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tv   Bloomberg Technology  Bloomberg  April 2, 2019 11:00pm-12:00am EDT

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emily: i am emily chang in boston, and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, bitcoin jumps more than 20%. past $5,000. but traders are at a loss to explain why. plus, u.s./china trade talks resume as a chinese vice premier leads a delegation to washington. could there be a breakthrough, and what will it mean for global tech giants? and lifting the curtain at youtube as the video platform faces controversy.
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staffers say managers are not listening and proposals to change recommendations and curb conspiracies are being sacrificed for poor engagement. two our first story, bitcoin abruptly surged after almost three months of low volatility. the world's most popular cryptocurrency soared to its highest level since november. at topping $5,000 and bringing one point smaller cryptocurrencies up with it. this after it plunged more than 70% last year. could the crypto winter be nearing an end? joining us to discuss is the chief commercial officer and our bloomberg executive editor. joe, what do you think is happening? joe: it is hard to say. no one has any good theories for what i have seen for what has caused bitcoin to surge so much after not doing anything for a long time. i do think it is striking the way every coin moved higher today, including all of the garbage ones way down on the list.
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that brings to mind questions about, is the crypto winter really over or is this just another blitz? emily: sonny, what is your take? we know you are always more positive on bitcoin. i assume you are pretty happy about this. but why did you think it happened? sonny: i am not really sure but it shows how global bitcoin trading is. a lot of times these price hikes seem to happen late night in america and early-morning in europe but always midday in asia. it shows how powerful asia is in the bitcoin trading market. it is exciting and interesting tradee bitcoin truly does 24/7 around the world. i don't really know what caused this move. the markets have been skittish. my traders say once it goes past 4300, it resumes from there. not a lot of demand either way on which way the market will go. emily: joe, we know that volatility has been more stable,
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but other things that have concerned investors, hacks on exchanges, market manipulation, has any of that stuff changed? joe: it does not feel like it to me. the fundamental issues that people have raised, particularly around security and things like that, it is not like there is any more regulatory clarity, or anything like that. so i think all those concerns remain. that being said, bull markets often start in anything before all of the questions are answered. and if you wait until everything is resolved, and this is speaking for any asset class, if you wait until everything is resolved and you have security taken care of and institutional moneys come in, by then, it might be too late. it is certainly plausible that you could have a bull market start with so much uncertainty. and i do think it is interesting that even though nobody can explain why there was a price surge in the middle of the night, the prices held. it is not like it immediately went back down and selling
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resumes. i think that is an interesting phenomenon to take note of. emily: sonny, what sort of things on the regulatory and institutional side are improving in your view? sonny: every day that bitcoin stays active is a plus for the bitcoin industry. right? regulations in america are pretty stable that way. europe is pretty stable as well. what would really boost the market is if you see countries like china, india, or russia, the three big ones where the governments have been not allowing bitcoin in those countries. if any of those countries three change, you could see a boost to the industry. as far as fundamentals, you are still waiting on companies like fidelity, which kind of like did a soft launch to launch in a big way. goldman sachs, a square, blackrock or something like that. once those big companies come in, joe said that you might have missed the boom on the way up. there is a lot of money on the side wines -- sidelines waiting
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to get in. maybe they think now is the time because the bottom might have already been hit. emily: bitcoin is still far from mainstream. what will you be watching this year? what would make you more optimistic? joe: i am very skeptical that we will see anything resembling mainstream adoption anytime soon. i am very skeptical that we will see a whole lot of day-to-day use case anytime imminently. i think there are certain parts of the world, and certain functions for which crypto-currencies, bitcoin in particular, makes a lot of sense. so obviously anywhere in which the government is cracking down on people's freedom to transact, on people's ability to move wealth in and out of a border, that is a potential opportunity i think for bitcoin. the more we see people use it, not so much in the broad sense, but the more we see people use bitcoin in the narrow sense, where there is a logical case
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why bitcoin offer something that traditional payments don't, that to me would be a good sign of it continuing to take hold. emily: sonny, where are we going to see bitcoin being used in a more logical case, where there are benefits to using it where there is not with traditional currency? sonny: i think bitcoin has a lot of regional use cases around the world, especially outside of america. you think of remittance in asia. you could use a currency hedge if you live in latin america. people use it as digital gold. they use it as an online payment mechanism that don't have credit cards. admit pay we just signed a fortune 500 company, one of the largest i.t. companies in the world. they use it for payments so people in asia can make multibillion-dollar payments using bitcoin. it is cheaper than a bank wire or credit cards are impossible. you are starting to see that use case developed around the world and outside of america. in america, most people use it for speculation. but outside of america, bitcoin is catching on fast.
