"all sites are green." all of which helps you do more than your customers thought possible. comcast business. beyond fast. emily: i'm emily chang. this is a special edition of "bloomberg technology" live from the wire 25 summit in san francisco. we will bring you the top minds in technology. microsoft ceo, and intel vice president genevieve bell, working on the future of a.i., but first our top stories. the continued fallout over the disappearance of a saudi government critic and the

questions it is raising in the world of technology, from silicon valley all the way to softbank. washington post journalist jamal khashoggi went missing after entering the saudi consulate in istanbul on october 2. turkey says the saudi government had him murdered, a charge the saudis deny. one company with close ties to the saudi government is softbank. the $100 billion vision fund's biggest backer. on monday, softbank shares fell as much as 7%, erasing $22 billion of market value. we should note this comes during a global tech selloff that began last week. we have eric newcomer and max chafkin. this is a rapidly developing story of international intrigue involving businesses and governments. what is at stake? max: of course there are huge geopolitical stakes, and stakes for president trump, the midterm elections in the u.s.

but in silicon valley, softbank and by extension the saudis have become kind of the funder of last resort for these big, late-stage privately held tech companies trying to put off an ipo for a couple years. if the saudi money goes away, companies feel like they can't take money from softbank or saudi arabia, that could put a wrench in the entire venture capital market in silicon valley. emily: several tech leaders have cozied up to the saudi government, also cozied up to softbank, not the least of which is uber, in which softbank is now a huge investor. several leaders, business leaders have dropped out of an upcoming summit, davos in the desert, one of them uber's ceo. complicated, because softbank is one of the backers. he said he is troubled by the reports of jamal khashoggi, and

unless a substantially different set of facts emerges, he will not be attending the conference. eric, not mincing words there, and hard to back down from that statement. eric: this is a very thorny situation for uber, because, sure, they are soul-searching about what to do about the softbank money. but uber has taken $3.5 billion from the saudis, and has a representative on their board. so the decision to walk away from this conference, pretty early, before some of the big names started to pull out, was a tough decision for dara. but i think there was a calculation, this is a consumer company that obviously had a terrible year last year for making questionable decisions, so they needed to move quickly and take a stand. emily: meantime, several business leaders have dropped

board thatd off the was supposed to help the saudi government developed this future city. we have not, if i'm correct, heard anything from softbank? max: no. as you said, the stock price plummeted earlier today, and, it's basically a situation where softbank is so saudis, itth the could be very hard for them to disentangle. the vision fund, $100 billion, $45 billion of that is money from saudi arabia, and a plan for a second vision fund calls for another $45 billion, another $25 billion from softbank. it is the biggest chunk of the fund, so it is hard to see how son can go through these plans if there isn't some story that emerges making people feel

more comfortable doing business with saudi arabia. emily: eric, you also have a major saudi ally calling for a boycott of uber. what is the latest there? uber isu know, it is, always under fire. i think a boycott at this point, we'll have to see. it's hard to say. emily: max, talk about some other business relationships at stake here. the study seven will find also has a huge stake in -- saudi sovereign wealth fund also has a huge stake. endeavor, the entertainment company, is in the process of severing ties with the saudi sovereign wealth fund. they had a $400 million deal at stake. how do we expect this to continue to unfold?

eric: you have to feel elon musk thinks he dodged a bullet by not securing funding, as he bragged, with the saudi arabians, because it would be yet another crisis for tesla. instead they just have to deal with a depressed stock price. it is a situation where a few months back, mohammed bin salman was going all over the u.s., having dates with sergei brin, many other tech moguls. and it feels like this whole, this romance between silicon valley and the public investment fund is maybe not coming to an end, but certainly people are rethinking that relationship right now. cloud,the head of google diane greene, also dropped out of this davos in the desert conference. the u.s. government has a very closely watched relationship with the saudi government. president trump has said that u.s. officials are looking into this.

