♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. we are here at bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: in this week's issue, a special takeover on the new economy. of course, we have to talk about china and india. we are exploring the challenges the world growth engines face as they advance. jason: speaking of trade, the

u.s. is raising the stakes. it is said to be preparing more tariffs on chinese imports in december if talks fail. carol: first off, the president spending the final days on the defense, traveling to support republican candidates. jason: meanwhile, white house officials have all but given up, bracing to lose gop control of the house. carol: here is our reporter in d.c. >> there is anxiety at the white house. it is certainly not lost on the staff there that it is a strong possibility democrats could take the house. i think the optimistic scenario i hear is maybe republicans control the house by a seat or two. but on this scenario a lot of people are looking at where democrats take control of the house, staffers are aware of what that would mean for the second half of trump's term. carol: give me some perspective in terms of what we have seen

from past administration and how this jives with what we are seeing with the trump administration. shannon: the midterms gives people a good excuse to leave. they did the first half of the term. now they can move on to something else or get prepared for the candidates to be reelected. however, this administration has had an enormous amount of turnover. it is really a handful of people who are left who were with the president through the campaign. there has already been enormous burnout. a lot of the staff we have talked to our tired. they are so battle tested that a lot of things do not get to them anymore. in one sense, it might be good to get some fresh eyes in the administration from a white house perspective, to get some new energy in there, but it is also this issue of re-staffing. carol: it is a different tone. he is campaigning in states that at one point people thought were safe there were going to go republican and now it is not for sure. shannon: where is michigan,

pennsylvania, wisconsin? those states propelled him to victory. his campaign took credit for having him go to those places in 2016. those are not on the map. instead, it is indiana, florida, montana, and west virginia. that is not necessarily where the white house thought they were going to be in the final two weeks, even a month or so ago. things have tightened up. about three weeks ago, there was optimism and momentum in the white house. republicans were energized by this battle over the brett kavanaugh confirmation. a lot of the seats were looking good. now the president is spending most of his focus going and campaigning for senators in solidly red places. jason: the governance is one of

a handful of new economy themes in this week's special issue, a complement to bloomberg's new economy forum hosted in singapore. this coming week, participants will gather to devise solutions to the issues facing the global economy next year. carol: a great gathering. joining us now is our "bloomberg businessweek" editor. what a great bunch of stories. tell us about your thinking. joel: we divided the magazine by these pillars that the conference is built on. governance being one of them. on the heels of the brazilian election, we wanted to look at news in brazil. so many people in brazil use whatsapp, an app that protects its users, but also makes it so that it becomes an echo chamber. carol: who knew it was used so much in brazil? joel: exactly. each section we devoted to one of those pillars, and we try to look at every pillar through a specific lens. india, we looked at climate. it was a really interesting experiment to build the magazine

like that. jason: it is a very personal essay. you talk about your hometown and traveling overseas. what inspired that? joel: one of the things you can do with an issue like this is make it personal. where i grew up outside of portland, oregon, actually oregon is well known for having advanced land-use planning. what i saw there was actually a controlled growth strategy, which is one that i thought was an interesting place to start when you start talking about the global engines of future growth. because what i saw from a personal level in portland, i saw an attempt to not have unbridled growth and be strategic about it. it is a message i carry over to singapore. on a trip over there this summer, i was able to look out a window and saw reclaimed land right at the foot of where the city has been developed.

so you can actually see singapore planning for growth in a really strategic way. that gives us a nice pivot into talking about these emerging markets. when we looked ahead, this will be where the global growth comes from. the challenges they face is how to make this not just be unbridled growth, but something more strategic. carol: can brazilian democracy survive fake news? jason: plus, no sleep till brexit. the city of london's wall street equivalent is scrambling to deal with quitting the e.u. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back. i am carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. join us for "bloomberg businessweek" every day on the radio from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00