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emily: sonny and our own joe, thank you both, we will keep watching. coming up, bloomberg tech investigates how youtube let objectionable videos flourish on the site. we will bring you the key takeaways next with the reporter who wrote it. listen on the bloomberg app, bloomberg.com and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: another day, another content issue on a social platform. according to a new bloomberg investigation, managers at google's youtube are not doing everything they can to curb toxic videos on the platform.
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staffers tell us, instead, it is all about increasing engagement. the primary measure of views, time spent and interaction with online videos. multiple current and former employees say executives were given suggestions on how to deal with malicious content. however, they say they were told not to "rock the boat." joining us is mark, the person who wrote this piece. the title of this is pretty damning. they ignored warnings to let toxic videos run rampant. what exactly did they ignore? mark: there is a series of events dating back to maybe 2012 or so. that was when youtube put in this internal goal to get to one billion hours of watch time. they reached over based on optimizing want people watch videos. so over the years, particularly since the 2016 election, a lot of people are bringing up the
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downsides of that where they are optimized for outrage. going viral on the site. what you saw with kids content where channels like toy freaks had really aggressive and sometimes violent pranks that flourished, in part because of the algorithms favored these engagements over and over again. emily: youtube said, our primary focus has been tackling some of the toughest content challenges. we have taken a number of steps, including updating our recommendation system to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation, bringing the number of people focused on content issues across google to 10,000. investing, machine learning, to more quickly find and remove violent content and reviewing and updating our policy. youtube has made some changes. are employees just saying it is not enough? mark: yeah, pretty clearly the past two years they have made a series of changes. and pretty radical ones if you look at them historically. recently they eliminated
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comments on a lot of videos aimed at kids. people let youtube have been there a long time tell me this says been -- this has been a huge shift. there has been a debate about comments for a long time. he kept comments in tact because they want youtube to be a social media platform. the company has been shifting around for what they call responsible growth. that is a metric where they are using things like user surveys to try to sense how people feel after they watch videos. tois a really tricky thing execute on. and they have not exactly told investors, the public, and their employees what that looks like. emily: youtube on twitter has released some follow-up statements saying that youtube specifically has made this a priority. in your story, employees are saying that she personally is not making this a priority. what exactly are employees telling you? mark: i think consistently the
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thing i have heard from people who worked under susan was not that she does not care about these issues, especially around the kids content which was an eye-opening moment for her and her leadership team. the consistent theme is more paralysis for a number of reasons. whether it is concern about being seen as anti-conservative or the changes they would make to youtube's advertising business platform. that paralysis has led to them stalling, inertia. if you look at anti-vaccination, we have new data. the number of videos promoting anti-vaccination theories, youtube has been aware of this for a long time. it has become a publicity nightmare and they are forced to take action. they recently started categorizing these videos as borderline content so it will no longer be recommended. what they have not shared externally is if those changes on the recommendation engine, and a lot of the changes that wojcicki has brought has made
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an impact on their engagement, their business, any of the metrics they are using for employees, and for the company. emily: mark, a really important story to take a look at. mark's investigation of youtube. thank you so much for bringing us that report. meantime, u.s. lawmakers and privacy advocates have spent the last year hammering facebook to change its behavior. ceo mark billionaire zuckerberg to propose a new vision for government oversight of the internet. this as facebook faces multiple government investigations. bydiscuss we are joined natasha, a shareholder in facebook. nice to see you here in boston. what is your take on mark zuckerberg's suggestion about a global government regulated framework for internet regulation, given the backlash we have seen for this proposal over the last 24 hours? natasha: i think it is a little
