♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: we are here at bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: in this week's special "sooner than you think issue," has gene therapy outpaced? jason: the costs are amazing. the startup that may hold the key to the next generation of artificial intelligence. carol: we begin with a new vision of technological

progress. joel weber is here with us. a great story that is going to make you rethink how you perceive silicon valley. joel: we wanted to really open up the whole idea of the issue here. it is really too easy to be down on tech right now. the tech-lash is real. antitrust is in the wind. don't forget that technology and innovators can still do incredible things and sometimes you just have to look outside silicon valley. ashley has spent a lot of time doing that. jason: it is amazing, his purview, his worldview, and it also comes at a time of real existential questions around silicon valley and yet, i found it to ultimately be optimistic. joel: there is a sense of hope. that is the spirit of this whole issue, the sooner than you think issue. not to just look at the glass half-empty. let's look at it half-full. carol: solving really serious problems. thank you so much. jason: more on this issue. jeff: last year, we were looking

at the incredible moment that we were seeing coming back for ai. this year, in the midst of the backlash against the conventional big tech industry that is heating up this week especially, we wanted to look at what new models of innovation and technological progress really look like. jason: one of the ways into this is that you use one of our best assets, he has been all over the planet literally looking at these pockets of innovation, and the comparisons he makes to what he is seeing around the world versus what he has seen and you have seen so many years in silicon valley are pretty stark. jeff: absolutely. this is really in his wheelhouse, a story he has been tailoring for the better part of a decade now as was said in one of his stories a few years ago. the finest minds of my

generation are trying to figure out how to get people to click on ads. this has been the story of the last decade and a half in silicon valley. his travels around the world have taken him to places that have reminded him of the value of generations past and reminded him that innovation can come in in all forms, whether it is in australia or china or chile or palestine or elsewhere. carol: let's talk about the silicon valley past and get into what he means by that and then we can get into what we talk about today. you were talking about when hobbyists were involved, builders. jeff: he harkens back to the silicon valley where people were really experimenting in a pre-computerized era with what

electrification and the growth of the electronics industry can do for the country. people were trying to tinker and invent their way to a better future, as opposed to trying to optimize it for shareholder earnings. jason: what changed? in your estimation and based on the reporting, where did the the pivot happen? he says the finest minds of our generation are now focused on something very different, even different from the 1990's. what happened? jeff: sure. as is pointed out in the piece, there is a wave of innovation that crests and changes after netscape and the dotcom crash. jason: it becomes apparent what the internet's potential is going to be in 1995 and we take

some hard left turns. jeff: that's right. a lot of people would look at the current slate of silicon valley tech giants and say facebook is the flagship problem, the biggest arbiter of the kinds of ad models that we look at. the piece blames google, the search giant more or less inventing the modern industry of accumulating as much data as possible about people to try to generate more and more advertising and ad dollars is where the industry started to lose its way. jason: and so is there hope for silicon valley at this point? one of the things pointed out an affiliate we have talked about it is this idea that so many of these companies, at least superficially or in their formation, were actually about doing good for the world. google, don't be evil. we go back to that. is there hope that maybe in the near to midterm future silicon valley finds its soul again?

jeff: i would not expect it to happen in a matter of a couple quarters, but there is certainly a model for innovation that people are trying to reach toward through the valley and particularly google, you can see in the protests by employees, walkouts, the pressure for better labor conditions, or different company policies, particularly around drones and military contracts, there is a push for reform. jason: you think back to the 1990's and the trouble microsoft got into with the government with antitrust. fast-forward to today. the government taking a look at these companies. if there is this moment of reckoning, that maybe at least puts us closer back to the right track, knows? jeff: i think that is very possible.

microsoft antitrust suite is likely credited as giving rise to google, leaving room for another company to build a search engine. carol: up next, why economists say hold off on celebrity the ten-year economic expansion. jason: and why progress may be made in the u.s.-china trade dispute. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: welcome back.