p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up by listening to our podcast. carol: you can also find us online at businessweek.com and the mobile app. jason: in one of this year's closely watched global elections, jair bolsonaro won the election, marking a hard pivot to the right. carol: was it a fair fight? real and fake news campaigns on whatsapp has prompted a lot of concerns. we talked to shannon sims. >> first of all, brazilians are an extremely social culture, and they have been ahead of the game in terms of adopting social media in a way a lot of people are surprised about. here in brazil, people use facebook and twitter. but more than any other app, what they are using a lot, that we do not use in the u.s., is whatsapp. that is the primary messaging for him for most brazilians here. what we saw is for the election, everyone in the u.s. would be

talking about it, posting on facebook about it. in brazil, that would happen on private whatsapp conversations. jason: take us inside some of those conversations. because, i think, anyone who has in a sentiment human who cares about politics has been a party to, in their family, in their group of friends, has had some conversations around politics. that is not just in brazil, in the united states, everywhere. shannon: just like in the u.s., you have families that come together at thanksgiving, you have cousins you have not talked to in a long time, and uncle who you do not agree with his politics, and all those people are together in a forum having a conversation about who they will vote for in one of the most important elections in the country's history. and so, you can imagine how things went in these forums. so what i wrote about in the story is that a lot of brazilians ended up leaving their family groups, quite a statement to check out entirely from your family conversation.

the reason they did is because they could not handle the fighting and this other phenomenon we saw the selection, the fake news. we saw a dramatic spread of fake news throughout this election. it became a really big topic. carol: in your story you use this phrase, virtual propulsion jet for news. social media. unbelievable, whether it was news, real or fake. this is what we got. there was this incredible velocity of news on whatsapp. but a lot of it was not real. shannon: in the u.s., we are familiar with the concept of fake news. like it or not, it has become part of our vocabulary when we talk about politics. in brazil, this was definitely the first election where it had been an issue. that issue was playing out in these whatsapp groups. so you would have somebody's a dad who shares a meme spreading some kind of information that is fake.

it has become a popular meme because it is funny or makes some politician look bad. what would happen is this would get spread in one group and that person would copy it and spread it to another whatsapp group. the interesting piece is when we step back what are the consequences of this viral nature of fake news within these whatsapp groups? whatsapp is a private forum. those are private chat rooms. it is not like you can easily monitor what people are sharing and whether it is true. and so what we have in brazil is an immeasurable impact fake news had on the election. nobody knows and i don't think we'll ever get a good measurement of it. carol: from brazil to brexit. london is facing its own set of challenges as it scrambles to deal with quitting the european union. ever since u.k. and eu leaders deadlocked this spring, there has been a lot up wargaming in london.

jason: with the deadline just around the corner, decades of work to build london as an international financial hub, they may evaporate. here is ed robinson in london. >> coming into the summer and out of the summer, there were many in the city, traders and bankers, money managers who believed this was not going to happen, or if it was going to happen, there would be a cushy transition to ease into this post-brexit reality. and now with the political situation deteriorating, the uk government and brussels are deadlocked at this time, you have to scramble in the city to say not only is brexit not happening, it looks like it is going to be a no deal brexit. jason: as this starts to play out, who are the potential winners? who is going to be picking up these jobs that are going to leave london? edward: right now the top contenders are paris, amsterdam, dublin, frankfurt to a lesser degree. they are big metropolises with

sizable financial services industries. so it looks like big banking in london and a lot of the action in london will be distributed, depending on what type of business it is and what type of deal they are getting from local governments. that is what we see happening. that is what the contingency planning is indicating is going to happen. jason: is london diminished for the foreseeable future? is this a blip or something longer-term? edward: you won't have this sudden break come march 29. everybody can kind of see what will happen, so it will be over a long period of time. the thing to focus on and i keep hearing this from everybody i talk to, all of the opportunities that could be lost as a result of this, so the investment not made, the expansion not made. that could be lost as a result of this was something i kept hearing from people i spoke to in this story.

