. we think we are on the leading edge of being about to see rage -- wage hikes. jason: the company has not been comfortable, why? they don't see the revenue growth coming that would allow them to offset the higher costs? thing we found across all these industries is there is an element of feeling there might be untapped labor pulls out there. a lot of folks have been turning to unconventional work or some might not technically qualify for the work in a loose economy, but can be at -- enticed into it in a tight one. trucking is a semi-qualified career. you have to have a cdl, so it has an extra entry barrier and i think trucking companies are saying, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. there aren't a lot of people who will get in this fashion to this

difficult line of work that is poorly compensated unless we offer a reason to do so. jason: let's turn to construction. colleague's is my report out of atlanta. it is a tight labor market, everyone is conscious they are having trouble pulling people off the sidelines, but they have run out of people there and still refuse to give wage increases. he is like, why aren't you raising wages? what he heard was even if we raised wages, we won't get people, so why would we pay more? taylor: that is interesting. jeanna: which i thought was fascinating. there is a real belief among those he was talking to that there are just not qualified workers who will be enticed into this difficult labor no matter what they offer to pay them. taylor: what about childcare? you havenother sector heard anecdotes there are shortages, but not quite seeing the increase in wages. jeanna: the reason i was interested in childcare is it is -- we don't have an unemployment

rate on childcare but we noticed the number of people working in it has declined. at the same time, we hear people saying i can't find childcare. i had to stay home from work because i can't find someone. we were. some out. what is going on in childcare is families aren't earning anymore, even if they aren't working, they are not able to pay more for childcare. mom and dad might have jobs, but if they are still earning tepid wages just keeping up with inflation, they can't raise wages or the people they are directly employing to watch their children. there is this natural ceiling on what childcare workers can earn and in a hot economy, other jobs are driving them away from that industry. jason: next, immigration has fueled sweden's economic boom, but it is dividing voters on the eve of an election. taylor: and a touchy political topic in silicon valley. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. taylor: i am taylor riggs. you can listen to us on radio on sirius xm channel 119, and on am 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 fm in washington, d.c. and am 960 in the bay area. jason: and in london on dab digital. in the technology section, we go to silicon valley. uber drivers, google, software engineers, microsoft testers, there essential to business there. fighting tothey are be considered full-time employees. we got the lowdown from josh. josh: throughout tech, we have debates over who is the boss. workers who have created a lot of wealth for well-known companies but according to that

company don't work for them directly. whether the company says they are employed by a third-party like temp agencies or self-employed. this debate happens at uber about drivers, at amazon about warehouse workers, and at microsoft in a dispute that we've got a new perspective on through freedom of information act request about a few dozen in workers -- dozen workers who were testing apps for bugs and were employed according to microsoft by a contract company, line bridge technology. jason: what happened? what is the crux of the dispute between these two? in 2014, these few dozen workers successfully unionized. it was a union victory that is pretty rare in software for a to win themps election and get a chance to bargain collectively. microsoft, but the

company they were getting their paychecks from. things took a darker turn for those workers a couple of years later when in 2016, they found out that the entire bargaining unit was being laid off and all those jobs were being eliminated in washington state. the union filed a charge with the national labor relations board alleging first this was illegal, they were being retaliated against, and second, that microscopic -- microsoft was liable, as well. microsoft was in legal terminology called a "joint employer," a company that has enough control about a group of workers that it is responsible if the law is violated against them. taylor: this brings out the broader problem that it is not only microsoft, but a lot of other companies are spending time and energy and money lobbying to make sure they can maintain their rights and have

employees perhaps not be able to unionize. what is that bigger fight? that's right. here in california, there was a state supreme court victory for people that wanted to make it easier for workers to be treated as employees of big companies. that state supreme court victory made it harder to treat contractors is being challenged by a coalition of companies that are pushing for the legislature, the governor to unravel it. meanwhile, in washington, d.c., you have democrats sponsoring legislation that would make it easier to force companies to bargain collectively with workers they say are not their employees. you have the national labor relations board moving to undo a precedent from the obama era that makes it easier to get companies considered a joint employer. example, to potentially get mcdonald's considered legally an