jason: join carol and me for "bloomberg businessweek" every day on the radio. also, listen and subscribe to our podcast.

carol: you can also find it online at businessweek.com and our mobile app., june marks a 10 year anniversary in one of the longest economic expansions of u.s. history. jason: should we be celebrating? >> this month marks the 10th birthday which equals the longest expansion in records going back to 1854. type with 1991-2001. if it goes one more month into july, it will become the recordholder. you would think that streamers, parties, cakes. carol: we are not celebrating. jason: we don't have fun. peter: there are two reasons people are not celebrating. we are worried this is nearing its end. that actually would could be heading toward a recession. you see that in the bond market with the inversion of the yield curve we are talking about all the time, where the three-month treasury yields are higher, often a sign recession is on the

way. jason: it is a sign because people don't have long-term confidence, so they are buying shorter duration. peter: it is really more that the fear of growth is going to be low in the long-term, inflation and growth will be low over the long term. meanwhile, the rates that the fed imposes, the fed controls the short end of the yield curve, are high or choking off field curve. carol: the shorter end is higher, the longer is lower. typically, you want a higher yield for a longer duration. peter: so, that is one thing. then we have the trade war, which was with china and now it is soon to be breaking up with mexico. we also have worries about japan and europe. so, the growth is still healthy, but there is a worry it is going to end.

jason: help us understand larry summers in this context. this is a guy people listen to. where does he land? because he was part of a nice expansion himself. how does he look at it academically versus practically? peter: so, he is on the second point. the first point being the recession might end. the second point being it was never very strong in the first place. that is what he gets into with his theory of secular stagnation. that is an idea that was coined by alvin hansen in the 1930's and he single-handedly has revived it over the past five years. he has been hammering on it. larry summers. jason: former treasury secretary. peter: he was the treasury secretary under clinton and head of the national economic council under obama. jason: former president of harvard. still teaches at harvard. he knows a thing or two about

this. peter: he does. his thought is that we have gotten into a situation where there is a chronic shortfall of demand by businesses and households and the only way to keep the economy growing at a decent pace is by fiscal and monetary stimulus, kind of extreme, more than you really feel comfortable with. fiscal stimulus being sort of deficit spending and monetary stimulus being very low interest rates. we are in a situation where there is a lot of fiscal stimulus because of the 2017 tax cut. and interest rates remain quite low, considering how low the unemployment rate is. even with that, growth is just kind of ok. carol: let's get a little bit more on peter's story. taylor riggs is with us. taylor: we have a great chart as always. come in my terminal here.

that is in yellow, that is all you need to know. growth in the 1990's was averaging about 3.8%. before the great recession, we were averaging about 2.8%. this is right here. the last decade, we are only averaging about 2.3% growth. when we talk about how long the expansion has been, this is why people have been talking about it. carol: thank you so much. jason: how do the world's biggest investors view the economy? jonathan gray, blackstone's president and coo, i asked him about one of the biggest issues in the economy right now, the u.s. trade dispute with china. jonathan: we don't have a ton of businesses in the global supply chain. we have some that are being impacted by this. i would say that that is the issue. i would say the broader issue is what it means for markets, what

economic growth. if this persists, we are going to see less economic growth, more uncertainty. markets logically have traded off. that makes sense. i think as investors, you have to be mindful of that. i would say that sometimes you don't necessarily think through all the multiple impacts of these things as they play through a lot of industries. i think it makes you generally a little more cautious. the bond market has moved much more cautious with a 10-year now quite negative. u.s. growth is still ok, although we are waiting to see the impact. jason: how soon do you think we will see the impact? the next quarter? this year? jonathan: this year i think, incrementally. there are definitely companies trying to move supply chains. that has an impact. if you think about what drives

economic growth, this is one of the challenges about brexit. if people have confidence that tomorrow things will be better, they will make capital expenditures or hiring decisions based on that confidence. if they feel very uncertain about the future, they tend to pull back. i do think the tax cut last year was helpful in building confidence. i think now there is more wariness with regard to what is going on. i will say this, i still think as it relates to u.s. and china on trade, ultimately i think there should be a resolution because it is in both parties' interest. there is the recognition of a rebalancing that should be taking place. this is about the pace and extent of that rebalancing. i think the technology side of this is harder to resolve and we may end up in sort of a bipolar technology world. jason: to that point, rebalancing is one thing. on the tech side, we are looking at decoupling in a lot of ways these two economies.

