♪ ♪ emily: i'm emily chang and this is "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all the top interviews from this week and tech. coming up, trade truce tensions? presidents trump and xi dial it down for 90 days, but trump's tweets sent markets on a wild ride. what did they agree on? to temporarily halt the trade war. plus, locking up huawei, the ceo arrested by canadian authorities at the behest of the united states. how will this impact the tenuous trade truce?

and spacex sets a record, deploying 64 satellites in one falcon nine rocket. but first, to our top story. the confusion following trade discussions between the u.s. and china at the g20 in argentina. on monday, global markets cheered the weekend record, which suggested the two presidents agreed to a 90 day tariff tax, but things changed the next day when doubts emerged over what the world's two largest economies had agreed on. we will set the scene with this report monday with michael mckee who was at the summit. michael: the agreement may be the best investors could hope for, but it doesn't necessarily mean big changes in chinese behavior ahead, particularly for tech. it is not even clear what was agreed to. the white house has a list of semi-specifics, including reconsideration of the qualcomm deal if the companies are interested and purchasing what president trump calls massive amounts of agricultural, energy,

industrial, and other products. chinese officials haven't mentioned qualcomm and say only that they are "willing to expand imports according to the needs of the domestic marketplace and the people." no specifics on products. the u.s. administration says they will spend 90 days negotiating forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, nontariff barriers, and cyber theft. the chinese mentioned no timeframe and say only that president xi agreed to open "to gradually resolve the legitimate concerns u.s." there is no indication china will make any changes in its made in china to 2025 effort to lead the world in the technologies of the future. on the other hand, the u.s. made no concessions on exports to china of dual use technology with potential military applications and offered no indication the u.s. won't subject proposed chinese investments to detailed review. even if there are 90 days of negotiations, that hardly seems

enough to make much progress on complicated issues, which leaves twoysts saying the countries kicked the can down the road. trade tensions will come back in 2019. emily: michael mckee there on monday. tuesday, the president posted a series of tweets hinting he could extend that period of detente. it came after more confusion tweets about eliminating tariffs reducing or eliminating tariffs of u.s. made cars. larry kudlow told foxnews the deal isn't finalized, but he expected china to lower its auto tariffs. take a listen. larry: the president expects -- he is right. he will get it. they would take their car tariffs down to zero. they were 15%, then they were up to 40% as a retaliatory move, and i think you will see pretty soon, they will be knocked down to zero. that is my guess. emily: we discussed with a

and senior fellow of the asia society. >> the heads of german automakers meeting at the white house today with trump administration officials, they emerged from the meeting and their message was not that they are here to advocate for trade. the eu is in charge of that, but they came to tell trump about their plans, that they might be able to expand themselves in the u.s. and i'm sure auto tariffs did come up and that would be a disservice to the companies that want to important to the u.s., but the larger message was there is potential for more u.s. investment in car production even by european companies, so let's not scuttle the relationship. emily: isaac, the chinese haven't said anything about this at all. they have not commented on the president's initial tweets nor have they commented on the backtracking. what do you make of that? isaac: i am having a tough time figuring out just what is actually going on. my best guess is that they didn't really agree to anything on saturday night except an

agreement to keep talking, and then trump felt either desperate or impulsive for a deal. the u.s. side put out a list of things that they wanted to get out of it or thought they got out of it. you had this bizarre trump tweet on sunday, i think it was, about the tariffs that kudlow had to walk back. i think the markets and outside observers and possibly the chinese are scrambling to try to understand what exactly is trump's play here and if this is something he planned or just impulse and error? emily: one of the most memorable tweets of the day so far, "i am a tariff man. when people or countries come to raid the wealth of our nation, i want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. it will always be the best way to max out our economic power. we are right now taking billions of dollars in tariffs. make america rich again." h, aren't american taxpayers

paying the tariffs? sarah: there are companies in the u.s. who are complaining who import from china that the tariffs are hurting them. china has issued retaliatory china has issued retaliatory tariffs, so again being hit by those. the trump administration would argue it has added billions of dollars to the coffers, but it also comes at a cost for u.s. businesses. i think that is the key marker as we look ahead to these 90 days. what impacts are the tariffs having on the economy? trump has a few months to assess the data to see if these trade headwinds that economists are predicting are taking hold as the tax cut affect peters out and this global momentum shifts a little bit. emily: now on the intellectual property theft issue, isaac, the i have been dying to get your thoughts on this. the chinese government has laid out 38 different punishments to be applied to various ip violations. how significant is this? what counts as a violation and will the government can enforce

