♪♪ ♪♪ >> i'm in san francisco and this is bloomberg technology. coming up this hour, a deadly combination of cold and snow plunges millions across texas into darkness as rolling blackouts surge to contain an energy crisis.

what can be done to prevent future emergencies with the ceo of a texas-based renewable energy company. plus, bitcoin surges past $50,000 for the first time as more major companies jump into crypto. we will have an outlook. and it's the week we've been waiting for. ever since gamestop became market darling, creating mayhem as retail investors sought to edge out short sellers, a house hearing is set this week and all the major players from robin hood to reddit will testify. we'll have a preview from an sec veteran. all the stories in a moment, but first, let's get to u.s. markets where the energy sector seemed to seize up today on the story that continues to unfold out of texas. we have the furl picture. walk us through the day. >> yeah, energy dominates the s&p 500, the main gauge of u.s. equities, not really pulling in either direction. investors undecided proled as they kind of continue to assess the vaccine roll-out, the

potential for a big stimulus package, but all of that is on hold right now because of what we see playing out in texas and other states where this massive freeze has left millions without power. you can see there's the s&p 500 energy index, that group of energy stocks, outperforming in a big way up by two pite 25%. some underperformance in technology, though. nasdaq 100 off by a quarter of a percent. that said, the big basket of megacap tech stocks up by 1%, but it's so closely linked to energy and so closely linked to the commodities market. if you look at the specific stocks that are on the move today, you can see oil companies higher, something that our colleagues are talking about in that special edition of commodities, occidental, the second biggest player in the permian basin by 4%. it's telling customers it's not going to be able to honor its contracts to deliver oil because of the situation out there, marathonnal oil also higher. but a different story in the utilities. nrg energy, the company that

owns and operates the power generation site that power your homes off by almost 6% because there's two competing stories there, and then if we dig into the commodities picture, you can see that thal oil stocks are rising as oil also rises. you can see west texas, intermediate and the global benchmarks higher significantly and that big pop in natural gas contracts, having some crazy outperformance on the day as different traders and consumers struggle to power their homes. the images coming out of texas and other states incredible. >> a lot to digest there. i do want to hit bitcoin. we're seeing more companies under pressure to give their answer to tesla's big investment. what was the movement that we saw there? >> yeah, was it last year, it was last week that we were talking about 35,000, 40,000 for bitcoin? we're already at 50,000.

you wake up and the picture has changed so much. big news over the weekend that morgan stanley according to sources is considering adding the crypto currency to some of its main funds, big vote of confidence and it's all apart from that momentum coming off that tesla news a week or so ago, news that tesla would invest $1.5 million into bebitcoin through its treasury and consider even taking payments through the crypt ocurrency in a limited way. you see other companies like mastercard talking about the potential for bitcoin in terms of transactions and this is a record-breaking rally that seems to have no end in sight, emily. >> all right. thanks so much. going to be speaking with the ceo of mastercard on the show tomorrow. we'll definitely get to their thoughts on crypto. meantime, back to the story continuing to develop out of texas. ice, snow, arctic temperatures have plunged the state into a crisis that's left nearly 5 million people without power.

oil refineries and shale wells shut down amidst unprecedented freezing weather, forecast to continue until at least wednesday. the associated press has reported at least two deaths likely from the cold. former energy secretary under president trump has blamed the intermittent less reliable renewable power for the crisis. take a listen. >> until we can reach the point that we have grid-scale storage and battery technologies that allow us to rely on this energy 24/7, it's important that we not put ourselves in the situation where we're dependent upon it. >> joining us, somebody who knows a little bit more about that, jon berger, ceo of sanova, a houston based provider of solar and battery storage. jon, i just want to say we can see you and hear you clearly so thank you so much for joining us. i know you're coming to us from houston. how have you, how has your company, been impacted by the

blackouts happening across the state? >> thank you, emily. thank you for having me. we've had a tremendous amount of impacts, myself, my home does not have grid power and has not for a long time. many of my employees have not had power in their homes for a number of days. now, stretching into yet another night. so there's been quite a lot of pain, quite a lot of angst, a lot of questions about what happened, what's going on, when is this going to end? and, you know, we are trying to do everything we can as a company. the good news is our customers that do have the storage are doing quite well from what we can tell and up to this moment in time, and we certainly see a path forward here making people more independent and putting their future in their own hands rather than depending on systems that can be obviously very unreliable and not meet the needs of our modern age. >> look, we know the transition

to renewables is going to take an incredibly long time. the infrastructure needs to get there. is there anything that a company like sanova can do in a moment like this to alleviate the immediate crisis? >> well, we can continue to -- and we have -- go out there and make the case and more and more people are coming to us for solutions, and i want to make the point right now that this is not a renewable versus fossil fuels problem. it is not. that's a fact. everything failed. particularly the rotating machinery, it is wind turbines, it is also coal plants, natural gas plants. texas has more natural gas plants than anything else. new plants failed, as well. this is not about renewable versus fossil fuels. what it is about is we have a centralized system where you

have a single wire going to a single home and physics say that can fail and it fails often. this is a problem we've seen brewing for my 25 years in the power business. we've seen these issues, i've dwelt with them over 20 years ago in the eastern side of the united states, so this is not unprecedented, either. and what we're seeing here is that we want, as society, as we move forward untime, whether ritz wildfires in california, whether it's hurricanes in florida, whether it's winter storms in texas, the level of reliability, particularly as we move to a society of working more from home, doing more things at home, the level of reliability for our power system regardless if it's fuelled by natural gas, coal or wind or solar, even with some storage, is not enough and you need to put the generation and the reliability at your home and that's what sanova does and i would hope that we can see that