your boss intimately involved in china, he is a confidant of the leaders of both countries, u.s. and china. how worried are you about that decoupling? how worried as the firm? jonathan: i think everyone recognizes in the near term the parties have moved apart and i think everybody is disappointed that that has occurred. i think there is a sense that it is in the collective interest of both parties to come back together. i think in terms of trade and reciprocal openness of markets, i think progress ultimately will be made. i think the technology thing is just tougher. jason: for more on that interview, check out our "bloomberg businessweek" extra podcast. carol: also, the magazine this week, we have an excerpt from our interview with the cisco ceo.

up next, the one-shot gene therapy that could treat incurable diseases. jason: and imagine a $20 smartphone with a five-day battery life. those stories just ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ jason: welcome back to

"bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can also listen to us on the radio. jason: in the bay area, london, and to the bloomberg business app. carol: advances in gene therapy appeared to successfully treat once incurable patients. jason: this progress does not come cheap. i talked to james patton. james: it is a very interesting time. we are entering a new frontier in medicine.

the science is accelerating rapidly. gene therapy is really at a turning point after many years of struggles and setbacks. we are talking about treatments that are intended to be given to patients a single time and potentially deliver a lifetime of benefits. a possible cure in some cases. now there is uncertainty over the long-term whether these benefits are going to be sustained, whether patients will be needed to be treated again at some point down the track, whether they will encounter any side effects. we don't have full answers to all of these questions, although the data over the past five years or so has been dramatic. for health care systems, for payers around the world, governments and insurers, they are wrestling how they will pay for these treatments that could be multimillion dollar drugs.

even if they save money over the long-term, over the shorter term, they are going to have a significant budget impact when you consider this year number of gene therapies approaching the market and the cost. jason: i want to get into the cost in a minute, but help me understand how this works. you said this is a one time thing. does it replace drugs going down the line? james: that is the goal. my colleague talked to the mother of a patient, for example, with a rare genetic condition better known as bubble boy disease. this is a rare condition that basically leaves newborns extremely vulnerable to infection. they have to live in isolation. it frequently kills kids before they turn two years old. in other cases, these gene therapies are replacing a lifetime of costly care.

there was a product just approved by the fda in the past couple weeks from swiss pharmaceutical company novartis to treat spinal muscular atrophy. that is the goal over time. there are those long-term uncertainties that still need to be resolved. jason: right. let's talk about the costs. as you say, multimillions of dollars. why is the cost so much? james: if you consider the cost to treat some of these conditions, like hemophilia for instance, the standard treatments can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, upwards of $1 million per year. they are very expensive to develop over a long period of

time. the pharmaceutical companies are trying to recoup investments and charge what the market will bear, but they obviously are under a great deal of pressure to price these that responsible levels. the drug price controversy in the u.s. is well underway and of this will only add to the debate. carol: also in the "sooner than you think" issue, using a product from china and lessons from india. jason: it is all about getting africans internet connections tailored to their needs on that continent. here is our reporter. shira: i've been talking to people in the tech industry for years and years about what is colloquially called the next billion users, although it is really like 3 billion or 4 billion users, people not yet connected to the internet, about one half the population of the globe. there have been all of these initiatives to try to crack that 50% or so of people who are not

online. i started talking to people in the last couple years about this company, which is this little start up, a spinoff of a chinese electronics company, that made this software for very inexpensive devices that are somewhere between a 1990's cell phone and the smartphones you and i have. jason: it is fascinating. one of the headlines kicked around on this is the $20 smartphone with the five-day battery. ok, i'm listening. in terms of that market opportunity. how does it work? take us inside the phone and tell us about the opportunity. shira: the phones are sold by companies like reliance go in india. orange, large french mobile phone company. they are starting to sell the devices in africa. it looks in many cases like the cell phone you might have had in 1997.