if a management firm decides it wants to grow to capture european customers, that is not going to happen. carol: it is not just the financial damage to london. it is also a reputational damage. edward: london has long been seen as a reliable, pragmatic, transparent, very effective, entrepreneurial place to do business, with what could be the world's best legal system, which is another huge draw for business. that is now in a state of play. i spoke with gina miller, the leading anti-brexit advocate. and she really pointed out to me that that reputation could really fracture. that it is no longer reliable. we don't know what is going to happen politically. there could be a general election next year. jeremy corbyn, the labor radical leader, could be the prime

minister. that is plausible. how do you build a reliable reputation as a is the center when something like that could happen? jason: coming up, the trade war escalates. coming up, according to reports, if the g20 talks fail, the u.s. may roll out tariffs covering all of china's $500 billion in exports. we look to the charts. carol: a lot at stake. plus, d.c. and silicon valley veteran kai-fu lee says u.s. companies are not ready for chinese ai. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm, and in new york, boston, washington, d.c. jason: a.m. 960 in the bay area, and in london and on the bloomberg business app. carol: trade tensions remain on the rise, an exclusive saying u.s. officials are planning to

announce tariffs on chinese exports if talks this month between president donald trump and xi jinping proved fruitless. jason: here is taylor riggs breaking down the billions of dollars of goods moving between the two countries. taylor: there has been so much talk about this. it is not dollar for dollar. we export to china a lot less than we import. i thought a terminal chart would do a good explanation visually of how this all breaks down. we have the u.s. exports to china, only $155 billion, versus imports, about $.5 trillion. so we clearly import a lot more. interestingly enough on thursday, president trump was tweeting about talking with the chinese president xi jinping ahead of the g20 summit. saying, trade talks are going well, but we never know. carol: we never know, indeed. all right, taylor, thank you so much. appreciate that. the question is when the rubber hits the road for the chinese economy. according to bloomberg economics, the current tariffs

are expected to slow chinese gdp growth by half a percentage point in the year ahead. check out this chart. also, if the u.s. follows through on the threat to raise tariffs further, impact on chinese gdp could be slowed by 1.5%. that is when we see a more significant impact when it comes to china. jason: when you see it in black and white, it is startling. for more and how it fits into china's ambitions, here is tom orlik, chief economist for bloomberg economics, and author of "understanding china's economic indicators," a guide to china's economic data. he joined us from d.c. tom: this is part of the motivation for d.c., for the trump administration. the headline you hear them talking about is the trade deficit with china. but behind that is a deep concern about china's industrial policy ambitions. china made the mistake of writing those down in a policy document and published it in 2015.

they basically set out fairly aggressive targets for grabbing market share at home and globally across all of the key sectors of the future of the global economy, so everything from robotics to new energy vehicles to artificial intelligence to new medicines and medical devices. china has a plan and a target for grabbing global market share. carol: i have to ask you, this is not the first time. if you think about over the last 50 years, where we have seen nations say, we want to dominate a market, japan and germany come to mind. so what is different about what china is up to? tom: china is really big. 1.4 billion people. so if china continues to move toward the technology frontier, continues to raise productivity, they are going to overtake the united states in be the world's largest economy. and i think that is kind of an existential fear to many in

washington, d.c. the second fear is that chinese politics are not like that in germany, japan, or south korea. it is a single party state, a rival to the u.s. so that economic rise comes with a bunch of geopolitical baggage. carol: let us get down to it. what is at stake? what has china become good at compared to the rest of the world? what countries have to be worried? tom: it puts them head to head with germany on autos and taiwan on semiconductors. with south korea on electronics, automobiles, shipping. so those three economies are the ones that faced the most significant challenge from china 2025. one of the oddities is that in most of the sectors china is targeting, the u.s. is not a major player. carol: staying with china's plans, "bloomberg businessweek" spoke with kai-fu lee about artificial intelligence companies he is funding in