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bit of an admission that they cannot handle it. that what we would like to see as investors and to get ahead of, they have not been able to. and the government is going to come in and clean up the mess. so i really think it is an admission, it is too much for them to deal with. they are looking for the government to come in, tell them what to do, tell them what not to do, and then the accountability does not fit with the platform. emily: do you think his suggestion makes sense? the critics are saying mark zuckerberg does not get to make the rules. natasha: well, mark zuckerberg has a lot of power and has made a lot of rules so far. so, if he is coming out and saying that he wants government regulation, i think that will have sway. he certainly proved the case by not managing the platform well. that it is needed. what we would like to see, and the reason we started engaging
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with facebook two years ago on content governance and election interference, we want to see them get ahead of the issue. they have not gotten ahead of the issue. it continues to be a game of whack-a-mole. and frankly, i don't think that they have the answers. emily: is facebook too big for its own good? natasha: yes. [laughter] emily: well, you are an investor. elizabeth warren says facebook should be broken up, designated as a utility, separated from whatsapp and instagram. is that something you would support? natasha: i think that we keep hearing the problem is too big, it's too much scale, we cannot deal with all of these issues. it has to be a.i. that comes in and fixes the problem. that is not working. we see instagram, which is a facebook asset, being more poorly managed than facebook itself. and so, if you cannot handle kind of your core assets, how can you handle your other
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assets? and i think there is a case to be made that a smaller company would result in more innovation and they could have another handle on it, frankly. emily: how concerned are you about these multiple investigations? the ftc looking into the consent degree. the fcc looking into privacy violations and whether they disclose the consequences as transparently as they should have to investors. the department of housing and urban development is looking at if facebook discriminates against blacks and latinos when it comes to housing, credit and jobs. is that concerning to you? natasha: there is a lot that is concerning. i think that, from our perspective, looking at what happened over the last couple of years, there is a lot that's wrong. from the investor perspective, this is not a good thing that there are all these investigations.
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but the company needs to clean up its act. and there is more at stake here than simply facebook or a youtube or instagram or any of that, because what's happening is we have so much misinformation and so much hate being spread over these platforms that it is bad for our democracy. in terms of an informed electorate. and it is certainly of course bad for investors and users who are losing trust in the platform. emily: so what do you think it means for investors? given that you are a shareholder, say facebook is broken up, is that better in value for you? natasha: it could be. yeah. i think there is room for disruption. and if facebook were to sell off an instagram asset and focus on its core business, that could be possibly a good thing for investors. so, i don't think that just having giant tech behemoths is the answer. because, you know, there is a
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ceiling on growth. so maybe it is a smaller, more nimble company. emily: natasha lamb, you are sticking with us. we are going to talk about something very important. coming up next, it is national equal payday here in the united states. the second annual gender scorecard has been released. we will tell you how the biggest tech companies react. you can check us out at technology and be sure to follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: in the united states, april 2 is also known as equal payday. it is a date to recognize the push, or lack thereof for pay parity among men and women in corporate america. our junior capital has released the scorecard ranking 46 of the world's largest companies on pay based on gender and race. this year the scorecard gave an a rating to only one company,
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citigroup. they also passed out failing grades to half to companies surveyed. where did tech companies land? we are back with natasha lamb. i want to start with the good news. what did citigroup do right? natasha: in january, citigroup was literally the first company in the world to reveal its median general pay gap. and its u.s. median racial pay gap. what that means is it did not use an adjusted number, which is what are the disclosures we have gone from company so far. which and people pay for equal work number. most of those numbers we have seen from companies have been adjusted, they are around many $0.99 to parity. if you and i were in the same position, we would make the same is if i was a man and you were a woman. what citigroup did further was to publish their median number. if you take all the men and women, you take the middle person and say what are they making, there is a much bigger gap. that is how equal pay is measured in the u.s.
