taylor: i'm taylor riggs in san francisco in for emily chang, and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, uber sinks. shares to a record low for the ride-hailing company as the lockup period expires. is the worst over? plus, rocky picture for roku. shares falling as much as 17 and after hours trading wednesday after the streaming platform posted third-quarter earnings that missed estimates. we also have details ahead.

hack away. the u.s. government says russia, china, and iran will seek to meddle in u.s. elections going forward. how vulnerable are we? we get opinions from ethical hackers in our electioneering series. first to the top story, all about uber. shares hitting a record low. early restrictions lifted. shares in this year's largest u.s. ipo are now down nearly 40% since its may debut. for more, walter joins us with in new york. with me in san francisco, lizette chapman who covers the company for "bloomberg technology." give me the breakdown. what did we learn today? reporter: exactly what we expected. there was 1.7 billion shares outstanding. a large swath of them have traded hands.

most widely traded stock today. a lot of people are just sick of waiting around for it to get better. we saw the stocks fall. there are some questions around when this could continue, considering a number of early investors are not underwater and could see potential upside. taylor: walter, the volatility today, is this a day issue, week's issue or a month's issue? >> the average daily volume is 15 million shares. you're talking about a billion shares coming off of lockup. some of those shares are probably not going to trade. i don't think softbank, who owns about 200 million or so of the shares, will trade any time soon. they are pretty bullish on rideshare and have a number of investments. but the founders of the company, we will see what they are doing. there's a host of other investors. it could take more than a couple

days to digest through this. taylor: i want to take a look at a chart for the bloomberg audiences inside the terminal. it is the bearish sentiment around this stock. 1.4 put for every call, showing more bearish sentiment into the is. put that into perspective for us. we knew that day was going to come. do we expect more downside risk ahead? what are investors saying? >> investors are taking their cue from the results of uber who reported monday. at that time, it was mixed, noisy. the upshot were a couple of things. one of them was that growth was the slowest at 29% of quarter than it's ever been reported since the company began sharing that number. that's not a good thing. this is a company that has always sold investors on its growth potential as it went to 60 plus countries and entered

things outside of the core ride-hailing into grocery delivery, autonomous driving, helicopters, gig worker matching, etc. that's one thing. whether it will continue or not, anyone's guess. a lot of people focused on the fact that it projected to even be profitable by q4 2021. that is a projection that has never been shared before. it was supposedly to reassure investors, but it doesn't seem like it worked. taylor: walter, does the bearish sentiment lineup with the fundamentals we got from the company this week? >> part of it, the selloff in these types of stocks, is not happening in the last couple days or weeks. it has been going on for months now. whether it is growth or momentum, this has been a disfavor. there is no positive catalyst on the horizon for the company.

the incremental competition they are feeling which resulted in a deceleration of growth, which is an incremental negative, that doesn't seem like it would stop anytime soon. i think the catalyst of saying we will reach profitability in 2021 w probably wasted ahead of one billion shares coming off of lockup. it is still questionable whether they can actually hit that target. in the meantime, you have a competitive eats business, you don't have autonomy coming as a potential catalyst anytime soon. it's just hard for investors to own these when you are relying on things like revenue multiples to base your valuation. taylor: i have a little bit of a bone to pick. when we talk about adjusted, meaning the company is profitable, and to be clear we are not talking about net income or bottom-line profitability, are you ok with adjusted positive by 2021 or would you see it translate into net income?