actually enforce it? isaac: all we can say right now is it is a positive step. it is really, really hard to know whether or not the government will expend the political capital that it needs to enforce it. my guess is that for some really cases ofs brands being ripped off, they'll make a big show about taking those down, but for companies like huawei, a national champion, i would be shocked to see them say you are accused of stealing u.s. ip so we will are actually going to punish you according to new regulations. emily: but the range of potential ip violations is broad. chinese citizens coming to work at u.s. companies and going back to china. walk us through all of the potential issues around ip theft and what this is actually addresses. what it a dresses is that

it gives beijing the opportunity to say you guys have a big problem with ip, we are doing something on it. here is a concrete list of what actually we are doing. but there is such a huge disconnect often in china between the letter of the law and its implementation. issue -- is also a big there is an old chinese expression, the mountains are high and the emperor is far away -- with beijing's ability to control the implementation of something like this in further away regions from beijing. we do have 38 specific steps they say they are going to take, but i would be shocked if we have this conversation in three months and find they have taken a lot of those steps. emily: so, sarah, that said, is this going to be enough to appease the administration? sarah: this ip issue isaac was discussing is obviously the high water mark for any deal that trump is going to reach. achieving that in 90 days sounds almost impossible. last month, the u.s. released a you know, just last month, the

u.s. released a report that said china has not responded to any of the trump administration's demands to address the ip se ip issues. it was the basis for the tariffs to begin in july. i think if the trump administration, if they ignore this issue, which will be the most difficult to tackle, will be going to easy on china in terms of the bar that it set. emily: that was isaac stone fish of the asia society and bloomberg's sarah mcgregor. trade tensions were further complicated after the arrest in canada of huawei's chief financial officer. coming up, we will dive into the reasons and repercussions next. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio, listen on the bloomberg app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

confidentially filed to go public.

they submitted early-stage documents for an ipo, beating uber to the punch. bloomberg has learned that lyft is working with j.p. morgan and jeffries to lead the offering in the first half of next year. the banks have pitched valuations from $18 billion to $30 billion. and more on our top story, trade talks between the u.s. and china could get even more complicated following the arrest of a chinese telecom executive. the u.s. convinced canada to huawei cfo in connection with violating sanctions against iran. she is the daughter of huawei's founder. we talked to sam sacks and a a cyber policy and china digital policy fellow along with bloomberg's mark gurman. >> this is seen as a dramatic escalation from beijing. even though this isn't directly linked to the trade war, it comes at a time of tremendous political tension between the u.s. and china and could make ongoing trade talks more contentious.

statement from china, at the request of the u.s. side, the canadian side arrested a citizen not violating any law. the chinese side firmly opposes and strongly protests over such actions which seriously harmed the human rights of the victim. they want the u.s. and canada to correct this wrongdoing, to restore her personal freedom. mark, put this into context , because huawei is by far the most global of china's tech companies. of course alibaba and tencent are huge, but they are still relatively confined to the chinese and asian markets. market: right, so huawei has two main businesses we care about. one is there devices business, and the other is there telecommunications equipment business. let's start with the phone business. the phone business has become one of the biggest in the entire world, eclipsing apple according to some analysts estimates as some of the most popular phones on the market. that is not what we really care

about here. we care about the telecommunications equipment, because right now all of the talk is about 5g and word is huawei is using equipment to spy on citizens in other countries, whether that is america, the u.k., australia. that is what all these conspiracies originated from years ago when everyone started looking into huawei. that brings us to a doj investigation from the u.s. that started around april, that we reported on bloomberg at the time. this arrest appears to be part of that. emily: samm, it is impossible not to view this in the context of president trump's meeting with xi jinping. we don't know if the president knew about this arrest, but what do you make of the broader signal that this sends to china in the midst of will or won't the u.s. strike a deal on trade? samm: this comes at a time when the u.s. is taking a multi-pronged approach to taking down huawei. they are going at -- at the u.s.