it has the basic body of a cell phone. it has no touchscreen. that is typically one of the most expensive components on a smart phone and it drains a lot of battery. if you were talking about markets in africa or rural india, where people might have spotty access to electricity, a touchscreen is a little bit of a no go. you start talking about some of these efforts to make these devices as simple as possible, but still have the sophistication of a smartphone. they connect to the google voice assistant. you can get apps like whatsapp and facebook that have been customized for the devices. you are talking about a device that in some parts of the world you can get for $7, $20, $25, that have some of the brains of a smartphone, but at significantly lower cost, which make it a good on-ramp for the internet. jason: part of the cost comes from all of the stuff that is in

the phone. almost $400 worth of stuff in the latest and greatest iphone. you got to get that down so it is affordable for people to sell. right down to the processor. a $3 processor. shira: absolutely right. one of the analysts i talked to said these smartphone devices probably have maybe $15 worth of parts. as you mentioned, the highest and iphone, we are talking about $400 in estimated parts. a lot of it is just kind of things that you maybe don't need if you are just trying to get people onto the internet. again, a less expensive, but still capable processor, the brains of a smartphone. $50 in a high-end smartphone, versus three dollars in this device. jason: up next, the company attracting the attention of just about anyone who is going to need superfast ai chips.

carol: "billions" is wrapping up its latest season. we will hear about diversity on wall street from its creator. ♪

at comcast, we didn't build the nation's largest gig-speed network just to make businesses run faster. we built it to help them go beyond. because beyond risk... welcome to the neighborhood, guys. there is reward. ♪ ♪ beyond work and life... who else could he be? there is the moment. beyond technology... there is human ingenuity. ♪ ♪ every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected, to do the extraordinary. take your business beyond.

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. jason: and i'm carol -- carol: and i'm carol massar. still ahead in this week's special issue, six flying robo taxis that could soon shuttle you around new city. jason: and in cities around the globe. and why one sea captain wants to tell an iceberg to south africa to solve a water crisis. carol: and what is called the third wave of computer processing.

joel weber is here with us. we all know about cpus, but now we are talking about ipu's. intelligence processor unit. joel: right, and this is a story about machine learning and artificial intelligence. all of the big advantages we have seen have been rooted in software. and this is the first time we have seen advantages in hardware. tiny chip, big potential. jason: what is fascinating is that you sort of need to make them a little dumber and cool them down. joel: this is created by a british startup. when we do processing for ai, we are using maximum computing skills. look at your face and connect all the data points. one of the things we have been able to do with this chip is make it be way lower energy consumption and it is rooted in the guesswork. the chip becomes brain like in its ability to have human level

intuition. carol: we are going to need this processing capability. we will need to be able to do this. joel: for companies with big ai aspirations, microsoft, bmw's of the world, any company looking for ai future, this looks to be the big breakthrough. they're calling it a new level of architecture. carol: editor joel weber, thank you so much. jason: big money, big breakthroughs. we talked more about this with our reporter. graph core istin: a bristol-based company. i mostly write about silicon valley companies so it was great to talk about another company doing something difficult. which is basically the idea is that ai has been seen as a software problem. big data problem. this company said we don't have the hardware to address these problems. to think more like humans do. to actually solve these issues that ai is trying to address. carol: we need a new chip.