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women are paid $.80 on the dollar. that is the median earning. so citigroup, in response to a proposal, came out with this data and stepped up as a leader and really set a new standard. emily: not only are they releasing more data and being more transparent, the data looks good. is that what you are saying? natasha: the data does not look great. those median numbers don't look great for most companies. it was a 29% median pay gap as compared to their $.99 equal pay gap. and for minorities in the u.s., it was $.93 on the dollar. so, it does not look great, they squeaked out an a. they got 86 out of 100, but they are the only company to receive an a on the scorecard. emily: apple and intel, you gave them a b. you gave several tech companies failing grades. oracle and hp. why? natasha: some of those companies
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were a's or a minuses last year. emily: so they got worse? natasha: no, they did not get worse. we added one new criteria. we are ranking across 10 different quantitative factors, it is very transparent, and we added the median racial pay gap. -- is is this is sick statistic citigroup put out and that no other companies put out. it set a new standard. some of those companies that were getting a minuses are now getting b's. but they have made improvements for equal pay for equal work numbers. their global coverage of how many employees they are reporting on. and the companies that failed, it was half of the list. emily: so, oracle, hp, marriott, mcdonald's, walmart. why did they fail? natasha: because they are not disclosing. and if they are it is only because of a regulatory mandate in the u.k. some of those companies, like mcdonald's, have to report in the u.k. and those numbers look ok, but
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those are only two out of 10 data points that we are looking for. emily: we are seeing some steam and momentum behind equal pay regulation in the united states. do you think we need laws? natasha: i think that it has been very slow. states including massachusetts and new york and california have started to improve their state laws. we recently saw a judge in the u.s. overturn a freeze that had been put on by the trump administration that was going to require companies with over 100 employees to report their gender and racial pay data to the government. and so that is promising. that is similar to what is happening in europe. and a recent study showed that even when companies are reporting just to the government, not fully transparently which is what we are looking for, they actually narrow the gender pay gap, they hire more women in positions of leadership, and that is where
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you see the performance benefits. emily: a new survey shows that 50% of men believe that the pay gap, the gender pay gap, is made up. how do we deal with that when men, to be frank, are still running most of these companies? natasha: i think that is bad. i think there is a lot of misinformation. you can look at it on an equal pay for equal work basis. even in my industry, i'm a financial advisor, the gap for financial advisors for equal pay for equal work is $.62 on the dollar. so that is pretty remarkable. but even if men and women in the same jobs are being paid the same, there is still a median gap. because there are no opportunities for women and minorities at these companies and there should be. that is where it makes a difference. emily: absolutely. natasha lamb, thank you for doing this work.
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it is important work that you are doing. coming up, turning data into profit. the startup segment just closed a massive funding round, making it tech's latest unicorn. we are going to talk to the ceo next. so with xfinity mobile
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emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in boston. manage the streams of data they a startup that helps companies collect from their -- giving it a $1.5 billion valuation. here to discuss the company's rapid growth, we are joined by the ceo, as well as bloomberg's tech editor. you have clients ranging from ibm using the process, how does it work? >> segment helps the brands that you love really deliver a great customer experience.
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the way we do that is we help companies unify all of the data that exists in there for walls into a single contract so they can deliver that experience. because of the data in there for walls, we help with customer data's and managing across the global brand. these companies are starting to realize that they need something like segment, because crm is no longer enough to deliver what they need to their customers. emily: you are seeing more legacy companies scrambling into this industry. overall, investor interest seems strong. what is driving that? >> if you look at the historical industry, crm is a huge category, if you go back 20 years to a bank branch and walk in, the branch manager is going to know who you are and your business. that is because they have been using a crm.