you know, how could how the u.s. weighs in on this impact all of these other relationships? eric: one thing that i think is interesting. you mentioned the possible boycott of uber. happening to basically every company, everything becoming politicized. we set earlier today president trump seemingly defending saudi arabia to some extent, and you can imagine a situation where any tech company that has taken money from saudi arabia, or an entity connected to saudi arabia, could get wrapped into the same kind of politicalization, between boycotts or hashtag campaigns, that we saw a really hurt uber last year, that could spill over to other companies. emily: how big is uber's business in the middle east? a business that could potentially be affected, as a result of this? eric: i don't think there's a number to put to it.

it is certainly a reaching the company is thinking about aggressively -- region the company has been thinking about aggressively, in acquisition talks. wants to remain a major player. the story of uber internationally has been one of sort of retreat, in some ways. china, southeast asia, russia. so the middle east is certainly a region where uber has wanted to have a strong presence, so i don't think that they back away from it because of this controversy. emily: all right. we will cover this as it develops. eric newcomer, max chafkin, thank you both. coming up, walmart looking to become a one-stop shop to resell other companies' streaming services, similar to apple and amazon. according to sources, the idea would be to let customers of walmart's video service vudu pay for an additional service like hbo now or showtime. the retail giant is

attempting to stave off declining dvd sales by converting hundreds of millions of customers into customers of online services. "wired" magazine hits a quarter-century. what is in store for its next week five years? we speak to the editor in chief next. and later, conversation with howosoft ceo satya nadella, he is empowering those with disabilities to have futures in technology, and more. that is later in this hour.

emily: welcome back to a special edition of "bloomberg technology" live from the "wired 25" summit in san francisco.

20" five years ago, "wired magazine has become an iconic brand in the tech industry, and they are celebrating with a four-day summit and a special issue honoring 25 icons in technology. our next guest is editor-in-chief of "wired," nicholas thompson. always great to have you on the show. what i like is the theme. you asked prominent tech leaders to nominate the next generation of tech leaders. why did you decide to do it that way, and why do you think it has been so important? nicolas: we had a lot of conversations about how to do a list. if you just choose the people who helped shape the last 25 years, it is a little less fun. emily: it is always the same people. nicholas: so how do you have a big event? we kind of came upon this as a way of looking backwards and looking forward to. emily: you have some unexpected names, people may not have heard of. an 18-year-old undergrad working

on dna sequencing, who gave a very powerful speech, and reminded us all she was turning 19 years old. [laughter] an ai professor at stanford, a young woman working on digital currency at m.i.t.. how do you choose these people, but also not overhype things that will ultimately not turn out? such a risk in technology. nicholas: when you look back in 2043, how many of these people are still known? we have kind of offloaded that decision, because we asked each of our icons. we said to johnny i've, pick somebody yourself. it turns out, if he picks don't have a huge influence, that is on them. only: so jeff bezos was stage. the cover story for this celebration, blue origin and space. interesting to hear him talk about space as the most important thing he believes he is working on, the thing which he is most passionate about, and yet he is still working on all

these other things. nicholas: right. emily: how do you see the space race involving, -- default -- evolving, with these tech billionaires at the helm? nicholas: it is curious, that some of the most influential, richest people in the world are fixated on this idea, competing. but for me, it is all positive. there's no harm that comes out of the effort to figure out how to get humans into space. lord knows we might need it and not so long. i am thrilled elon is doing spacex, bezos doing blue origin. emily: it seems the queer coming out of a period of tech adulation, into a -- it seems that we are coming out of a period of tech adulation to a period of tech hating. will this be a prolonged thing? nicholas: it is difficult, because so much of "wire" is

about optimism that these technologies are making the world a better place. i agree, but you also need clear critiques. we have gone into a period of the tech utopians becoming optimists, the optimists have become neutral, and those who were neutral have become real pessimists. we need a strong critique of what's happening, but we can't overdo it into cynicism and hatred, because that's going to undermine one of the most important things in the american economy. one other point about that. the biggest thing happening in tech right now is the bifurcation of the u.s. and chinese technology spheres. there is a real risk that if they go off in different directions, you end up with a strange and risky world economy. you don't want that at the same time china is building synergistic relations of sweat their companies -- with their tech companies. emily: you wrote a cover story