government has gone around talking with allies and partners across asia and europe and said , look huawei should not be a , part of 5g networks. we are already starting to see signs the u.k. government is going to be reviewing huawei in their networks, which is really significant. so i see this as a broader effort by the u.s. government to take on china's technological dominance as they see it using huawei, maybe as a whipping post for that. emily: you know, just how advanced, mark, are huawei's technologies compared to u.s. networking companies, compared to u.s. smartphone makers? mark: on the telecommunication side, huawei is regarded as one of the top players in 5g networking. their equipment allows them to connect to smartphones. they are a major player, their equipment is intended to work almost globally and is a big part of their overall business in china. so this is definitely not a good thing for the company's bottom line, and i think that is one of

many reasons you see stock trades and futures having such an impact globally right now. in terms of their smart phones, they are regarded as some of the best as well, and we have already seen them shut out of places in the u.s., at least. we have seen some carriers verizon and at&t, dropping deals to carry huawei devices in january, february earlier in 2018. we see the pentagon no longer allowing employees to buy huawei devices. best buy has shut huawei out of its operations. best buy is one of the biggest devices retailer in the world. so we see a lot of companies working with the u.s. government to shut out huawei. emily: samm, how do you imagine the chinese government could retaliate or react? samm: there are a number of ways they could retaliate. they could take measures against u.s. tech companies in china. i think it is an environment where all bets are off. they can use standards, market

access tools. i think this could be a chip that could be used as a bargaining tool in ongoing negotiations in the 90-day period following the dinner. right now, this says we are in a new environment in the u.s.-china dynamic and there is uncertainty. we don't know how this will play out. emily: what is the likelihood it ends like zte where president ys thesteps in and plac hero. he figured it all out, zte paid a big fine and were able to go back to their usual operations. samm: this brings up an important question because the theory is this kind of investigation should be independent from any kind of ongoing political negotiation over trade. but we saw that wasn't the case with zte. so it is possible this could be used in a negotiation. zte is different in that it was brought to its knees when the u.s. threatened to cut it off from access to u.s. components. huawei is not as dependent as

zte is on the u.s. supply chain. however, telecom carriers in the u.s. and globally, many use huawei. so they will have tremendous impact from that angle. emily: samm sacks and bloomberg's mark gurman. coming up, tech leaders make another trip to the white house. this time to talk emerging innovations like ai, ig and robotics. we will have all of the details shortly. facebook's messaging market in asia, home to more than 200 million whatsapp users. we talk about the opportunities along with the challenges later in the show. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: tech industry leaders descended on the white house this week to talk about emerging innovations like artificial intelligence. while the administration's trade war with china wasn't officially on the agenda, it loomed large. we broke it down thursday. alex: i think it has a lot to do

had a lot to do with trade and less with the future of technology, the industries of the future that the purported purpose of the meeting. i think these ceos really wanted to know whether the white house has a plan to resolve this trade war with china in a way that truly gets at china's alleged theft of intellectual property. emily: trade representative robert lighthizer was there, longtime hardliner on china. what does that signify? alex: it shows that trade was probably was the true agenda item. the white house was expecting these ceos to come with questions on trade. it wasn't something the white house particularly planned to bring up, but they were prepared for it. emily: it has been a confusing week. it has been a volatile week. do you imagine the white house will listen to the concerns that these tech ceos might have about

trade issues? alex: it feels like the white house is looking for a way out of this trade war regardless of the tech ceos concerns. i think they are staring at mountains of unsold soybeans in iowa and wobbles in the stock market and wondering whether this trade dispute is not working out in america's favor, so i think the concerns, the the tech ceos raised will be added to the pile of other indicators that the trade war is not particularly great for anyone. emily: now, this isn't the first meeting the white house has had with tech ceos. you know, put it into context for us. how productive were the meetings much doly, and how d you expect will come out of this one? alex: we don't have any readout from this meeting from the white

house or from any of the ceos. we don't know anything that was discussed for a fact. i expect very little to come of this meeting. he, the president has done several of these, as you mentioned, and there has not been any particular policy or any announcements that the white house has proposed as a result of any of this stuff. i think the white house for the most part just likes to stay in touch with the most important people in u.s. industries. emily: all right, bloomberg's alex wayne in washington. i do want to talk more about this meeting at the white house. while the official agenda listed ai, robotics, 5g, it took place against a backdrop of trade tensions simmering between the united states and china. to talk about how those are tech tensions are hurting tech companies and the u.s.'s policy toward technology, we have david kirkpatrick here with me in san francisco. a seniorve