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if you fast forward to what it looks like today, if you call the bank, they have no idea who you are. that is because the world has shifted from an in person situation to an online world. you have crm's, mobile apps, websites, in that world the crm is not enough. what you are seeing from an investor perspective is crm was huge but now it is a small portion with all the new data. this new category will help company solve the issues. you are right that a slew of large legacy tools are scrambling to glue together their acquisitions and make a play. but the reality is, it requires a fresh take. emily: segment is a company that not many people might not have heard of. now it is worth more than $1 billion. why do you think investors are getting more interested in startups that are not household names? enterprise startups specifically.
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>> right now you have a lot of ipos from uber and lyft. web venture investors are talking a lot about right now is these companies you might not have heard of that are the next wave. these enterprise companies that are focusing on businesses rather than consumers as potentially driving a lot of growth and having a customer that is willing to pay a lot of money, and willing to pay -- emily: peter, your company talks about protecting data, privacy preferences, first party data. what deed do differently when it comes to how you handle your data than you think that other companies do? peter: when you look in the realm of privacy, there is a group of companies call data brokers. they buy and sell data with addendum.
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-- with abandon. we think those companies are super sketchy and that is not what segment does. we are only interested in helping companies make use of the data that is within use in their four walls. how they interact with their customers on their websites and in their stores. we are helping them manage the data from that direct customer experience, and give them a better customer experience within their data four walls. if you are a global brand and you spread across many regions, across many sub brands, it can be challenging to appropriately recognize customer preferences around to munication, privacy and how data is shared. you need some sort of infrastructure to understand and roll those out across those different sub brands. we help drive consistency across global brands. emily: question for you, anne. it seems like we have been minting unicorns faster than usual. do you get a sense that they are out there trying to raise money
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before the economy tanks, or it is because of a flood of venture capital into the system? anne: you are seeing billion-dollar plus companies -- for example the company that delivers food to businesses just raised $1.2 billion evaluation and said they did not need the money. they were just raising in case the economy tanked and there was a funding winter. startups are thinking, worst-case scenario, when you -- the economy does go down and they will have this money in the bank just in case. emily: anne and peter reinhart, ceo of segment, thank you both for stopping by. auto companies are making the transition to autonomous and electric cars. ford is taking that next step. a big announcement out of europe. bloomberg's david westin caught up with stephen r strong, ford chairman from
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amsterdam. >> if you think about the electrics, we think that by the middle of the next decade it will be 50% of vehicles sold will be electrified to some degree. we think in 2025, something in the order of 20% will be full battery electric vehicles. hybrids will still be a substantial part of being sold because they offer a level of flexibility in capability to people who want to go to a full battery electric vehicle. we see hybrids are going to be a very important part of the lineup for many years to come. david: as companies move to electrification as well as economist vehicles, there is a lot of teaming up going on. volkswagen and ford have been talking about ways i can work together on ev's and 80's. -- av's.
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how does volkswagen figure into this today? steven: the announcements will be made today are not a part of the alliance we are forming with volkswagen. these are products we will be producing now before we get into more discussion around the potential for sharing the technologies. what the volkswagen alliance posts far, we have announced we will collaborate on next-generation commercial vehicles. smaller pickup trucks and like commercial vehicles. the news that we share today is not linked to the vw alliance. it is products we will bring to market before we seal the benefits of that collaboration. david: there is a great deal in the u.s. and europe. let me take to specific instances. brexit, your ceo says it has affected your decision-making in europe.