about facebook with a controversial image of mark zuckerberg beating and bloodied on the cover. nicholas: but smiling, but beaten and bloodied. emily: do you think facebook can recover and regain the glory it once had? do users care as much about privacy and trust as we journalists seem to do? nicholas: really complicated, hard question. i don't think facebook will never go back to where they were before the 2016 elections. emily: never? never.s: emily who can say they have only been around for a few years, my god. but this has been a real hit to them. i also think that the people inside of facebook are actually trying to fix it, trying to figure out whether the algorithm can change in a way where this doesn't happen again. they are hiring a ton of people to work on security. i think that some of the visceral negativity towards facebook has blinded people to what they are actually trying to

do. so i both think that real damage has been done, but i also think that they are serious about correcting some of the mistakes they made. emily: and some of the blowback has come from the founders of companies facebook bought. both whatsapp founders have left. both instagram founders have left. kevin was on stage talking about this. nicholas: and sean parker. emily: also very critical of facebook, and critical of, you know, this assumption that they are doing good in the world. is facebook really doing the right thing? nicholas: the question of whether facebook is net positive or net negative for the world is impossible to answer. i do think the critique has been healthy, and that there's different levels of critique. , whoounders of whatsapp were blistering in that interview. kevin on stage today was much calmer. whether he's dodging what he

really feels, or if he genuinely doesn't feel hostility towards mark zuckerberg, we will learn as time passes, but there are different levels of critique. emily: nick thompson, editor in chief of "wired." congratulations on a great summit, and thank you for having us. coming up, from cultural anthropologist to a leading voice on ai. we speak to genevieve bell on what the future relationship is between man and woman and machine. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to a special edition of "bloomberg technology" live from the wired 25 summit in san francisco. one of the biggest themes we continue to explore, artificial intelligence. professor genevieve bell is vice president at intel, cultural anthropologist, and at the center of ai development. she took the stage to talk about how to manage human-computer relationships in the fourth

industrial age, and notably how we build a new cyber-physical world that doesn't reproduce existing social inequities. i spoke to bell earlier today, and asked how a cultural and apologist becomes a leading voice on ai genevieve: one of the things we have all gotten a little obsessed about around ai is what is technically possible. i think we need to pay a lot more attention to what is culturally, socially appropriate and acceptable, working inside of our laws. emily: you are talking about whether robots will share our values, not if they will take our jobs? genevieve: really good question. we know that artificial intelligence will go to scale, and it will end up in lots of places. the question becomes, how do we ensure that is something we are comfortable with, that we feel good about, that reflects things we care about? that means asking questions beyond just what we can do technically, to ask questions about, what are the values we want these objects to enshrine? we get to decide what the values are, and how we regulate them.

emily: are these questions being asked as often as they should? genevieve: i am an anthropologist, so you know i think the answer is no. [laughter] the good news, they are starting to research. the more you hear talk about ai and ethics, ai and public policy, ai and governance, those are at least the beginnings of conversations about, what is the world we want to build, how we will live in it. emily: so that's take the pro side, say these questions are asked as often as they should be. what is the potential of ai to affect our lives in positive ways? genevieve: if you manage to think through the places where ai can be most useful, i always want to ask not can we do it technically, but should we do it socially? so are there places where ai makes better sense, not because of efficiency, but because it either has a way of making decisions that is a little less messy than humans making it. by the same token, depending on who programs it, depending on what data they use, sometimes we

have the potential of these technologies to reproduce and enshrine, really long-standing inequities. that seems like not a good thing at all. emily: so one of the gravest dangers, if these questions don't get asked? genevieve: the greatest dangers are that we take the world we live in now, and we make it the world in perpetuity moving forward. so all the things about the current world that don't feel right is what the data reflects, right? a world where women aren't paid as much as men, where certain populations are subject to more violence, where we know that certain decisions get made in a manner that is profoundly unfair. if you take all the data about how the world has been, and that's what you built the machinery on top of, we get this world as our total future. i don't know about you, but i would like something slightly different. emily: so intel has done a fascinating study of gender differences in perceptions of technology, and found that men are much more comfortable with