analyst. he has a report out arguing the u.s. needs a national ai strategy to boost u.s. economic competitiveness and support u.s. defense capabilities. not particularly optimistic anything will come out of this, but what does the white house need to understand about the advance of ai in other countries around the world and what can be done about it in the united states? joshua: thanks for having me. the important thing to keep in mind when it comes to a i is the united states enjoyed an early lead because of our strong technology sector and innovation regulatory environment, and other countries are aggressively pursuing leadership in this space. there are signs our lead is, so china in particular is the best positioned to overtake the u.s. they released their artificial intelligence strategy in 2017 and are detailing massive amounts of funding and investment with the stated goal

of being the world leader in ai by 2030. the united states, unless there is some serious action from policymakers here, won't be able to compete with china. emily: and yet at the same time, we're seeing tech lash coming from the president. he has been hard on google. he has been hard on amazon. he has been hard on facebook. how does that play out, given the need for progress on these some of these broader issues? david: there are different parts of tech and google and facebook don't have much participation in the chinese market. it is interesting, a number of the companies in the white house today do have very deep business ties in china. emily: except google is considering going back in china. david: there were just reports about how much ads are selling in china. the president says one thing, does another often. i think that is worth keeping in mind. but i also think this meeting has to do with trade, but goes beyond trade, because there are genuine long-term issues of u.s.

competitiveness, as we have just heard, that have to be addressed, because not only is china moving forward with ai and other technologies, we have led this historically, but we are literally the only major country that does not have an explicit government policy of supporting our ai and other technology developments. so i think the trump administration has been moving steadily toward a more explicit very steadily toward a more explicit set of supporting policies for tech in the united states as a competitive weapon, and i think this discussion is connected to that, even though there are short-term issues about ip theft, etc. emily: even so, many would argue that the u.s., joshua, has a thriving tech sector, that silicon valley is still innovating, so what are the drawbacks of the u.s. not having a comprehensive policy like perhaps china does? joshua: sure. yes, it is true the u.s. does have a strong technology sector. we are the world leaders in ai for now, but there are signs

that this lead is slipping. so china in 2015 surpassed the united states in the number of patents related to ai and deep learning as filed, and in 2017, published six times as many compared to the united states. there are serious education concerns that we might not be producing enough workers with the ai skills necessary to develop these kinds of technology. we are already not meeting that demand as it stands today, and it is only going to get worse policymakers' intervention. r&d investments are at nearly half a century low as a share of gdp and that is crucial for developing the foundational research the private sector can later innovate and develop products 20 years down the line. since we are not doing that now, the future of the private sectors ability to develop innovations in the space is limited. emily: coming up, here is something you don't often see associated with an iphone. a discount.

will apple's latest marketing move be enough to win our holiday customers? bloomberg technology, livestreaming on twitter. follow our global network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to "the best of bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. apple supplier woes continue. tuesday, cirrus logic joined others to tumble after cutting its forecast following worries about future iphone demand. shares of cirrus fell as much as 6% in early trading before recovering some of that loss. we spoke with mark gurman about this and the measures apple is taking to try to sell more iphones. mark: they are not actually cutting prices per se. they are advertising a lower price which makes it so interesting. they are advertising the iphone xr for $300 less than it costs.

this is a marketing tactic you might see from samsung or huawei or some of the carriers for -- like verizon or at&t. this is a new type of effort for apple. this is not something we have seen from them, basically disguising the price or saying the price is something it is not. this is a trade-in deal they are boosting. so this is a new, aggressive tactic and it was unbelievable to me following apple for so long, and seeing a banner for a $300 discount that is not really a discount at the top of the page. emily: you do not think about banner ads and discounts associated with the iphone, those discounts are being delivered. talk to us about the marketing shuffle. they have put additional staff on trying to make sure they get more iphones out the door? mark: about a month ago, they shuffled some of their marketing resources and staff at apple in what one person called a fire

drill, reallocating resources to focus on new ways to market the iphone and boosting iphone sales in light of these concerns, and in recent weeks and months about the prospects for the holiday season. emily: talk to us about these continued supplier cuts. are the alarm bells getting louder? mark: we have heard this before with the iphone x and it turned out the iphone x did quite well. it was their best seller on a weekly basis. apple continued to say that iphone unit sales were not that bad across 2017 and 2018. the problem is all of these fears are compounded by the fact that apple will no longer reveal their iphone unit sales. at this point, the truth is important, but apple will not come out and correct the record. they already said they are not going to do that. quite frankly, that says the days of iphone unit sales growth