>> i'm fine with it. i'm sure most investors will be fine with it. i know it makes for better headlines to focus on a net income number, but the reality is ebitda is closely associated with the cash in the company. if they can get to that positive ebitda, you will find a broader group of investors willing to invest in this name and put multiples on ebitd rather than relying on a multiple revenue or bookings. taylor: lizette chapman, thank you for joining. walter piecyk will be sticking with us. i want to go to roku. shares are plunging as much as 17% after the video streaming company posted third-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates. we will explore demand with increased streaming competition from disney and apple. we will be looking at that throughout the hour. also on the earnings front, i want to take a look at qualcomm. shares rose after hours on wednesday. that is after the chipmaker

reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings-per-share that did beat estimates. it also says fiscal first quarter revenue will be $4.4 billion to $5.2 billion. qualcomm also projected strong revenue with 5g technology which debuts later this year with samsung headsets. there's also wall street optimism for relationships with apple on future versions of the iphone and 5g. coming up, we will get the latest from asia. a $6.5 billion loss for softbank from investments in uber and we work. that conversation is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ taylor: california's attorney

general has filed a lawsuit against facebook in a san francisco state court.

the claim says facebook failed to comply with the state attorney general's demands for information about the company's business practices around user data. california ag xavier becerra said they were left with no choice when facebook failed to engage. japanese billionaire is defiant as softbank reports an enormous loss. investments and wework and uber lead to a $6.5 billion operating loss. masayoshi son on makes it clear he will not back off the strategy, even saying he can make wework profitable. with us is walter piecyk. give me your opinion here. a one-off, bound to happen, or something a little more serious? >> based on his math, he is still up on the vision fund. they have booked up to this point over $15 billion of unrealized gains. this is a big setback that the

write-down in the vision fund and aggregate was $9 billion. it was more than just what was happening at wework. there were a couple of other billion that occurred. overall, he is still up on the vision fund. he looked at this and said we will have 15 massive winners, 15 awful losers like wework and the rest of them are doing so-so. his investment style is more about having massive winners like alibaba, putting in $20 million and it's worth however many billion now, in order to drive returns. while they talk about more conservative investments, what he really wants to do is find really big winners to find returns. the bigger issue for the company, which is kind of a sideshow, they have a big deal out there right now getting challenged by state ag's. t-mobile is trying to bribe ash

-- t-mobile is trying to buy sprint. t-mobile is cash burning. they have to go to court. if they lose that, they are kind of stuck with sprint. that would be bad. if that deal can get approved, if t-mobile can buy sprint and get that off of his back, it removes the debt from the balance sheet. he's got a great asset in t-mobile that he can borrow against and invest in the vision fund. i think it gets softbank back on track. a lot of what softbank investors should be looking at right now is how the sprint court case is going to go with state ag's. that can be a catalyst for the stock. taylor: rightfully so, second sentence of your note hot off the press says the sprint-t-mobile deal is the biggest catalyst for the stock this year. is that what you need to see to sort of, not save the company, that sounds too drastic, but at least get the stock to move to

the next leg higher? >> softbank has a lot of things going for it in terms of investment. other things can help. two thirds of the investments in the portfolio, they were the last guy that invested in it. if through an ipo or another round of investing in the private markets, you can get third-party validation for investments. i think it would also help softbank. maybe if uber, like we talked about in the last segment, if they can stabilize the eats business, that would provide more credibility. right now they are losing a couple billion dollars on the u ber investment. any validation of the evaluations set on investments, or a favorable turnout in terms of t-mobile being able to buy sprint, either of those things i think would be a positive catalyst for a stock that is really still trading at probably a discount. no matter how conservative you are in terms of marking

investments, they are probably still trading at a discount. let's not forget alibaba is still a massive investment that softbank has and supports the overall valuation of the company. taylor: your general thoughts on softbank and the vision fund decision to put more money at wework -- some people have called it putting more money at other bad money. your take? >> masa was insistent today that it was not a bailout to save a bad investment, but it certainly looks like that. you valued a company at $47 billion and put new money in at less than $8 billion. to me, that sounds like a company that was pretty desperate. i don't think it's a good sign in terms of the investment. it was softbank making the investment as opposed to the vision fund. that tells you the vision fund partners, which they are hoping to sign up to the second vision fund, were not willing to come in as the investor to effectively bailout wework.