emerging technologies than women. what are the implications of that? genevieve: i think this was one of the most interesting findings. we did this study looking at american consumers and what they imagine technology will look like over 50 years. in one of the places, artificial intelligence, there was a really strong difference between what male parents thought and what female parents that. dads went, more of that, women went, i don't think so. hard to know what that is about, but it points to something. i think there is a place where we have a lot more questions to ask about, why is it that some parents were incredibly excited, and others were going, i don't know about that. emily: women are also more concerned about their data. what does that mean, in an industry we know the vast majority of tech is produced by men, yet attempting to serve both male and female? genevieve: this has been a problem as long as i have been in silicon valley. the population of people making

the technology and making decisions about the technology don't reflect the population of people impacted by that. not just by gender, but age, education, background. i always think that the more voices you have in the room when you are making solutions, inventing the future, the more likely you are to find something that is compelling. so for me, the fact that study after study finds men and women have completely different attitudes to privacy, data, security, means that unless we have all those voices in the room, we will develop things that don't work for everyone. emily: do you think facebook and google and twitter would exist as is if they were created by a more diverse workforce? genevieve: in so far as i think they were tapping into very particular aspirations, yes. would the technology they built look slightly different? maybe. you might have had a different starting point. emily: so what do governments and companies need to do, given that ai will only become more powerful, and yet the inequities exist as they are? genevieve: some things companies

and governments are already doing, implementing laws, data security, privacy. you have regulations coming on in europe about data protection, data rights. there are clearly open questions we need to consider about how we treat data, about how we deal with biases in the data. i think he will start to see more and more companies developing internal policies. you will see different governments around the world developing their own standards. we are early days, but i remain cautiously optimistic about the conversations that are happening. emily: genevieve bell, vice president and senior fellow at intel. coming up, microsoft is looking to make the workplace inclusive for all, and that includes the more than one billion people in the world with disabilities. to microsoft ceo satya nadella next. this is bloomberg.

emily: this is "bloomberg technology." we welcome you back to a special edition live from the wired 25 summit in san francisco. this month's national disability employment awareness month and this year's theme is empowering. microsoft is trying to do just that, can power the one billion plus people in the world who live with disabilities. microsoft announced a five-year, $25 million ai for accessibility program. with rapid developments in ai and machine learning, microsoft plans to create accessible technology which can allow all workers to be productive in the workplace. joining us now, microsoft ceo satya nadella.

and microsoft's chief accessibility officer. jenny's interpreter is also with us as well. satya, you have for many years championed the potential of tech to be used as an equalizer. you are nominating jenny as the next version of tech leaders to watch. why? satya: i came across jenny and met her maybe three or four years before i became ceo. she was already leading the accessibility efforts at microsoft. in her i found someone who not only had the patience to teach me why accessibility mattered, but quite frankly, bring about that sense of energy across the company on what a difference technology can make. i mean, think about ai. we are at a stage where ai and especially speech and vision and language are making amazing advances. if you think about that coupled with universal design. it can help the billion

people who have some disability or the other to fully participate in our society and economy. that is thanks to the leadership of jenny and the entire company rallying around her vision of what accessibility can mean. emily: jenny, you've lived with deafness almost your entire life, yet you majored in music and you are the chief accessibility officer of microsoft. what potential do you see for people who have disabilities to use technology as a doorway to opportunity? >> technology can be an incredible enabler. i think if you look at the demographics, you've got an unemployment rate double for people versus disabilities versus without. i think technology can be one of those incredible areas that can get people to really achieve whatever they want to achieve, whether in education and employment or enjoyment of life. so we are beginning to see that. some of the technology we've been able to put out through ai,

whether that is an app that allows people with blindness and low vision to have the world whetherly described, that is an image of you, or handwriting in a holiday card, have that spoken out loud. or for me, captioning. i think, just the simplicity of having really high-quality captioning that is instantaneously provided through ai. it will never replace the need for me to have an interpreter as someone who is deaf, but it will mean i am able to be more independent in mike indications, my meetings -- my communications, my meetings, my interaction with friends. there's amazing opportunities and a lot more to be tapped. emily: this has always been personal for you, satya. you have a son born with special needs. i'm curious -- if other tech leaders have that kind of