employer of workers in franchise stores. datess a hot topic that federal workers, labor advocates, are locked in combat over and will be for some time. taylor: we go from silicon valley over to sweden. they are taking in a flood of migrants that is helping fuel economic growth. jason: economic gains that may be turning to a political strain in the eve of elections. several: we interviewed . we interviewed a gentleman who had come over from syria. he had quite a lot of skills. he had an mba from lebanon and a career that had spanned many countries, work in equities and real estate. he talks about how difficult initially it was to find employment, but he got for up with a program that offered this

crash course. it is a mini mba. -- economicram school in stockholm and that was the clinch. --now works for we have people with difficult transitions into the labor market, but successful ones. we began to look at how the country stuck up -- stacked up against other european countries . put sweden in that context. this idea of nationalism versus immigration. nationalism versus globalism. it is a theme you guys are looking at almost every week, it feels like, in a somewhat provocative way and the surprise here is how immigration is essentially countering, it seems, some pretty grim demography? forcena: sweden's labor

is aging carried the country has vacancies of 100,000 that it is struggling to fill. always good are not matches for jobs, but in the welfare state, which in sweden includes elder care and health many jobre are men -- openings they have been able to fill. at the same time, there is an election on september 9. aght now, the polls show that party that is a nationalist, anti-immigrant party, they want to clean -- complete ban on asylum-seekers, is going to get about 20% of the vote, which will make it difficult for establishment parties to form a stable government. let me say that all parties in sweden now have some rhetoric about putting controls on immigration. we are talking about a country of less than 10 million people that absorbs 600,000 new arrivals in five years. we hear a lot about italy and

germany, but in terms of if you looked at the percentage of population, it is huge. taylor: there are also some challenges absorbing a large amount of people, like you said. economy,es help their as well. walk us through some of the statistics about how they are able to boost the economy and absorb that massive amount. cristina: we looked at growth and saw that in the first two quarters of the year, suite number 3%, which is almost one percentage point above the eu average. we also looked at labor participation rates for foreign-born workers, which is how sweden classifies is -- this population. that was 82%, 4% above the eu average. though there are other numbers that tell the story is not completely rosy. new arrivalsamong is something like 20%, which is much higher than the national averages. jason: next, air france falls

out of fashion. its first non-french ceo tries to restore the brand to its former glory. taylor: plus, rockhard competition for diamonds. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. taylor: i am taylor riggs. we look at wildfires. they are worse today. jason: we also take a closer look at snap. its ceo, looking inward to change the company's culture. taylor: this week's european cover story all about air france klm. jason: this is known for its

supersonic flights, fancy flight attendant uniform. taylor: we got the scoop from reporter matt campbell. largest carrier groups in the world, appointed a new chief executive, a guy named benjamin smith who was the number two at air canada. that followed three months of really leaderless stasis and pretty severe crisis, especially at the air france part of air france klm, which has been suffering terrible labor discord that has grounded a lot of company, and the created something of a mess for this very large airline at the heart of the summer travel season. this is a company that is in some amount of turmoil, trying to arrest that turmoil and doing some -- so in a very turbulent market where any misstep by a big airline can be exploited ruthlessly by all the budget carriers.

jason: talk to us about where air france sits in the french imagination, because it does play this role that draws the attention of both the everyday french person as well as the government. why is that? matt: well, jason, look. it is a very historic company. all airlines are historic, but air france is especially so. it has been an impassive or over the years for french style, billeds by bior, what is as the best of french gastronomy in the sky and french technology. france is a big power in the world of aerospace and air france has been at the vanguard of that for the better part of a century. in the 1950's, it flew the caravelle, the first mass-market short-haul jetliner.