they were effectively willing to let the investment kind of go. this money came from softbank. the question is let's say sprint faces the same issue. let's say the t-mobile-sprint deal fails. is softbank going to come into sprint and have to write another $10 billion check? is sprint accompany burning sprint is a company burning money that needs to invest in the network. should we expect more? that's a slippery slope for a company you don't want putting more money into bad companies. you want them to put that into new growth companies that can be among the 10 or 15 names he thinks can be huge winners five or 15 years from now. taylor: and you expect them to do that with sprint? >> i don't think they will. in this case, it is different than wework. sprint is an ongoing cash burn issue. i think they will look for other buyers. maybe they will start to break up assets. this is part of the reason the government should probably approve this deal in the first place. yes, softbank had the money to invest in sprint, but they didn't.

if the deal doesn't get approved, you will be left with the company that its own parent is unlikely to continue investing in growth. they will regionalize businesses. they will look to sell spectrum, which will potentially impact speeds of service. it won't be good for the american consumer. i just don't think softbank will be in a position to put more money into that company if the deal fails. taylor: walter piecyk of lightshed partners, you will have to come back for more. thank you for joining us. the huawei founder and ceo says he expects chipmakers to rise in 2019. speaking on a panel of bloomberg, stephen engle led the coffee event when talking about the blacklisting on the company and wanting to meet u.s. president trump.

>> i don't have his mobile phone number. maybe you can be the medium. [laughter] reporter: would you meet him and talk to him? >> yes, i would, certainly. reporter: donald trump, if you are looking at bloomberg. [laughter] >> he has private jets and he can come to china anytime. i do not have private jets. my airplane is only made of paper. if it rains, i might fall. taylor: coming up, the ripple ceo says only one percent of today's cryptocurrencies will survive and they will be game changing. that is next. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. listen on the bloomberg cap, --bloomberg app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg.

♪ taylor: let's take a look at

today top tech calls. jefferies analysts say microsoft should be able to maintain double-digit revenue growth for the foreseeable future. microsoft innovations should sustain strong business momentum in the face of any macro concerns. he maintains the buy rating with $160 price market. -- price target. groupon, reporting weaker than expected third-quarter results. the j.p. morgan analyst said it will be very difficult to offset the significant external issue challenging the core business, highlighting international macroeconomic pressures. the street is weighing in on xerox's bid for hp. wells fargo says hp might be

worth $25 a share in the xerox deal. the potential purchase would make sense given the potential synergies. a cash and stock option for hp would likely be heavier on cash. those were a look at your top tech calls. while facebook's libra is under immense scrutiny, the ceo of blockchain company ripple is confident in his outlook on cryptocurrencies. ripple offers payments and settlement services through its token. xrp is currently the world's third-biggest digital asset after bitcoin. he spoke with haslinda amin and rishaad salamat. >> i'm incredibly pleased to see how much traction people are seeing with, let's solve a real problem with digital assets. historically, there has been a lot of hype in the crypto ecosystem, a lot of experiments. we are able to look at what we are doing with xrp and help banks take advantage of what is possible.

rishaad: so many cryptocurrencies out there. you are one of the up front runners. are there too many of you guys? >> actually, i agree with you. there are too many. there's around 3000 different digital assets to trade on a daily basis now. any time there's a new market, a lot of people run into the new market to show they can solve a problem, deliver a customer need. i've said publicly that i think 99% of all crypto probably goes to zero, but i think there's 1% focused on solving a real problem for real customers and able to do that at scale. that's going to be game changing and continue to grow significantly in the days ahead. rishaad: probably one of the reasons why there is so much instability in terms of price, but you want to be a unit of transfer. the problem is if you transfer money to somebody else, that may be worth much less by the time

they want to actually cash it in, if they do cash it in. how do you actually produce some stability in all of this? >> it turns out this is a false narrative. when you enable a swift transaction, the volatility is a calculation of time and volatility, so a swift transaction can take two to three days whereas the x rp transaction takes a few seconds. the volatility in a swift transaction is much higher than enabling the xrp transaction because of the time. we actually did a post on the ripple website explaining the math. the volatility is lower with an xrp transaction. haslinda: investors are pretty concerned about the selloff in ripple, saying it's bigger than expected. is there reason to be worried about it? >> ripple is a private company and we have shareholders, you can't trade ripple shares, so to speak. xrp, we pay attention over the long haul.