china. jason: he is a taiwan native and is a venture capitalist who spent most of his life in the united states. he spoke with us before the official release of his book. it is called "ai superpowers, china, silicon valley, and the new world order." pretty ambitious. here is our editor. >> he feels he has a stake in this, but feels china has more or less caught up with the u.s. and ai. his argument is that we have gone beyond the theory phase that companies like google tend to be focused on. we are at the point where the business advantage is in the implementation phase. jason: techno utilitarian policy. i have do go back and read a couple of times. it is a novel concept and does encapsulate what he is trying to

do. >> this is a slightly updated version of what you call command and control policy. the idea that china will put the weight of government behind companies it thinks will be, not just national leaders, but world leaders. the government has invested significantly in infrastructure, particularly in wireless coverage for the rural parts of china, an area where the u.s. lags. carol: this policy goes to the idea that the government is like, you want to try something? try it. we will see where it goes. that is an incredible freedom to have the government say, go try. >> it is a great sales pitch to particularly chinese ex-pats in silicon valley who are frustrated as to what they feel like is the bamboo ceiling, this perception that even brilliant chinese engineers cannot advance far enough, fast enough in the valley.

so chinese companies, both startups and venture capitalists, are increasingly saying, throwing massive salaries at them, saying the trade-off for you coming back to china is having 7 million people's data to play with. jason: what is happening in the u.s. from a policy perspective that may be, either wittingly or unwittingly, enabling china to, if not catch up, pull ahead here? are there constraints? is there a different mentality with the administration or the way companies are being run in silicon valley? >> i think that it is something that american companies will have to worry about in the year ahead and beyond, this idea that consumers in the broader public are starting to become aware of how their data is being

commodified and sold. that might impose new limits or lead politicians to find political favor in trying to regulate these industries more strictly than the bare regulations that are imposed today. but so far we have not seen too many concrete proposals along those lines. the test will be over the next year or so. california is going to be writing a sweeping privacy law set to take effect in 2020. that may either be a blueprint for federal law, or preemptive. carol: you have two great market powers, economic powers. ultimately, he says, something like ai creates wealth, it creates problems. that ultimately the u.s. and china might want to work together. jeff: 50% of all jobs the way we currently think about them will be gone by 2030, or have to be radically re-envisioned. that is a challenge that anyone

country cannot handle alone. jason: from ecuador to cairo, the urge to build cities has never been stronger. carol: that is just one story in this week's takeover. the new economy issue. here is the creative director on putting the world's growth engines together. >> we found a way of using gdp projections to work the earth according to country-size. it creates this map where you can look around and spot countries and see this change in a really visual way. we had this nice line growth engines, which we played simply and big. it is a nice way to get at this concept for the issue this week. ♪

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♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. still ahead, closing the cash gap in kenya with crypto. jason: how cities are grappling with air pollution. some breathtaking numbers and what is being done to clear air. puns intended. carol: this is part of the special new economy issue. it is a preview to bloomberg's new economy forum that will be hosted in singapore next week. participants from around the globe are gathering to devise

solutions to issues facing the global economy in the coming year. jason: this issue of "bloomberg businessweek" explores some of the daunting challenges these growth engines face and will continue to confront. here is our bloomberg economics editor behind this issue. >> we have an idea. we call them pillars, the important topics that are the foundation for the conference that is going to happen in singapore. this is a part of that effort. the pillars are things like governance, inclusion, trade. the challenge was we have to tell stories within those rubrics that are fresh and new and representative of the challenges these countries face. carol: let us get into his story. he takes a look at folks folks re-creating cities, planning new communities. jason: he goes way back. carol: he says this is what everyone wants to do, start from scratch.