are over and perhaps they will sure that when growth increases again. we will find out what it means based on the revenue numbers as well. emily: i have this chart showing apple's continued dependence on the iphone. it has gone up and it has gone down slightly more recently. we have been talking about how apple is trying to make this transition to the services company, but the iphone will still be incredibly important. we talked about how the company is making a bet that 5g won't be a big deal next year, they are waiting until 2020, yet at&t is working on a phone with samsung that will have 5g conductivity and be ready for next year. how much of a threat is that to apple? mark: in years past with the iphone 3g and iphone 5, they missed the boat by one year. it did not matter because five to 10 years ago, no one cared about any high-tech phone other than the iphone. these days, the competition is

much higher and you will see samsung having about a year and a half head start on 5g. it is a network technology that will be more heavily marketed. i want to touch on the transition for a minute. apple has been trying to give it -- to pivot investor services and i quite frankly find the notion that they are pushing this a little ridiculous, because the services have to run on something. services growth has been tied to the growth of iphone hardware. at some point they will have to have a new piece of hardware to run those services on for the growth to continue on the services and hardware front. emily: it is all about continued growth of the apple ecosystem. do you think we will be getting more supplier cuts? there are companies we have not heard it from yet. mark: and the careful balance has to be there between what is related to an apple supplier and what can be said about samsung's own issues selling phones, because the smart phone market overall is reaching saturation where growth is slowing.

the interesting one today with cirrus logic, in their most recent filing with the financial institutions, they say that 82% of the revenues come from apple. that is a big chunk of their revenues, the most i have seen from any supplier to be dedicated to a single company. it is not great for their business and their shareholders, but that is indicative proof that this is an apple related problem. emily: we kept on apple with our ek, a journalist turned investor who is now a partner at true ventures. we discussed the challenges ahead for the tech giant. om: feel that they are doing what they are supposed to do as a company. they are making new technologies, new products. they are pushing the envelope on their products, whereas they have new services business which is growing really fast. so as a company, they are doing , what they are supposed to do. do i get bothered by their not reporting their numbers?

yeah, a little bit. emily: why? om: i think you need to be more open. emily: let's talk about facebook. i have been dying to get your thoughts on the latest controversies and new reporting about what mark zuckerberg in sheryl sandberg specifically been doing over the last couple of years in response to russian election meddling, fake news, and more. the title of "the new york times" investigation certainly does not reflect well for either of them. then there has been this drip drop of news that maybe they were not essentially truthful when they responded to the article. this is a company where shares have plummeted 35% since july with hundreds of millions of dollars wiped off the market cap of the company. you followed facebook for a long time. you know mark zuckerberg. what is your reaction to these leadership issues? om: let's separate the leadership issues with the business. there is not that many players in the advertising market. it is google and it is them.

advertisers are not leaving facebook anytime soon. they may make nice statements in the press, but not a single one has quit facebook because it can't afford to. how many people have quit facebook, employees? not very many. things have not really changed. i think what people forget is the biggest challenge in terms of facebook is not mark or sheryl, it is more their business model is based on fundamentally engaging people constantly. in order to do that, they are willing to sacrifice any sense of morality around it. emily: to that point, six cofounders of the companies that facebook has acquired over the years, whatsapp, instagram, and oculus, have all left the company and not with nice things to say. how concerning is that? om: everybody knew what this company was for a long time. since 2007, i have been saying this constantly, that we have to

be very careful how these guys collect information, how they push the society, and what they do with our data. unfortunately, 10 years later, it is a little too late to say that. i think when whatsapp or oculus or instagram sold their businesses, they knew what would happen. to think that they were unaware of the outcome, that is childish. emily: if whatsapp and instagram are where the future growth is, do you think facebook can achieve the same kind of growth they have seen in the original social network if indeed plateauing on facebook proper? om: i think they are going to ruin instagram much more than they ruined facebook because they have more economic pressure to grow the revenue. in order to do that they will really push the envelope and that will mean that the lifespan