talk to us about how this chick -- chip needs to think how we do. how our brain really works. austin: totally. the other thing is that the two types of chips that came before, cpu's, gpu's, basically, they thought, let's be as precise as possible. they were based on the calculator. they are trying to be as accurate as possible. and that is not how humans think. roundabout, we a don't figure out the precise dimension. seeing jason and carol, we don't analyze every pixel of your face. we need a processor that thinks more like a human. that plucks a different nodes in the sphere and can process amorphous of data structures. to come from a precise point. jason: this gets to the core, pun intended, of silicon valley. the semi conductor is the fundamental piece of this tech

revolution. they really have to go back and rethink what they are doing. how do you do that? how do you start with a blank sheet of paper, in some ways? austin that is what they had to : do. the whole chip industry is based on the idea that the transistors on the chip will double. but as they keep doubling and doubling, these processes are getting superhot. about 10 years ago, they started getting very hot and power-hungry. so this company, they need to say, how do we designed this chip so it is not just imprecisely calculating to save energy, but is also doing it in an efficient way that is not too hot? chips, historically have been designed separately from memory. it usually has to go to a different component of hardware.

an external memory. that is super power-hungry. carol: and not productive. austin: not productive at all. so this chip combines logic with memory so it can do thinking and storage at the same moment. they have broken it up into 1200 processor cores. i apologize for it being too technical, but it is fun. so these processors act independently doing the small problems. and at the moment when it is most efficient, they sync up and share learnings. carol: love that story from austin car. taylor riggs is here with more of the story. taylor: nvidia is one of the key chip -- chipmakers, but already investors have focused and traded that premium. given the big gains they have made in gpu's. those are the graphic processors. and their competitors investors

really rewarding those shares. you wonder if nvidia would rise a little higher as they are really the clear leaders in ipu's. carol: if they can continue the transition. taylor riggs, thank you so much for that. jason: coming up, why huawei's engineers are working 24 hour days. carol: the once-in-a-lifetime discoveries being made by underwater drones. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. join us every day on the radio from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show. check out our podcast and find that on itunes, soundcloud, or bloomberg.com. jason: also, find us online and through our mobile app. carol: in the technology section, with huawei's selection of drying up. jason: they are working on contingency plans.

we talked to the editor. >> we have been covering huawei a lot from the perspective of president trump and how he has targeted the company, encouraging our allies to take action. we have been tracking this and now the story our reporters in asia have been following is, basically, they are calling up their troops. calling on all employees. the business is developing 20 47 -- 24/seven to react to what has been happening. and what is happening is the commerce department has taken action against the company and put it on a blacklist. the company cannot buy parts from u.s. companies and u.s. companies cannot do business with huawei. now, it is starting to have a trickle effect. trump's efforts to get allies to go along with this is gaining traction.

so huawei is looking to basically make up for any of those needs that were fulfilled by u.s. companies internally. carol: it is amassing the troops. i feel like when i read this story, that is what it is doing. pulling everybody together to rid themselves of any dependency. certainly on american companies. dimitra: of course. and they are really approaching it. we posit it in this warlike way with the troops, they have a lot of resources. something like 10,000 developers, all kinds of people. it is at every level of this company. if you are functioning 24/7, the canteen needs reworking, developers need to be working to do everything they can to develop the base sets and the chips. and everything else that they

were sourcing from other places. certainly, the american supply chain is dramatically being cut off. there are concerns that will happen with others. jason: and what we have seen is both an internal and external effort in many ways. our colleague tom mackenzie in china had an exclusive interview with the founder of huawei. he is taking a very bold position, both to his own employees, and to the world. dimitra: oh, sure. he is taking it as a sign that this company being targeted is not because -- that they are ahead of the u.s. companies. and this is why president trump, essentially this is what he said in the interview, that this is why they are being targeted. of course they are in a good position, as he sees it, to push

back against this. carol: we are going to stay with technology but get -- but get back to our sooner than you think section. with undersea drones mapping the ocean floor. jason: they have tripled the data we had before, found lost submarines, and there is the potential for more discoveries. carol: we got the details from reporter jack wise. jack: i got into the story because i was fascinated by the missing malaysia airliner. when they first started looking for it, it was an unbelievable technological challenge. they had traced the signals the plane had set to this patch of -- sent to this patch of the remote indian ocean up to three miles deep. they wind up searching an area the size of great britain. this vast area. how do you do that? the technology they had at the time was they would tow this sonar beacon and it would transmit sound waves.