cities grow up, become chaotic, and then you want to start over. cristina: we looked particularly at new cairo. it does not have its own name yet. a new city is being built that is going to be the administrative capital of egypt. it is going to house parliament and ministries and embassies and businesses. that was a project born around 2014. it is moving along at a quick pace. jason: this is post arab-spring. this is under the auspices of the el-sisi government, an autocrat, who is looking to impose a different structure politically and economically on a country that is complicated in those regards. cristina: the interesting thing is the project was born from the

optimism from the arab-spring but is being executed from some of the authoritarian elements of the new government have made it possible to move forward faster. carol: they're supposed to be creating seven major cities but the first one they are doing is the government offices. cristina: a group of city planners got together and took the idea to el-sisi. he said, let us start with one. the thing is, there are also problems in this project. the designs show a lot of water elements. water is an issue in cairo. in order to get enough water for this new capital, they are going to have to siphon supplies from other cities in the area. the u.n. is predicting that by 2025, this new city could be experiencing water shortages.

carol: speaking of water, nigeria is dredging up the atlantic to create a new community. cristina: lagos is sinking. jason: the most populous city in africa. cristina: it also has this issue of not being able to grow any further. they have dredged up, chinese dredgers were brought in. they dredged up an island 10 kilometers square off of the ritziest neighborhood in lagos. we see three or four big towers in the middle of what is going to be a marina district, renderings showing beautiful buildings. it kind of looks like the high line. there is this gigantic seawall that protects this island from the elements, from surges. the problem is that dredging

causes erosion in the surrounding areas and may cause more damage from storm surges. many of the communities are poor. environmental activists have called this a climate change apartheid. carol: this is a big part of it. a theme throughout the stories talk about balancing growth and sustainability. you have to figure out the right mix. cristina: it is difficult. we see from our own cities the impact some of these big projects have. a lot of the knocks that people who are critical of this push for new cities, that is what we hear. affordability you hear often. the criticism is that what are being created are enclaves for the rich and environmental issues. the strain on supplies and ecosystems. jason: one of the themes throughout these stories is you build for what you think is

coming up next, but you do not anticipate what is coming further down the line. cristina: we looked at a place in the middle east. it is in the united arab emirates. that was a city conceived to be zero-impact, totally sustainable in terms of energy and water. already, so many of its features are passe. it has this transportation system, you have these mini-pods that jet around. they do it on roads, but they are electric vehicles. imagine a subway system that was cars. a few years ago the designers said we did not anticipate advances in electric vehicles would be so fast that our system looks a bit passe already. carol: you also go to the other end of the spectrum and look at what is going on in india.

far from perfect. especially when you think about people living there just trying to deal with basic needs, and that includes sanitation. that is still a big problem in india. cristina: india was a country where more people have cell phones than toilets. the government, in 2014, kicked off this campaign called clean india. as part of that, they have launched what is the biggest toilet building spree in the world. something like 110 million toilets will be built by october of next year. carol: a toilet revolution. cristina: that is the anniversary of mahatma gandhi's birth. 150 years. carol: up next, air pollution. the result of emerging economies are merging. an update on how bad it is and how the biggest interpreters are tackling the problem. jason: crypto in kenya.

plus how trading is revolutionizing local commerce. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. join us for "bloomberg businessweek," every day on the radio from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast. check it out on itunes, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. jason: find us online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. carol: the top three carbon dioxide polluters are china, the u.s., and india. last year, you might recall, the u.s. pulled out of the paris climate agreement. the other two nations are still committed to their ambitious goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. jason: that will not be easy for two fast-growing economies trying to lift populations out of poverty. reporter eric rawson took a closer look at pollution

challenges. >> it is called particulate matter. it is small, 2.5 microns, tiny. asian cities in recent years have grown particularly infested with these toxic pollution that comes from cars and coal plants and in india, stoves in the home and burning agricultural fields. carol: go through the numbers. the three of us were talking before we got started that it is startling when you start to think about the deaths caused by the small particulate matter pollution. >> what the public health community calls ambient air pollution or bad air is almost your classic smoggy, mid-century

black cloud of pollution. it is the sixth largest cause of premature mortality every year, worldwide. more than half of those deaths occur in china and india. a report just out recently put the number on children under the age of five. 99% of the children under the age of five in the south end east asia live under this black cloud. that adds up every year to something on the order of 700,000 deaths of children under the age of five, once you consider both ambient air pollution and the problem of indoor air pollution largely caused by wooden cook stoves. carol: problematic because you start to think they are born into this. these are developing parts of the world that are going to have this pollution.