understanding, how do you think tech might be different? would google and facebook be different if they'd had the benefit of that kind of understanding? satya: i think all of us have that empathy for people around us, across all companies. this is something that all of us innately have as human beings. and as leaders of companies and institutions. the question is, we in the tech industry have an amazing opportunity and responsibility to take these advantages and create opportunities for people who have not had it. accessibility is one such thing. one of the things we are trying to make sure is we take ai in other places where perhaps markets don't work that well. even on the environmental side. so we have, we recently did ai for humanitarian actions. another area where technology can make a fundamental difference. i think all of us in the tech industry can do this. we all have personal experience

that can inspire us. one of the fun things for me at microsoft, we do this one week hackathon each year, and a lot of the projects, whether it is gazeg ai, the eye technology, it came out of not because i said so or jenny said so, it is the employees of the company rallying around their passion and innovating. i think that is going to be true across the industry. emily: as i understand, evolved hiring practices to attract people with disabilities. specific programs designed to hire people with autism, for

example. jenny, this has unlocked a lot of potential talent that you might not have attracted otherwise. how did you do that? what can other companies learn? >> if you really think about creating technology, creating any product whether you are in the tech industry or not, creating products that work for humans, disability is part of that. you have to have people with disabilities in the fabric of your company to represent that expertise, and bring it to whatever you are creating. so for us, it was not a nice thing to do, it was a business imperative that we have that skill base. so we have been pushing frontiers, how can we bring in these additional areas of expertise and talent into the company? and if you look on disability as a talent and change your lens, i personally think it is cool as well, then you see it in a different way. we've learned a lot through the autism hiring. that is one area where we continue to unpack and learn. we have learned that we ourselves were screening people out through some of our interview practices. so we ditched the interview, and we bring people through an academy. we've been able to bring through some amazing talent pools into our company through that program so far. it is still a learning journey. we have a lot more to learn.

emily: xbox is another one of the products that was designed with this empathy in mind. is there a business bottom line here? the balance of doing well by doing good. everybody says that you shouldn't trade those things off. satya: i think the business case is absolutely self-evident. you think about a billion people in the world with disabilities, building products that address their needs can be a massive advantage. the xbox accessible controller is a great example. not only is it a fantastic design, and it came about because of the ethos that is there in microsoft, where the product team was able to include the community, a lot of veterans and other disabled communities who play xbox, and we were able to design this with them, but more interestingly, the packaging. you asked what blew my mind. the team didn't stop at building the controller, but took it all the way to recognize that even

the packaging needs to be accessible. it raises the bar, i think it will differentiate xbox in the marketplace. emily: jenny, what does inclusive design actually mean? give me an example of a design that is not inclusive that perhaps you changed or realized after the fact that it needed to be different. >> i think you see it honestly all around you. even if you go back to the very non-tech principle of the door handle. the door handle used to be this round knob that we used to have to turn to open a door. when you started thinking about that through the lens of physical therapists, they said, how about we make it a actual handle, that you can hit with your elbow and other parts? i think the key thing of inclusive design is to embed people into the process. people with disabilities, whether that is deafness, blindness, speech, mental whatever ititive,

may be, into the process. ultimately you will create products that work better for everyone. you do it at the beginning. you don't try and retrofit at the end. that was the biggest learning for us. often it becomes, oh, we missed it. you have to do it at the beginning. satya: you can do this every day. if you are building a powerpoint presentation, you have all the tools in powerpoint for inclusive presentations. that is an example. i am presenting, there might be someone with visual impairment who will need to follow along. how do i create it? emily: speaking of being inclusive, i wouldn't be me if i didn't ask a couple questions about stories about the day. you have some employees who penned a letter on medium protesting your bid for a big pentagon cloud contract. what do you plan to do as a result of that? will it change?

genevieve: overall -- satya: we are very clear that we serve our federal customers, whether it is the department of defense with or the labor department or veterans affairs, and we will continue to do so. but more importantly, we welcome all views of our employees and have an open dialogue. the core for us is that we have a set of principles that guide what we do and how we engage. that will be the case even going forward. emily: the other big story of the day is what is going on in saudi arabia. the government has been accused of being tied to the murder of a prominent dissident, and several business leaders have either cut ties or are suspending involvement in various saudi government initiatives. microsoft has some big customers in saudi arabia. some that are linked to the government. are you going to reconsider doing business there? satya: what has happened there is really sad.