after that, it flew the concorde which was a joint franco british project. it was one of the major users of the a3 80 assembled in france. it is very much identified with technological and industrial leading edge of technology. jason: and the government owns or controls a fairly substantial piece of the company? 14% andat's right, with more in voting rights. the upshot is nothing significant can happen at air france without the government agreeing to it. that doesn't mean the government is the only voice that matters. delta airline owns a large chunk of air france, as does china eastern. those are both air france's partners and sky team, one of the three global airline alliances. complexfairly government sector and that is before you start thinking about

the dutch voice within the company. two major operating units that are very different. jason: we're here with joel weber, the editor-in-chief at bloomberg businessweek. the cover of harley davidson. joel: this is a story we have been interested in for a time because we know harley has a conundrum on its hands. , boomers older riders have been buying bikes from harley for years but then stopped around the great recession. oy, here is this conundrum. how do you grow this brand when rumors aren't buying bikes? the new ceo took over and they come up with this strategy, announce it, and trump brings out terrorists that directly affect their business. that is a challenge for any business leader, no matter the industry, should be interested in because it could happen to you. taylor: it is also a challenge market a brand abroad that is

so identified with american nationalism. tol: they realized they had go abroad and people were buying motorcycles, but not in the u.s.. they looked at bmw's and honda is. harley actually has an amazing engineering tradition that they doubled down on. they are bringing them out in a couple of years, and they look nothing like harleys. this is one of the ideas we came back to with this story. harley's may not look like its past. jason: let's move to a newer ceo, the european cover is on air france klm. new guy. joel: brand-new guy, canadian. first non-french ceo to run air france. we had some fun with his cover. it is really iconic. it is really about air france needing a revolution and this might be the guy to do it because the last guy -- it was almost like brexit where the last ceo put his whole reputation on the line with the

referendum and employees ousted him. it is so french. taylor: there is so much turmoil within france and klm and there are external issues hitting the airline industry, and you were able to capture that. joel: this is a company that at one point, outfits were made by mills --st-class meals, and that business model does not stand up when low-cost carriers are basically owning the skies. on top of that, as we know with all things french, there are labor unions that are incredibly powerful. that has made this business model be a very difficult project. jason: the news cycle was upended this week on tuesday afternoon with verdicts -- a verdict in the paul manafort case and a plea in the michael: case in new york. how did you deal with that? we stepped back from it

and throughout the bloomberg news room, the overall narrative has become one of is this going to be an inflection point? this has been a teflon president. nothing has stuck to the sky and here is the moment in time where we have convictions of two people and these are the most prominent cases that have been pursued and will this proved to be an inflection point? if that proves true, what is next? you could extrapolate into the midterms, if democrats win over the house in congress, what might happen? could this lead to impeachment hearings? what does that mean for the business community? jason: joel webber, thanks so much. next, a few things you might not know about wildfires. taylor: plus, the family tea room stands the test of time. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. taylor: i am taylor riggs. you can find us online at businessweek.com. jason: the giant wildfires in california and western states seem to be getting worst, but are not new. taylor: they were more widespread in the 19th century than now. justin: there is a lot of stuff acresg, basically and burned in wildfires, and also, the damage. nothing this year has been anything like the fires in mine country last year in terms of earning houses, but obviously, it has gotten worse over the last couple of decades. welor: talk us through where started from. in your story, you go from 1861 through the 1900s. it feels worse than it was since then, but what does the research

say? back 3000have to go years because there is a study in 2012 that took charcoal sediment throughout the western --. and came to the determination that the first half of the 20th century was the least wildfire prone period in the last 3000 years in the western u.s. the reason is because we learned how to fight wildfires with put tons of money into it. more and more people were living on the edges of forest, and there was a whole smokey bear philosophy of wildfire, we've got to put it out right away. that helped lead to the issue now. another finding of that 3000 year study shows we have a massive higher deficit, basically. getting warmeren -- and other issue is climate change, and throughout the western u.s., averages are up two degrees over 30 years.