and then catch the -- an image of the seabed. carol: kind of like mowing a lawn? jeff: yeah, kind of like mowing the lawn and imaging the seabed. you go for miles and miles, you turn around, and you come back. that was the technology at the late 2014, 2015. jason: all the while, this is sending signals back to human beings. jeff: the human beings are on the ship. you have human eyeballs on these images being fed up the cable. they did not find it, and nobody could explain why. they thought, maybe we should look further, but we have spent all our money. a company called ocean infinity stepped up. this was a new company. nobody knew who they were or why they were doing this. they said to the government, look, we will keep looking for free. if and when we find it, you pay us then.

it was no skin in the game for malaysia, they said go ahead. it had only been a couple of years since the search had started, but they have new technology. instead of pulling this sensor along, now you are sending down a robot. a drone, if you will. but not just one, a whole fleet. carol: autonomous water vehicle. jeff: thank you. and when i heard about it, i was skeptical, because you are operating in one of the most difficult environments in the world. it is weeks to get back to land. they call it the roaring 40's, it is this notoriously terrible area of the ocean. and yet, you are putting down a drone, putting down another one, and as you put each one down, the ones you put down are finding their way autonomously. each one is mowing the lawn but in a coordinated way. so collectively, they are

searching this area. jason: coming up next, the robo taxis poised to work their ways into our everyday lives. carol: and could icebergs be the answer to south africa's water problem? jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, and on a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. carol: a.m. 960 in the bay area, in london on dab digital, and on the bloomberg business app. in the sooner than you think issue, more than a dozen companies have working prototypes of passenger drones. jason: don't you mean robot taxis? carol: four driverless cabs. jason: it could be sooner than at least i thought.

here is our reporter. >> more than half a dozen companies already have flying prototypes in the air. we have seen manned and unmanned test flights across las vegas, in dubai, and lots of companies from the u.s. to germany, to china, are vying for investor money and try to conquer the skies, basically. jason: i have so many questions about this. the first, is this a mass-market play? are we going to see major cities in the world? is there a vision of people moving through the city in these taxi driver? -- taxi drones, robo taxis? stefan: there certainly are several cities that are explicitly looking at these forms of transportation. the middle east is far ahead and asia is relatively far ahead as well.

because these are cities that are relatively confined. there is lots of capital there, lots of people, lots of traffic. robo taxis are a way to get people away from congested streets. it is a very convenient way of traveling. yeah. it is also environmentally friendly. nearly all of the flying taxis being developed are electric. jason: wow. so who are the companies leading the way here? stefan: we have several companies leading the way. we have a company in germany called volocopter. it has basically developed a drone on steroids that has already had manned and unmanned test flights, even autonomous flights, over the dubai skies. they are building a port, an airport for robo taxis in

singapore this year where they will start test flights, public test flights. and there is a chinese company that is doing pretty well that has already flown. there are american companies involved that already have prototypes flying. so, yeah, the skies are pretty busy already. jason: reading your story, i love some of the names of the companies. astro elroy, a call back to the jetsons. kitty hawk, a call back to the wright brothers. the first in-flight as it were down in north carolina. manned, unmanned, where is this going to go? stefan: the cheaper version is unmanned, autonomous. and that is the ideal way of transporting. you board a flying taxi, you tap a few buttons, then the taxi

will fly you autonomously to your destination. there are already price estimates from a trip from jfk to manhattan for about $70. that is certainly affordable, not much more than a taxi. but just a scaling up that model and flying autonomously will be the key here to keep prices low. carol: also in "sooner than you think" south africans are facing shortages of clean drinking water. jason: and one sea captain says a 100 million ton iceberg, that's big, it may be the fix for the problem. here is reporter caroline a winter. idea of towing icebergs and converting it into drinking water is not that new have an idea. this story was fun because it focuses on a marine salvage expert who is the sort of guy whose career involves repelling

onto burning supertankers and cleaning oil spills. for those of you who remember, he boarded the costa concordia, the famous italian cruise ship. he lives in cape town and has experiencing the droughts there. there has been a number of successive drought seasons. it culminated last year with what they call a day zero, where they said cape town was within months of running out of drinking water and municipal water in general. they really cut down the water rates. so he begins thinking about using his unusual skill set for doing what others have talked about, towing icebergs from antarctica close enough so that the water can be harvested.