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that we have the possible trade dispute with the united states and europe. how does the possible trade dispute with europe potentially affect what you will be doing in europe, specifically with electric vehicles? steven: brexit, a hard brexit or a no deal brexit would be a disaster for our industry in the u.k. for ford motor company's and the rest of the industry because we have spent the last 40 years working a supply chain that could move goods and services free across the border with europe. we have a supply chain that is structured specifically to do that. we have been encouraging the british government and the authorities in brussels to come to an agreement that will allow
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us to maintain frictionless movement of goods at the border, and tariff free exports and imports. anything that makes it more difficult to move materials or products around europe, between the u.k. and mainland europe, it will limit our ability to invest in the u.k. we love our business in the u.k., it is an important part. we want to continue to have a big business in the u.k. anything that would impact our competitiveness in the u.k. would cause us to think about our future footprint and would make our investments. it is an issue we take seriously and i encourage the u.k. government to find a way through. >> that was stephen armstrong. coming up u.s./china trade , negotiations are about to resume. we look at how big tech is influencing the talks between beijing and washington. ♪
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emily: the chinese vice premier is in washington wednesday for trade talks. both sides trying to keep up the momentum of what could be the final stretch of negotiations. bloomberg businessweek has been following the story, especially how it could impact global tech companies like huawei. our editor writes about the magazine -- about this in the magazine. how could whatever is decided affect global tech giants? >> a lot of the stuff back and forth has nothing to do with tech. aluminum tariffs, automobiles, soybeans. in the background there has been this concern. some of this is in the involvement negotiation, and some is happening in the
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background. that china's state tech companies are going powerful, and that china has made life difficult for american companies. although this would not be necessarily in the agreement, there is a possibility that the u.s. could go easier on huawei right now. the u.s. seems to be doing everything in its power to get want to bring action against huawei, but also to pressure allies to stop buying huawei equipment. there is this question of could china make it easier for some of the big cloud companies to operate in the country? that could end up being a part of this agreement when we finally see it. emily: what about on the flip side. how are big tech companies influencing the negotiations? apple has spoken out about tariffs. we have seen apple iphone sales slide in china. max: everybody has their own point of view. huawei has been taking a sees mentality -- ach mentality. huawei has been pushing back
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vigorously, saying that they are politically motivated. meanwhile, apple is basically trying to argue for some sort of accommodation because so much of its revenue is dependent on selling technology in china. the bottom line is, all of these companies to succeed as businesses need to have open markets. on the other side you have political leaders in both countries who see the big technology companies as something akin to weapons. at least economic weapons. in the u.s. people are worried about huawei potentially getting too close to american communication networks. maybe in china, fears of these big american technology giants imposing whatever american standards on chinese citizens.
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emily: you are ready have many companies that have reconfigured their supply chain. we sat down with the ceo of gopro who has moved a lot of china-based production to mexico. they say it is working great and they may never move us back. have the trade tensions lead to permanent changes in the flow of supply and goods already? max: some of it is trade tensions, some of it is trade economics. as you don't need as many people to make these goods, that makes places like mexico or even the united states more viable while keeping things cheap. wages in china are also going up. in china itself is trying to get further away from just kind of being able to be the factory of the world in developing technology. if you're a small company like gopro, having cushion, not being
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beholden to the events of the day will be advantageous. gopro wants to sell its stuff in china. the trade negotiations will have an impact there. emily: what happens next? we know trade talks are resuming this week. what is the process for the next few days? max: they are ironing out the various compromises. we are seeing little signs of what might be in the agreement. for instance, last week, maybe if the like a trial balloon. china signaling that it would be open to american, or foreign cloud computing companies controlling some data in the country, which would be a new thing that could be part of the agreement. the idea is, assuming everything goes well, we get an agreement later this month, and trump and xi both sign it and we go back to normal. but the last couple of years
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have taught us that this is a volatile situation. both countries are negotiating. i think it any point someone could walk away from the table, or at least act as if they are walking away from the table. that could prolong things. emily: how soon could we expect a breakthrough or at least resolution? max: it is a matter of weeks. on the other hand, if there were a public statement, i think it could happen more quickly than that. it could also drag on. emily: bloomberg businessweek's max. thank you for the update. you can hear from the editors every saturday and sunday on bloomberg television and radio. still ahead, closing the gender stem gap. we will tell you about a company partnering with disney to promote growth stem education across the country. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: data shows that the stem gender gap is the widest around the fourth grade. that is why they are starting at the point of what they believe is the highest leverage, tenure -- 10 year old girls. a pilot program will give 15,000 girls in california start of -- starter packs. an online inventor program. joining us to discuss is little bits ceo.