i tell employees i don't think about it for three days, three weeks, or three months. taking advantage of what digital assets can do to make transactions more efficient is a journey we will be on for a decade or two. if it is a marathon, we are on mile two. i don't think of xrp in the short term. if we can enable xrp to be the most efficient, measured by speed and cost of transaction -- haslinda: nothing to be worried about when you take a look at the selloff? >> i think there will be volatility in crypto broadly. the whole market moves together. there are times when xrp outperformed bitcoin and times it underperformed bitcoin. but i think it's a long-term journey and i'm optimistic on where we see the whole market. there's a lot of bullish trends for the whole crypto ecosystem. rishaad: of course, the big players want to get in on the action. i'm talking about libra. tell me about your concerns and the things that libra represents which are good.

>> i think what's good is a number of people in the crypto space, and what ripple has embraced, is how do we reduce friction? how do we reduce cost? how do we bring people who are under banked into the system? that is a vision we embrace. goebook's efforts to directly to consumer is one approach. the challenge is that all financial systems, all financial tools are built on trust. with facebook as the lead horse around libra, it is fair to say, facebook has had a trust deficit based on a lot of things that have happened to the company and things they have done. i think it will be hard for libra using that foundation of trust from facebook to get a lot of momentum. as you know well, there's a lot of regulatory scrutiny and questions that are still not yet answered. i think the good thing is mark zuckerberg has said they will not go live until those are clarified. haslinda: jamie dimon says it's

nice, but will not happen. is it too soon to write it off? >> we have seen a lot of momentum shift. it came out in june and there's a lot of enthusiasm from the likes of mastercard and paypal, others stepping away. a lot of that is from regulatory uncertainty. facebook took a pretty aggressive, arguably naive view to run into this, despite a lot of concerns. taylor: that was the ripple ceo brad garlinghouse. coming up, impossible foods cooking up impossible pork for china. we look at a taste for plant-based meat craze in shanghai. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ y95óóo

taylor: this is "bloomberg technology global link" where we are joined by bloomberg "daybreak australia" to bring you the latest in global tech news. let's take a look at the top global tech stories of the day. >> thank you. a key u.s. lawmakers the latest to sound the alarm over tiktok as a national security threat. also called out apple for storing icloud data locally for users in mainland china. chinese payment giants alipay and wechat pay are planning to

let foreign visitors use those apps in china for a time. they can use a prepaid card service. the apps on by tencent and alibaba account for 94% of the country's mobile payment market. and huawei's billionaire founder says there are not any u.s. buyers for its 5g technology yet. a panel was told that there are no american companies talking to us. the u.s. government accuses huawei of aiding beijing and spying, and is seeking to ban huawei from its 5g network. those are the top global tech stories we are watching. haidi: the china international import expo is now in its second year. the event is designed to showcase the country's desire to shift its economy towards buying more foreign goods.

63 countries are participating this year. our very own selina wang has been covering for us. she joins us from saying hi. great to have you. it is interesting, from president xi's opening remarks, he pretty directly criticized the exclusion of chinese tech companies by foreign players like the u.s. i am wondering what the representation is at the event? selina: that's right. you heard xi warn about intellectual blockages highlighting fears of this tech coupling, but you did see significant presence from large tech companies like microsoft and qualcomm, which are showing off collaborations with chinese partners when it comes to 5g, smart cities. you even saw companies that are blocked in china have a presence there. i was just at the facebook and instagram booth yesterday where they were showing off some of their latest artificial intelligence technologies. i do want to point out that samsung had a very large presence. this is a company that has significantly lost market share