our heart goes out to the family. and i think it was a real step back. i was very helpful for saudi arabia in terms of the opportunities for the citizens there, the women in saudi arabia and the small businesses. as reforms were being put in place. so this clearly is a step back. we continue to monitor and see what all this means, but at the same time, it is clearly a step back in what my hope was for a saudi arabia that creates more opportunity for all of its people. emily: satya nadella, ceo of microsoft, as well as microsoft's chief excessively officer and her interpreter. thank you so much. coming up, flying cars, e-learning, ai. sebastian to run -- thrun wears many hats. he's also the father of the self driving car. he tells us what is next for his

latest company, kitty hawk, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to a special edition of "bloomberg technology" live from san francisco. kitty hawk ceo sebastian thrun says there is a unified thought across all of his ventures, leveraging tech to improve lives. the computer scientist and former professor first broke ground in ai, spearheading google's self driving car initiative. now he's betting on flying cars and e-learning to revolutionize daily life. he joins us now to discuss. i'll give you credit for being the father of self driving cars. you built the first one. now you are working on flying cars. it seems there's an investment frenzy.

companies as big as boeing trying to get into this. what will be kitty hawk's advantage? sebastian: first of all these are not cars. they have no wheels. emily: should we call them something else? sebastian: call them whatever you want, but imagine you could have this magic wand that lets you fly in the air, above the tree line's? what would you do? if i want to go from san francisco to berkeley, i go in a straight line through the air without any obstacles. emily: what do you call it? sebastian: we call it e-v devices. e for electric and v for vertical takeoff and landing. emily: what makes kitty hawk's design approach unique? sebastian: we've been on it for about eight years. we've done many thousands of successful flights. we do 200 or 300 per week now. i think we are still developing the technology and working

towards practical deployment. emily: when do you see this being as affordable and accessible as an individual car? sebastian: i think eventually it will be cheaper than cars. the reason is the vehicles will be cheaper. they are much lighter. also the amount of energy you need. you could fly on one cent of energy from jersey city to times square, manhattan. so much less expensive than a car. i see a future -- a distant future, trust me. you are smiling. years ago, when you took the very first drive in the google self-driving car, the same smile, crazy idea. no one is going to take it seriously. this guy might be crazy. the same thing happens now. today self driving car is the biggest thing since sliced bread. everyone talks about it. no one yet takes flight as a serious alternative to urban transportation. i promise that will change. emily: when do regulators and governments catch up? safety is a concern. sebastian: safety is a huge

concern. i would suggest it is going to be safer than cars. because there's almost nothing to hit, 400 feet up in the air. but we have to work with them. we are working very closely with new zealand. we have a path to get vehicles deployed as an air taxi service, possibly the first ever air vehicle for passengers without a pilot. we are working every day in las vegas, where we fly totally legally a mock air taxi service. emily: larry page is one of your backers. how involved is he? do you talk often? what is his level of -- sebastian: larry, apart from being a close friend, has incredible technology wisdom. if we think of the thomas edison of our time, i would say it is larry page. so a lot of what we do is based on his insight. the same was true for the self driving car. he brought the self driving car to google. firmly believing it would be a great business opportunity.

emily: what is an example of some feedback he's given you? sebastian: we talk about noise, physics, how to go to market. where to deploy first. a lot of things that happen in daily life as a ceo. he's a fantastic board member. emily: some ask, shouldn't all these minds be working on fixing our bus systems and other broken transport systems that already exist? sebastian: in california we have this thing on the roadmap to build a new high-speed train track from san francisco to los angeles. i would say that technology is 20th century technology. we are inventing 21st century technologies. for example. bus systems, buses are great because you can amortize the cost of a driver over many passengers, but the moment you enter a driverless car era, there is no benefit to putting many people in the same vehicle. you have the last mile problem,