and brought to the people of cape town. carol: let's talk about this. it is not the first time people have thought about this or worked on it. money spent on this. but exactly what kind of iceberg are we talking about? how do you actually physically do that? caroline: right. that is a long story. he is looking for an iceberg that is about 25 million tons. the dimensions would be about 1000 meters by 500 by 250. it would be an antarctic iceberg. the icebergs in antarctica are typically much, much bigger than arctic icebergs. they tend to be tabular because they break off of the antarctic landmass. that makes the more stable and easier to tow. the idea would be to pick up one of these icebergs that has already traveled halfway to south africa.

they would need to use satellite to locate the ideal iceberg and use radar and sonar to make sure it is structurally sound. and a less likely to break apart on one of these tows. and then they want to surround it with a giant net, basically, with two supertankers pulling it and two tugboats. it is a detailed process you will have to read about, but they think they can do it. jason: the showtime "billions," i have to say, it is one of my favorite shows, it is wrapping up. carol: i sat down with the show creators and we talked about how the show has exported the gender identity of wall street. >> even though hedge funds have tendrils to the past and are mostly male-dominated, largely white males, in a company, the founder can put his stamp on his

company and set the climate. especially if they are doing well. people will follow it. we just thought that he could be a guy who -- it's not a question of whether he is socially liberal or conservative, but he judges people based on the values they provide. so if he confers this person is so valuable, everybody else will fall in line and accord this person respect that he does. we just thought it be interesting to not have been caught up in the pettiness of it. there is only one person who slips in a moment of the highest anger and it plays like an insult. even though he just uses the feminine pronoun in that moment. it is very intentional. >> both of them do. >> and it is very intentional. >> but also, we found it was easy. once you know somebody and spend

-- know somebody who is non-gender binary, and spend time with them, to not use a name, people ask is that all the time. to use the wrong pronoun, it would literally be like calling dave bob in a moment of anger. you just think of the person that way. and it was not easy for the two of us. we are a couple of 50 euros guys -- 50-year-old guys who came from a culture that did not know gender non-binary people existed. but after a week hanging out with asia, you would never think of calling them anything other than that pronoun. but that is who they are and that is who they are. >> one thing that happened when we were shooting the first episode, even though we had been working with asia for two years. when they were wearing the dress and the makeup and the wake, -- the wig, the feminine pronouns to started flying out. nobody could help it. and even asia was like it's fine, don't worry about. and when all of that stuff came off the next shooting day or whatever, it came back to

normal. it was very odd. the way people respond in this visualized way. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. jason: also available online and our mobile app. what is your must-read? carol: i like so much of the issue, but austin's story about the next generation of processors and what they might be able to do would be able to open up a whole world in terms of technology. love that story. jason: it is a cool story. carol: your must-read? jason: ashlee vance, one of my favorite writers out there. read his book. i got a chance to catch up with him in palo alto not too long ago. this takes you inside his brain. he is so thoughtful about where silicon valley was, where is, -- where it is, the rest of the world. and the social and economic business implications, you have got to read. very thought-provoking. carol: his stories have deftly spark conversations in my own home. and you can find more stories

on businessweek.com. jason: and check out our daily businessweek podcast. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

♪ emily: i'm emily chang and this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all of our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up in the next hour, big tech is in the firing line of the u.s. government. alphabet, facebook, apple, and amazon maybe set to face antitrust probes. plus, scrutiny overshadowed apple as it rolled out its new hardware at its annual conference. we bring you the key takeaways. and are drones the key to amazon locking down its deliveries? we take