they are going to grow up in it. >> they are. when demographers look out on the long-term view, they are concerned, particularly about india. india and china have comparable problems. india's population is much younger. they have a younger, more robust and stronger younger population. that will become more susceptible diseases being caused by bad air. jason: what is it driving pollution in india so much? eric: crop burning and increased coal burning, automobiles -- india has become the top of this list. in our piece, we look at the most polluted cities with 5 million or more people. if you did not limit it to that, the top 10 most polluted cities are all in india. carol: to be fair, among those

cities larger than 5 million people, dominated by cities in china and india. los angeles is on that list, hong kong is on that list, london, madrid, new york. jason: riyadh high on that list which surprised me. eric: it may be there is an element of dust. in india we see dust from construction. there are more factors than just sort from combustion -- than just soot from combustion. it is a more complex picture. every geography has its own inputs. jason: is this part of what the climate agreement in paris was meant to solve? is it helping? eric: it is strongly related to that. even in the united states, you

see public health advocates and climate advocates working together on issues because of the source of this pollution, a big part of it is corruption -- combustion. the faster we clean up our economy, whether motivated by health or climate concerns, what ever it is, what the wonks in washington call co-benefits. your mention of los angeles earlier was interesting. i think it is worth looking at north american and european cities. there is a hopeful story. numbers are dire and upsetting. if there is one thing economies have proven they know how to do in the last 50 years it is cleanup air pollution. we have seen that here and we have seen that in the last 1-3 years in china. now for days or weeks at a time there are blue skies in china in a way that was not true 10 years ago. carol: coming up, blockchain based digital tokens are taking off in kenya. jason: an exclusive, how using dna to discover your family tree

may have unforeseen consequences. carol: you're going to want to check out this story. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. you can listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119 and in new york, boston, washington, d.c. jason: a.m. 960 in the bay area and in london and on the bloomberg business app. for the last four years, some of the poorest neighborhoods in the kenyan capital of nairobi have been experimenting with community currency, paper vouchers that can help businesses pay for goods in areas where access to paper cash is sporadic. carol: that program is pretty successful. recently, with the involvement of a cryptocurrency program, it has gone digital.

reporter dune lawrence explains. dune: i wanted to look at the way cryptocurrency is being used outside of wall street and silicon valley. the whole idea blockchain is it is revolutionary. it is going to change everything. i wanted to see if there were actual real applications outside of, it is a commodity. we will see how high it goes and how low it goes. i spoke to this program in kenya, which is turning a poverty alleviation project into a cryptocurrency project. jason: i started reading it and i used carol's phrase. wait, what? it is amazing. they went from colored paper alternative currency straight to blockchain. dune: the original program, took that concept, these are people

who do not have cash, these are poor people who live in kenyan slums. they do have things to trade, but not official shillings to do it with. we are going to create a co-op and we are going to agree this paper voucher is worth something in our community. carol: they call it a community currency. it is within a certain geographical area. it helps the community in terms of an economic payoff? dune: they continue to get things they need. even if they happen to earn official shillings recently. the program has been successful. they have about six of these in different communities around kenya. outside of nairobi and in nairobi and in mumbasa. the benefits are only within that community, but the man who started it, this displaced californian physicist turned development economist. jason: that was a great phrase.

physicist turned development economist. dune: he thought, how to get them together? then these communities could connect with each other. he found his answer in blockchain. jason: if we were in a village, how would we use this? dune: if you have a smart phone, it is like any mobile money payment. it looks like that to the users. you would type in something on your smart phone and make the transaction. you would not see any of the complex stuff going on. if you do not have a smart phone, you can use the tech space system. this is something that has been pioneered in africa already because a lot of people do not have smartphones could i should back up and say kenya is a great place to try this because it's gone beyond where developed economies are in terms of fintech.