to domestic players when it comes to its smartphone market. they are investing heavily in china in terms of being in the second phase of their plant in china. you have a lot of tech companies there despite growing fears of decoupling and no shortage of u.s. tech companies there as well. taylor: you spoke with the impossible food ceo, pat brown. listen to what he had to say. >> we want to enter china as soon as we possibly can. we are talking to potential partners, we are talking to government officials, and we are being very deliberate about it. we want to build a plant-based meat industry in china that gets ingredients from chinese farmers. taylor: when are we seeing fake meat in china? selina: i had the opportunity to speak to the ceo of impossible

foods yesterday and actually tried some of the fake meat. they were making their first debut to chinese consumers at the event and working on imminently making a commercial debut. the company has caught the u.s. by storm. they are across thousands of restaurants already and in markets in asia but not china yet. in the u.s., they have partnerships with burger king. pat brown says they are already in talks with partners and regulators in china. this is a top priority for this company and if they can crack the china market, that will be a game changer for this company, and he also gave me details for the first time on their efforts to create imitation pork. this is a big deal in china because pork is the most popular meat in china, and it has not yet been created in terms of a good substitute for it. it is also dealing with china, this hog shortage because of the african swine.

flu. i asked about these macro factors, and he said that he hopes impossible foods can somewhat help to partially fill the void that has been caused by this epidemic as well as some of the food insecurity issues the china government has prioritized. taylor: thank you. more to come. this is bloomberg. ♪ taylor: on tuesday, americans

took to the polls in both state and local elections, and it looks like there were no successful attempts to mess with the vote. that's according to the u.s. department of justice and a slew of other federal agencies, but that is not a guarantee that next year's election will be free from meddling. according to officials, it is expected to be the opposite.

to discuss election meddling as part of our electioneering series, we have a professor of computer science with university of michigan. he has successfully hacked voting machines in the past to prove their vulnerabilities. in new york, a white hat hacker and the founding hacker of cybersecurity firm nordic innovation labs. you may remember him from the award-winning hbo documentary "hacking democracy," where he hacked u.s. voting machines and demonstrated that election results could be changed. thank you both are joining us as part of our electioneering series. we started the series talking about how local elections tuesday did not appear to have been meddled with, but that does not mean that it is over or that there is no threat. in both of the cases, what is the biggest risk as you look to 2020? >> the biggest risk is that much of america's election

infrastructure is badly out of date. there are many states that still do not have a paper record of every ballot, and many states that will not check those paper records where they are present. there is a risk that sophisticated foreign hackers could break in and change the way votes are being counted. taylor: do you agree that that is also the biggest risk? >> it is one of the biggest risks, yes. the other part is that the u.s. voting machines generally do not keep forensic evidence. if there is a false claim of foul play, these machines cannot really prove that everything went right. it requires that an audit is conducted to prove that the results are the correct ones. taylor: how do we get proof? >> proof, really, is all the

voting machines we have today and all the voting machines we have in the foreseeable future are something we can hack. the question is not to audit the machines. the machine has to be as good as possible, but, really, it's about auditing the results and making certain the public can trust that the results are the correct ones. it is all about auditing. taylor: do you agree that we need to improve our auditing skills to ensure the security of the elections? >> well, that is one of the key components. we have to make sure that state and local governments implement basic cybersecurity hygiene and best practices. we have to make sure there is paper backing every single ballot, and we've got to do audits that are robust enough to give us a high probability of detecting any outcome-changing fraud. taylor: you have mentioned paper