and the time coordination problem, which doesn't exist in every person gets their own vehicle. emily: google's self driving car unit, which used to be part of google x, which you use to run, sounds like they say the self driving car technology will be ready for prime time next year. is it really? sebastian: i'm super excited. i'm impatient. when i ran the google self-driving car team, i thought we were close. i hope you are going to see the technology soon. the reason is we lose over 30,000 people in traffic accidents every year. worldwide, over one million people died because of ineffective drivers, especially. so i can't wait. emily: could we still feel like we are this close, but really be so far? there's concern about ai having hit a wall. sebastian: i don't think ai has hit a wall. i can tell you, i am very optimistic. i have seen the progress. in self driving cars, you and i make a mistake, learn from it, and we can avoid the mistake, but no one else learns. in self driving cars, all the

when a self-driving car makes a mistake, all the other cars learn something, including all the unborn future self driving cars, so reliability goes up and up. waymo has driven over 8 million miles, with one really minor fender bender. emily: alphabet is facing a of privacy trust concerns. do you think they will figure that out? sebastian: i would say we in the tech industry, we care about people. we see tech as a tool. my company teaches people around the world. we had an initiative in the middle east to teach one million people how to code. that is our way to give back. we want to take everybody along. we really care deeply. we put our time and effort into technology that empowers the entire world. emily: sebastian thrun, kitty hawk ceo, i could continue to debate this with you for hours, but thank you. good to see you. we are staying in the skies. earth's resources are finite and

blue origin founder jeff bezos thinks humans may need a plan b. how the rocket company is working on sending millions, maybe even trillions to live in space, next. ♪ this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to a special edition of "bloomberg technology" live in san from the wired 25 summit in san francisco. marking the magazine's anniversary, an in-depth look at one of the most disruptive companies, blue origin. next year blue origin, founded by amazon ceo jeff bezos, plans on sending passengers on joyrides to space. and one day possibly to a life outside earth. here to tell us more, wired's editor at large stephen leavy, who wrote the cover story and the second cover story ever for wired 25 years ago. you've covered a lot of tech. what strikes you as most surprising about jeff bezos and blue origin? >> what is surprising to me is how much he's tagging this company which exists now, funding now, blue origin, which

really will not come to fruition until after he's dead and we are all long dead. he's spending money to make sure at least in his mind that humanity has a future, and he believes our future is off this planet. emily: you interviewed him on stage. he gave a convincing argument as to why somebody would get on one of these shuttles. would you do it? seeing what you have seen? >> i want to see it go up a few times. [laughter] make sure it is interesting. maybe if my kids were little, i wouldn't do it, but i have a grown-up son. why not? emily: he was fairly direct in his criticisms of reportedly google, talking about amazon's work with the pentagon, and also facebook, talking about how he believes social media isn't really good for us, and is exacerbating identity politics.

what is your take on that? >> well he actually said, and he talked also in addressing why amazon is enthusiastically bidding for defense contracts. he said, i'm the ceo. i get to decide what to do. that is an interesting contrast to what is happening with google and other companies, where the employees are pressuring the company to take a certain course. whether it is not bidding for defense contracts or changing their policies in general. he was basically saying, it is my company. i have my values. i will do what i think is important. emily: satya nadella told us something similar. is there something to be skeptical of billionaires deciding what the space race looks like? >> that is something i asked him directly. and what he was saying is this

particular mission that blue origin has is something that not a lot of people are pursuing. he says, if you are not going to do something people disagree with, maybe you shouldn't be doing it. because someone else will do it. he says, i have the money, i'm going to put it to something no one else is doing. this doesn't compare to the united states budget, but the united states isn't investing in creating infrastructure so a trillion people will live in space. that's what he wants to do. emily: who do you put your money on, elon musk or jeff bezos? >> the motto of blue origin is one step at a time ferociously. i think that deliberate method might be the winner. emily: stephen leavy, thank you so much. great to have you here. great piece in "wired" magazine. that does it for this special edition of "bloomberg technology" from the "wired 25" summit in san francisco. tomorrow, catch full coverage of tech earnings.

we will cover netflix and ibm after the bell. i'm emily chang. this is bloomberg. ♪

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manus: our top stories this morning. president trump floats the idea of road -- rogue killers. he sends mike pompeo to seek writer'so the disappearance. consumersn weakens as factory prices to verge. -- diverge. manus: eu leaders prepare for a crucial brussels summit. theresa may calls for cool heads to prevail. ♪