everyone, they leapfrog. they went from a country that did not have a lot of people involved in the formal banking system and they got something, a mobile money system and you can take cash and put it onto your phone and pay for anything. you do not have to have a bank account or anything. jason: turning to a businessweek story you can find exclusively online, dna testing is not only rising in popularity but it is becoming big business for companies like parabon nano labs. a small data analytics company is teaming up with law enforcement to solve decades-old murders. carol: we got more from our reporter. >> dna tests were used by cops who were trying to find murderers or people who were trying to establish paternity in will situations. suddenly you had companies like 23 and me marketing these things as consumer products for anybody, discover where your

ancestor came from and what diseases you might have a proclivity towards. this had these weird consequences, one of these was in the subculture of genealogy, where people realized you could use this stuff to find relatives you are looking for. long dead relatives or living relatives and over the course of time people realized you could use that to find a murder in a cold case. all of this stuff has begun to result in arrest as of just a few months ago. it has accelerated. carol: there is one woman who has made her life's work of this. tell us about her. drake: she has an interesting back story. her first love was musical theater.

she was -- not a struggling actress, but someone who never made it big. she was in commercials. at a certain point, she decided, wouldn't it be neat to put together my family tree? this was a wedding present for her niece. she went down the rabbit hole. this happened to be around the same time people were realizing you could use this genetic information as an adjunct. she became one of the leaders of this movement. she became good at finding things like the parents of foundlings or helping amnesiacs discover who they were. she became this self identified dna detective, but she was a detective. she could really solve these incredibly weird, hard cases. it was not long before actual detectives started asking whether they could help. jason: one of the fascinating pieces of this is that just because you don't give up your own dna doesn't mean you can't be identified by it, even if a distant relative does. drake: that's right. there is some debate about how far you can go and find people. you can basically -- there is a

study that came out recently. researchers at a dna company and columbia, their estimate is that if you have a third cousin on one of these databases, you can be found. everyone has maybe 100 third cousins. that means, if you are an american of european ancestry, which are the people highly representative these databases, 60% of americans can be found right now. whether or not you are on it, because it is someone who is connected to you. jason: are people starting to think maybe we should regulate this? where does it go from here? drake: the fact that you have these high profile arrests, many of which involve this woman we wrote about, has gotten everyone's attention. people are wondering about whether we should regulate this. right now, it is not regulated at all. there is some precedent. some states have put regulations on searching in the police forensic criminal dna databases. there is this idea that maybe

you could do something like that. right now it is kind of the wild west. carol: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. jason: and also online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. what is your must-read? carol: tom orlik writes about the u.s. and china and trade implications as the trade war escalates. we will see what happens. he reminds us about the long-term investments, the plan that china has in place to dominate so many different industries. we are talking about high-tech industries. this could change the future of china. jason: he does a nice job of giving us the history but also looking forward. a lot of specifics. a lot of people are wondering where does the rubber meet the road? he lays it out. carol: i love the story. your must-read? jason: dune's piece on the kenyan cryptocurrency experiment

i find fascinating. i spend so much time listening to wall street bros talk about crypto and the blockchain. this is where it is happening. this is a real world example. carol: it is a reminder that africa is a great test lab for future financial technology. you see that often. do not forget, check out our daily business week podcast, for some of our interviews including one with the author of "how the internet happened." it is about the history of the web, getting into specific details of how it happened. that was a fun conversation. jason: history you need to know. recent history that many of people have forgotten. clay alexander, founder and ceo of ember. it is my go to travel mug. and my mug at home. it tracks my caffeine consumption at the same time, which is not always great. carol: my favorite this week, sarah cooper, a comedian and smart writer, who has her third book out, it is a stocking stuffer. her book is "how to be successful without hurting men's feelings." say no more. jason: i will not. more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪

haidi: welcome to daybreak australia. and i am sophie kamaruddin. we are counting down to the major market open. haidi: these are the top stories we are covering in the next hour. since food prices through the roof. [round that the earnings of australia's big banks. little changed from year ago.