voting twice now. give me your thoughts on paper ballots versus electronic voting. >> well, electronic voting, unfortunately, was very popular a decade ago. we had computers that just maintained every single record of the vote in a digital database, but all of those records, unfortunately, can be changed if a cyberattack or is successful at penetrating the voting machines used in a jurisdiction. with paper, you have a physical record that just cannot be changed in a cyberattack. in this day and age, it should just be common sense that you want to have that kind of physical backup to be saved. taylor: talk to me as we look forward and try to make sure that these voting machines are secure -- what role does technology play? do we look at blockchain to help secure? ai? better cybersecurity? what role does technology play

in securing those votes? >> first of all, u.s. elections are uniquely complex. u.s. elections cannot be conducted without using technology. however, a lot of technologies which have been proposed are very much unproven and unsuitable. blockchain is really a solution looking for a problem. one of the problems is not elections. we have a lot of studies showing why blockchain is fundamentally incompatible with elections. we do not have technology to do online or internet voting. elections are uniquely hard problems because of the requirement of secret ballot and out auditability at the same time. we do not have any other technology than the paper ballot.

taylor: your take on the role of technology. could you have something like ai or blockchain, something that is secure and not hackable? >> blockchain is really good for certain things -- for achieving a public record of past events that everyone can agree on, but, really, in voting, i like to say that blockchain solves the problem of stolen votes just as well as bitcoin solves the problem of stolen money. it does not. you can still have bitcoin stolen if someone breaks into your computer, steals your password or compromises in exchange. it is the same when it comes to blockchain and voting. taylor: that might be the quote of the day. alex, i start with you. facebook and twitter in the fight on political ads -- who was right? >> i think twitter has it right, that the safer thing to do right

now is just to make sure that we are keeping political fights and potential disinformation at a distance from social media, especially when those political ads are a potential revenue source for the companies involved. taylor: political ads -- does twitter have it right over facebook? >> i agree with alex on that. we do not have a human firewall. we lack training for voters and us as humans to have the capability of filter and have it use a source critic to the advertising we are shown. at this point in time, keeping it out is the best way. taylor: thank you. the u.s. government alleges two former twitter employees help saudi's spy on users. a saudi national is also said to

be charged in a u.s. criminal case. we will continue to follow this story as it evolves. still ahead in an exclusive interview, microsoft's president discusses the company's philosophy and what he thinks are the important issues in the 2020 election. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ taylor: an earnings beat for

square is pushing after-hours earnings higher. jack dorsey's company projected revenue of about $2 million was reported for the quarter, up 40% from the same quarter last year. the growth indicator comes at a good time. square shares have fallen about 20% in the last year. qualcomm gave a stronger than predicted forecast for the first quarter, indicating that smartphone demand may be picking up after a prolonged slump. qualcomm is in its fifth year of revenue declines. investors have been waiting to see if qualcomm can parlay its

claim of leadership in 5g into sales growth. ian, you just got off the earnings call. what was the key take away? ian: the whole conversation was about their outlook for smartphone markets next year in 2020. they say it will return to growth again, as much as 1.85 billion devices will be sold. more important, 5g devices, as many as 225 million will be shipped next year is what they said. taylor: we also know they are looking at what could be a 50 year in both fifth sales and earnings declines. is that to the smartphone market? if that starts to grow, could we see top and bottom line growth for qualcomm? >> it has been a rough period for them. it has been this hideous drawnout dispute with apple. they've also got a dispute with

huawei which has not been solved. and on top of that, you have people getting bored with their smartphones and not seeing anything exciting to the point that they did. they are saying that phase of the smartphone market for them is over and things are going to come back. taylor: how much of a tailwind is apple? >> it means on getting paid on licensing already. even though they are not in the iphone at the moment, they are getting paid because their technology is, right? they already won that one, but it really when not cut it in terms of a chip unit until some point next year. taylor: a morgan stanley analyst coming into the call said the fourth quarter, which is what they reported, looked good, but

it was really next quarter that might have been too optimistic, but if shares are rising, do you get a feeling maybe they were not too optimistic? are investors pretty happy that maybe that next quarter is right in line? >> i think they're getting credit for having been conservative about the quarter they just reported and proved through their own execution they actually did better, so that buys them credibility when they go out and say things are getting incrementally better again. obviously, people like that. people want this company to go back to growth. taylor: finally, management naming a new cfo. how big of news is this? >> this guy has been with them a long time. he has been in the chip division, basically the head of finance for that chip division. on the call, he answered a lot of questions. he was very entrenched in the company. he understands the business model.