because of the firefighting efforts of the last 50 years or so, there was a lot more stuff out there to burn. it is getting hotter, and there are more people living on the edge of these fire prone areas. so it is really getting much worse. it is just kind of fascinating that it was really bad in the late 1800s and early 1900s, too. taylor: you also talked us through the top wildfires in history. you talked about america's next top wildfire in 1991. justin: the worst wildfire for property damage according to the is still thes oakland and berkeley firestorm of 1991, where a fire in the berkeley hills ended up jumping into some neighborhoods in berkeley and over the 24 freeway into oakland, and caused

billions -- i can't remember, i think it is $2.8 billion in current dollars damage. thatire last year destroyed much of santa rosa will probably come in much higher than that. it is not fully accounted for yet, but sonoma county where santa rosa is, people have filed $7 billion worth of insurance claims from wildfires in the last year. section,n the solution when i think rome, i think coffee. we are talking about a tea house that was founded in victorian times. i'm jason kelley. 125 years ago at the foot of the spanish steppes. >> it is such a surprising story, right? you are in italy, at the bottom of the spanish steps. picture the cappuccinos, whichere is babington's,

has been a family run business over for generations and through two world wars. it is this delightful story of two young women who did that typical rite of passage trip in the late 1800s and traveled to rome. they came from well-to-do families in the u.k., and took tea with a them because how are we going to find good tea when we go to italy? course of their lives, they loved italy. they fell in love with the place, and they established this tea house, babington's. remarkable. it has definitely evolved into some other things, but is true to its core as a tea house and is run today by two great-grandchildren of the two women who traveled. one of the two women who traveled to the u.k. -- from the u.k. it is really amazing, and i think it is also -- there is this whole culture of tea and there are so many tourists in

rome, and i think whether it was after two and there were a lot of americans or even brits in rome, so they would go to the tea house. whether it was later on in the 1950's when films were being made at the big studios in rome, so audrey hepburn was going to have her tea there or elizabeth taylor, or whether it was tourists from parts of europe or the world where their culture is more about drinking tea and they want to go have this delightful cup of tea. taylor: we go from t to tofu. tofu and youlove take us out to west oakland. what is behind this new tofu startup? dimitra: it has been around for a little while, and the founder came in vietnam. -- from the non-. he worked in finance for 15 years after coming to the united states in the early 1980's. he went to columbia, got a

bachelors and masters degree, worked for big banks and in finance, and then started to pivot when he was feeling he wasn't finding the tofu he remembered from home. aslly, what he describes very exceptional. so soft, so creamy. words that real tofu aficionados use like "elegant." he started developing his own in his kitchen. , started palo alto selling it, and there was interest in demand. he relies, i am going to make the shift and create this business. i'm jason kelley. ice cream.n to expansion was the flavor. see what i did there? dimitra: i do see what you did there. we present a photo essay in the magazine and more about it online, michael palmer took over the business. he bought it in 2012. ins was founded in 1949 santa barbara. decided to make

high-quality ice cream. all natural come in no unnatural ingredients. all handmade. the flavors were simpler then. they would make everything. then, it was bought a couple times by others who were not part of their family, though it was always a family run business. andael palmer looked around said, i have a dairy. it would great if i want to keep this really local. he grew up in santa barbara on this ice cream. but what if you want to expand? dairyy had to build a new and they did in oxnard, about half an hour from santa barbara. you find mcconnell's across the country in whole foods, so we thought we would end on an ice cream story at the end of summer. i'm jason kelley. next come how the ceo behind snapchat is hoping to change the company by changing himself. taylor: and how technology could be disrupting diamonds forever. i'm jason kelley. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

taylor: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm taylor riggs. jason: i'm jason kelley. you can listen to us on radio on sirius xm channel 119, and on am 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 fm in washington, d.c. and am 960 in the bay area. taylor: and in london on dab digital. over to the features section and take a deep dive into snapchat. he had the disastrous at redesign, but are trying to re-vamp there image. jason: a lot of it falls on the ceo and he is looking inward to change the culture of the company. max: received a special invitation to something called counsel, which is a sort of regular meeting. they have had -- i think

somewhere around 700 of these this year, so we are talking everyday kind of meeting where a group of snap employees get together and share. it is a very -- snap is a los angeles based company, a very california thing. there is a sharon stone they pass around. i think it is a purple amethyst. this is something snap's ceo evan spiegel and learned in a new age class and has brought to the company. all,eason this matters at besides being amusing and sort of weird, is snap is really trying desperately to grow up and get better at communication. evan spiegel has been very secretive, sort of aloof from his own employees and the outside world and with competition from facebook and instagram, which is a facebook robert e, they are having to change. joel: comically secretive,