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thank you so much for joining us. tell us why you are starting at 10 years old? >> at age five gross and boys -- girls and boys are almost equally interested in technology. by six girls start seeing themselves as less brilliant. by age nine the gap start showing up and the gap grows and girls dropping off in interest and in their confidence in stem. we want to start at a point of high leverage, but we want to sustain the interest in give them support so that they continue after they graduate. emily: little bit makes electronic building blocks. a series of magnetic bits that snap together that creates inventions. anything from an instrument to a robot. tell us how these kits specifically will work for these 10 year old girls? ayah: we are reinventing education through hardware, saw for -- software and content.
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it is like lego for electronics. you are snapping bits together, you are making robots, you are making circuits, you're creating anything from a prank for your siblings to an alarm, to an invention for sustainability. through the hands-on learning process, studies show kids are able to retain concept of engineering, and feel confident because they can create things that are important for them. we also have an online learning platform where kids can meet other kids. they can share their inventions. they can get inspired by each other and learn through video. that is how they are comfortable learning these days. when you combine online learning platforms with hardware, you are able to see their interests and get them to get excited about stem, and feel like it is not only something relevant for them, but inspires them to be is
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creative. emily: how did you get disney onboard board, and what is their role here? ayah: we have had a relationship with disney for a number of years. we were part of lucasfilm's adventure kit. and with marvels adventure kit. this partnership is not within disney licensing, it is within the disney philanthropy. they are funding this not-for-profit effort so they can really support girls engagement in stem, and really preparing them for work for the future. we have a great relationship with them, they have been very committed to diversity in their company. very much supporting a program that teaches kids how to code, that brings it into hospitals, brings it to the classroom. they are a great partner and they really believe in this mission. it was a very natural fit.
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emily: what kind of progress are you seeing in the stem gap between boys and girls? i have been told by organizations that more children are coding than every before, and that they are now almost perfectly diverse in terms of gender. are you seeing that? ayah: there is a lot more awareness about the problem. we are on national tv talking about it. that is exciting. some of the misconceptions that we hear a lot are, it is a one and done deal. if you expose kids to learn how to do a skill at a particular age, you are able to solve the gender gap. the reality is that girls are exposed to a lot of media stereotypes, sometimes confident problems. sometime this -- sometimes their families are not supportive. when they enter the workplace there is discrimination. there is failure that they are imposing on themselves.
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we really have to support girls with more tools, whether they are social, psychological, giving them comfort with failing and allowing them to see that they are the changemakers are tomorrow. so that they can sustained themselves throughout these obstacles when they come across them. emily: you are a young woman entrepreneur, you have experience firsthand of what it likes -- what it is like to be a woman working in technology, i focus on what the tech industry can do to improve their representation of women. you hear that it is a pipeline problem that needs to be done in the education system. it is on teachers, parents and popular culture. would you agree with that? is there a lot to be done at every stage of the process? at every stage as young girls become women and move into the workforce, is there work that the tech industry itself can do? ayah: there is so much the tech
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industry can do. it is easy to defer blame and say it is a pipeline issue, and say it is because we are not getting enough women into the pool. even the women that are in the pool, they are dropping out. they are dropping out because there are facing discrimination, they are not being promoted, because they are facing micro aggressions on a daily basis. they are not being represented in boards. i think the tech industry has a responsibility to do -- we notice now when we see women on investor committees, more investments in women in technology companies are happening. we need it at every level. emily: little bits ceo and founding. thank you for joining us. good to have you on the show. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we are livestreaming on twitter. check us out on technology.
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