they are getting somebody who very much knows this company. taylor: keeping it internal. thank you for joining me. microsoft president brad smith shares his new book and his take on working with the u.s. government. bloomberg's tom giles sat down with him in an exclusive interview on bloomberg's "studio 1.0." take a listen. >> the first thing i would say is we have a philosophy, a set of principles that remains constant. whenever there is a new team in the white house, we had a new president of the united states, our philosophy is to partner where we can and stand apart when we should. we work together with the obama white house on many issues, and yet, we sued the united states government -- not once but four times -- over the surveillance and privacy issues that were surfacing in the wake of the snowden disclosures. we had the opportunity to work with president trump and the trump white house on important

initiatives around issues like cybersecurity, and at the same time, we have filed a lawsuit together with princeton university and a princeton student to address the issues that are facing the dreamers. we have employees that benefit from the daca legislation, whose ability to stay in the united states is impacted by the executive order that changed that, but i will say the other thing that we really seek to do, regardless of who is in government in this country or in any other is to focus on the issues, address the substance, be respectful of people, and not engage in some of the more dramatic name-calling that i think can take us backward rather than move us forward. i think especially as a company, we need to be a force for constructive dialogue and progress. that is the kind of

philosophical tenet around which we just remain steadfast. >> we are on the cusp of another election. as you look at the field of candidates for 2020, are there any who are articulating what you believe to be a sensible way forward for the technology industry? >> one of the reasons we wrote this book is we, in fact, believe there is an opportunity not just for people who are running for office but are all of us as citizens to think more broadly and deeply about the technology issues of our time. yeah, i think that there's a lot of room for us to be broader in our perspective. technology is changing the world, but it is not reaching everyone in this country. rural communities are being held back by the lack of access to broadband. the many populations, minority populations, people who are less well-off, are being held back by the lack of access to technology

skills. we all have fundamental interests in the protection of our privacy and security and the like. what we would say is we would all benefit from understanding where technology is going and then thinking about what that means for our lives and what we will need from the leaders of our states in this country, and it is really an effort to make these issues more approachable, to also hopefully make them a little more interesting and engaging, that really sort of motivated us to take the time to put this book together. >> is there a candidate who is outlining what you consider to be a sensible view on the right way to regulate technology? >> i am not going to endorse any specific candidate. i will say in every candidate, we see some ideas that we think have real merit, and in every

candidate, we see an opportunity to learn more and do better. if there is one issue i will point to where i would frankly love to see more attention and more innovation, it is in this issue around rural broadband. we live every day in this country now with an appreciation that there are people in rural communities that feel that the country is not serving their needs, and yet, what we too often see is candidates who talk about spending $60 billion or $70 billion or $80 billion or more to try to bring fiber-optic cables to the home. there are better ways, cheaper ways, faster ways for us to connect everyone in this country. we need to make it a goal. we need to ground ourselves in the data. we need to have a more forward-looking strategy. i hope that we will see one or more candidates embrace this because it deserves to be a real mission, we believe, for the

united states. taylor: that was microsoft president brad smith. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." "bloomberg technology" is livestreaming on twitter. be sure to follow our global breaking news network at tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> the following is a paid program. the views expressed do not reflect those of bloomberg lp, its employees or affiliates. >> following is a paid presentation brought to you by rare collectibles tv. hn fitzgerald kennedy served as the 45th -- 35th president of the united states until 1963. jfk brought america hope, strength, and a vision for a brighter future. >> and so, my fellow americans, ask not what your country can do for you,