almost. why? does it go back to evans? max: yeah, and this was sort of a strength cap cap had. this was a company that didn't act like a normal social media company. it acted more like a fashion brand or something. facebook was in the bay area. snapchat is in l.a.. in these corporate offices, snapchat has been historically in these small buildings and some houses, even, in venice. which is a hip neighborhood in l.a. i think it all goes back to the culture and for a while, that worked. but had this cool factor, they have just been swallowed both by facebook's ability to copy them and facebook's capacity of bundling data with these product. advertisers on facebook have been able to target ads specifically.

snap has been late to the game. then: let's talk about facebook rivalry because i convened a small group of experts last night as i was reading this story. a couple of teenagers, and i was telling them about this. they were saying as users of both that instagram has done a pretty brilliant job of copying the best features of snap, and instagram onlyid has to be good enough to keep you on the platform. it doesn't have to be better. max: it is pretty stunning because people a couple of years ago thought as instagram is a mainly photo sharing thing. cute filter over your photo and share this glossy thing and now younger people are seeing it more as a video sharing platform. basically, exactly what snap was. instagram -- it is called stories.

as a result, this has been a boon to facebook, which has seen traffic on its main app seeming to flatten out a bit and it has been bad for snapchat. jason: in the pursuit section, lab grown diamonds making their way to markets. taylor: and it is all about the technology behind it that has improved in recent years. >> a few years ago, there was a stigma around lab grown jewelry. they thought it was cheap. this year, the ftc changed the definition of a diamond. they took the word natural out of it. you can grow a lab grown diamond as a diamond and that is a game changer for the industry. jason: the other game changer was -- who everyone knows in this business, entering the lab grown sector in a major way. >> debeers, a diamond is

forever, maybe a diamond was made a couple of years ago. business is mined diamines and as they saw small startups having success, they came in and undercut them. brandre launching a called lightbox, low-cost diamond jewelry to compete with self purchase items like accessories and skin care. a normal lab grown diamond is mined30% less cost than a diamond. devere's are 50%. taylor: i wonder why the shift. they feel like they are cannibalizing some previous business or are responding to something customers want because of sustainable issues? >> the competitors think they are trying to undercut them.

they say they are responding to customer demand. they have no issues with environmental disruption or child labor issues. they are cheaper, but millennials don't seem to care as much. 70% of millennial's would have a lab grown diamond as a primary stone in an engagement ring. that is often people's first major purchase. they are open to it because it is ecologically friendly. jason: consumer sentiment may be driven by some celebrities who have thrown their weight and money behind this new trend toward lab grown. chris: totally. activistdicaprio, an on many fronts, was one of the first to get behind it. he invested in the diamond foundry, which makes lab grown diamonds. who have swarovski, been using lab grown diamonds for a long time in jewelry on the red carpet, they got penelope cruz to do a collection with them. that really helps. you see someone stylish like

penelope cruz wearing lab grown saying on the red carpet this is sustainable. that is meaningful. that is a lot of times the only way people are exposed. taylor: you've got to take a look at some of them. can you tell the difference? chris: you can't. one of the producers of lab gems gems, who sells mined says don't have them at the same old -- on the table at the same time because you can't tell the difference. you can see on the first page of pursuits, they are big, they are beautiful, and there is literally no difference except for where they came from. "aylor: "bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. like the air france klm story because we talked about the internal pressures as well as some external problems they are dealing with. jason: a new ceo at the helm with a lot on his plate. my must read was evan spiegel, the ceo of snap. really taking it inside the company -- company and

everything that needs to happen culturally to improve the company's performance. taylor: more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪

emily: i'm emily chang and this is "best of bloomberg technology ," where we bring you our top interviews from this week in tech. sixosoft takes over websites created by a group with ties to the russian government and plans to meddle in the midterm elections. plus, more manipulation on social media. facebook and twitter take down hundreds of accounts linked to russia and iran. as elon musk faces scrutiny from the sec, investors, and the public,