of instagram as a golden goose will be much shorter. emily: what about whatsapp? om: i don't know about that one. emily: when the facebook cofounder left and appointed this guy chris daniels to run whatsapp, he has been to india a couple of times, and you understand better than most people what is happening with technology in india, do you think that is a huge opportunity for facebook that they can exploit? om: i think whatsapp owns the indian market. everyone uses whatsapp to make phone calls, send text messages. people live inside of whatsapp. but, i don't know how they turn that into money. it is still a big 'if.' i don't think it is very clear as to how that whole communication channel gets monetized. is it through e-commerce, is it through advertising? is it through paid services,

or is it like chat services? definitely they have a big opportunity there. emily: do you think -- as you mentioned earlier, this is still where advertiser dollars are going -- but do you think we will ultimately see a decline of facebook over the next 10 years? or do you think it is status quo? om: it took 25 years for yahoo! to be sold for a few billion dollars, so i think facebook is going to the here for a long time. emily: is facebook the next yahoo!? om: eventually we all become yahoo!, less relevant, less able to innovate. i think every company goes through that phase. i think with mark in place and their ability to overlook any kind of morality or doing the right thing, will keep them in a good place and make their investors very happy.

emily: that was true ventures partner om malik. coming up, spacex with another launch this year, launching 64 small spacecraft from 34 different organizations and orbit. we will bring you all the details. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: oracle told the pentagon in class to file a lawsuit against its winner take all contract. the company is claiming that terms for the $10 billion project violate procurement standards and unfairly favor amazon. oracle is pushing to protect its defense technology business following a months-long lobbying campaign in washington by oracle , ibm and microsoft. a pentagon spokeswoman confirmed the government received the notice of oracle's intent to sue. not one but two spacex launches this week, the 16th mission to

resupply the international space station. perhaps even more notable, a liftoff that launched 64 satellites in one fell swoop. what you are seeing is considered to be the largest rideshare mission in history. the falcon 9 rocket took off from vandenberg air force base in california, a sign of the growing demand to launch smaller satellites, modern devices that some companies believe will empower an array of new businesses. joining us to talk about the satellite launch is dana hull and max chafkin in new york. max: it is a big deal in the sense that it is yet another sort of proof point in what seems to be a growing sense that spacex is a mature, successful, stable company that elon musk and gwen shotwell, the coo, have turned this thing into a big aerospace contractor that is a force to be reckoned with. emily: talk about what makes

this particular mission unique and what it took to get here. dana: it is a milestone in all kinds of ways. it is the 19th mission of the year. that is a new record for the company. they have managed to recover the first stage booster again. this is a booster that has flown twice deviously. this is the first time they have caught or recovered a rocket booster that has already flown several times. they are trying to catch the fairing, this crazy boat named mr. stephen which has a net contraption. we do not know if that has worked out yet. they launched 64 microsatellites. typically when you think of a rocket launch, the payload is some huge object, one big, massive satellite. in this case, it was 64 small ones and that is where people think the satellite industry is going. smaller payloads as opposed to one large big one. emily: max, what does this pave the way towards? obviously every mission is another step toward something

and towards elon musk's broader goal. max: it paves the way towards having a long-term, sustainable business. we do not know for sure what spacex's books look like. we know they are collecting a lot of revenue because the revenue numbers for each of these launches are relatively public. at least the list price is. to build a sustainable business, to be able to make a much bigger rocket, which is the next step, they need to generate profits. being able to tap from not just the public sector, which spacex has made a really great business in doing business with the air force and nasa, but start up private space companies, that will be good. there are other rocket startups, rocket lab is one, that are betting on small satellites as a focus. if spacex can keep the small satellite market and do the big launches for nasa and the air force, that will be great for

them. emily: spacex has a contract to send american astronauts to the international space station. how far away is that? dana: the first test flight is supposed to be in january, and if that goes well they could be flying astronauts to the space station as early as june. that is a big deal. elon musk wants to colonize mars but has never proven he can fly humans safely. if they could do that, it will be a big proof point for spacex. emily: what has to happen before they get there? isn't nasa doing some sort of investigation into spacex and boeing? dana: nasa is looking at the safety culture of both companies. this grew out of concern of mus k's decision to smoke marijuana and a podcast. it is nasa's excuse to look under the hood as to what the safety culture is. it has not affected the timeline at all. everything is still a go for a commercial crew and nasa has

invested an enormous amount of resources to make sure that happens, because without boeing and spacex the alternative is american astronauts have to fly on a russian rocket. emily: max, do we think this investigation will turn up anything of significance or raise any red flags, or will everything move forward for spacex as planned? max: my expectation is that it always takes longer than it is supposed to take. especially when you're talking about elon musk with his tendency to be optimistic on his timelines. this is an issue that neither nasa nor spacex nor boeing can really afford to screw up. if nasa does not have these private companies, it will not have a way to send humans into space. we would have to rely on the russians. you really want to get it right, and just for the safety of the crew. it is one thing to be launching expensive satellites into space. it is another putting human

beings on that rocket. emily: in the same way that tesla has missed deadlines and some of the goals that musk has set but has now reached some of those, do we see the same in spacex or are they more on time? dana: the launch industry in general is notoriously late. today's launch was supposed to happen last week and then they had to delay it because of the weather and there was another delay when they were looking over technical specs. it is always late. the mars colonization plans will always be late. falcon heavy was late. i do not think it is much of an issue because it is a privately held company and it is more of a standard in space, everything is always late in space. it is an industrywide thing. emily: from the court to investing, we will speak to golden state warriors star turned tech entrepreneur steph curry on why he is betting on a travel startup. this is bloomberg.

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emily: steph curry disrupted basketball by making seemingly impossible three-point shots look routine. now the golden state warriors guard is looking for disruptors in business as he scouts out investments off the court. the nba's highest paid player is bulking up his investment portfolio of tech companies with his latest bet, a startup called snap travel. he says it is destined for success. curry caught up with natalie wong in toronto. take a listen. steph: being in silicon valley for the last 10 years, it is about relationships and expanding ourselves.

part of my team is kind of on the surface in terms of companies that are being disruptive and having success. in terms of snap travel, finding ways to meet the consumer where they are in terms of being disruptive in that industry. it said a lot about the company and the leadership and excited to be a part of the team. natalie: what type of value do you think you bring as an investor to the table? steph: hopefully a lot in terms of using my platform to bring attention and awareness to the company and what it can offer. there are a lot of things around my brand and things around the philanthropic world and media space that hopefully can boost and amplify the things snap travel is doing well. i love to be hands-on with

things and trying to bring added value any way i can, and being available, that is something we try to bring to the table as well. natalie: you have made a variety of investments in different companies. what is your investment philosophy? steph: it is continuing to grow. obviously looking at founders and their track records to want to make sound judgments and build credibility and sustainability early in our investment strategy. in terms of finding companies that have strong market traction, doing our due diligence and the approach of trying to be the hardest workers in the room, that is very important. in terms of trying to be successful early and to continue to sustain. natalie: you have obviously had a process that is made you arguably one of the best basketball players so far, but what is your process making investments and business

decisions? walk me through that. how do you make that decision? steph: in a synergy to basketball, you surround yourself with the right people. people who are smarter than me in terms of forming the right direction. in terms of details of the beginning, doing our homework, doing research, getting educated on the industry we are investing in and being smart with our , money, that is very important. natalie: do you see yourself as more of a risk taker or do you have more of a conservative approach when it comes to making dingbats in the market? steph: i'm somewhere in the middle. obviously i like to take some chances, but you have to make sound judgments and make sure you are doing your homework and aligning with the right people. i think the power and leadership and how important that is in the process of building strong, sustainable, and successful companies is first and foremost. natalie: many former basketball legends have become very savvy

business investors. from the ad role, magic johnson. -- from the admiral, magic johnson. who are some players you have turned to for a outside of your father? steph: that is the fun part about playing where i get to play. the network is amazing. when you go to the games and look around courtside, major vc's, major corporations ceos and things like that. the network is strong and my tenure is there. i can have a long list of people i have had a simple conversation where you just learn. veterans in the game that have been really successful, you named two of them. i've had sit downs with dave robinson for sure as far as what he is doing in the philanthropic space, seeing how successful magic is in his ventures. there are plenty of guys who have done it well. i am trying to do it my way, but

leaning on some of that advice as well. emily: that was golden state warriors star steph curry speaking with natalie wong. that does it for this edition of "the best of bloomberg technology." we will bring all the latest in tech throughout the week. tune in every day 5:00 p.m. new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. we are live streaming on twitter and follow our global network on twitter. i am emily chang. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." >> joining you from bloomberg headquarters in new york. >> we dive into the second annual bloomberg 50, the people driving change this year. jason: plus, the cash trade dragging down general electric.