this will be more of a part of the solution and indeed, i'm confident will be as we move forward in time. >> now, we're getting some headlines, u.s. oil production has plunged by a third as this continues. still unclear when power will fully be restored in texas as this continues. what do you make about the argument that renewables just aren't there yet, that folks like myself who live in california, i also had to deal with rolling blackouts due to the wildfires through all of last year. people blamed california for powering too far ahead when it came to renewable energy and neglecting some of these more tried and true sources of power, like natural gas. >> well, as i said, it really isn't about renewable energy versus fossil fuel energy. it's really more about what level of reliability do you want as an individual, as a company,

as a community, and then how do you go about getting that reliability where you want it at the best price? and yes with cleaner power. and so this is something that we've seen. it was sparked by the pandemic in terms of more and more folks want to be able to go to their home and have reliability of power. think about it. if you're going to work from home and be on the zoom call or the teams call, whatever, you need power, right? and so if you look at backup power generators which use natural gas and diesel, they're in extreme demand right now. this event is going to cause them to be in more extreme demand and when you look at solar and storage, which we do, those technologies are in extreme demand and have been since the july time frame, as well. this event will also cause solar and storage to be in high demand. so all this is more about level of reliability. the generation technologies with wind and solar have never been

better. they are economic. they are good and coupled with storage, they do work. and again, i point to the fact that the fossil fuel side of things has failed here, too, considerably, and so let's stop picking scapegoats and let's figure out how to really solve this problem. i know political sound bites i have hate renewable or fossil fuels sells well, but at the end of the day, it's not factual, it's not true, it's not what happened and it's not what's going on down here. >> right and at the end of the day it's about keeping people warm tonight. there's concerns about people freezing to death, let alone being able to take a work call. ceo jon berger, thank you so much for joining us and stay safe where you are in houston. okay. coming up, the flurry of trading activity around gamestop has led the house to hold a hearing this thursday with a focus on short selling and stock manipulation. we're going to have all the details for you on what to expect, coming up. this is bloomberg. s is bloomber.

>> it was only a few weeks ago when we saw the gamestop frenzy hit its peak. now, the house financial services committee will hold a virtual hearing thursday about wild market swings with more insight on commodity and security regulation. i'm joined now by barnes and thornberg partner and former ftcc lawyer -- david thank you so much for joining us. what if fireworks are we going to see on thursday? how rivetting do you expect this testimony to be? >> hi, emily, thank you for having me. i don't know. i think there will be fireworks, but i don't know that when the

fireworks have cleared, that we're going to find that anybody has done anything wrong. certainly, congress wants to find a villain in this and it seems that they want to work the narrative that the big bad hedge funds is abusing the individual investor, but i'm not sure that that's how things are going to shake out in the end. >> so if you see blame, where do you think it lies? >> well, i'm not sure there is any blame at the end of the day. in securities markets every day of the week, there is a winner and there's a loser in most transactions. just because some individual investors may have had their trading halted and may have lost some money doesn't mean there's any blame to go around. i think that if there is a thorough fcc investigation, which is going on right now, i'm certain we may find out that some of the blame lies with these individual traders who

apparently worked together to drive up the price of certain stocks including gamestop. >> and how would something like that be legislated or litigated or punished if you will? >> i don't know that there would necessarily need to be a new legislative fix or a change to existing rules, because the securities and exchange commission already has the authority it needs to punish that kind of misconduct. so, for example, the securities laws already prevent market manipulation and they already prevent and prohibit traders from injecting false information into the public sphere for the purpose of affecting the price of the security. so those laws and those rules are already in place. it's just a matter of the sec running out its investigation and seeing if anybody needs to be charged.

>> what about the focus on robin hood and many people seem to agree is a conflict of interest. it's banned in several other countries, but not the united states. is that a problem? >> it's only a problem if firms are not disclosing it to the customers who are trading through their platform and just recently in december of last year, the fcc charged robin hood with failing to disclose the extent to which it received payments for its order flow, but, you know, so long as that is disclosed and so long as the people who are using the robin hood platform to do their trading are aware that robin hood is receiving money for it, there is no real conflict and there's no violation. >> now, the robin hood ceo himself is pushing for a reform of so-called t2 settlements, the ability to sell more -- short

sell more shares than are out there. is that something that you see as problematic? >> again, short-selling is not necessarily problematic. it is a means for participants in the financial markets to hedge other risks that they may have. so i don't think the problem necessarily lies with anybody who is short-selling any stock, including the hedge funds who have been vilified recently. again, it's a matter of disclosure. it's important that people who are taking large short positions are disclosing those positions and so other market participants have transparency into what's going on. but i don't see any underlying problem with the fact of the short sales themselves. >> and what about lastly companies like reddit or discord or clubhouse where you have folks get into the same room or virtual room and saying we're going to do this and we're going to do this together.

do the platforms bear any responsibility there? >> that's a good question and i think that's the big wildcard, because colluding among traders for the purpose of moving a stock either up or down in a way that is divorced from the free forces of supply and demand can be market manipulation. and other participants, including institutions who are not themselves doing any trading, can be charged under the securities laws for aiding and abetting violations. so i would say it's a possibility, and again, that's going to depend on what the sec finds oout when it's through with its investigation, but i wouldn't foreclose that possibility, certainly. >> interesting. we'll be looking forward to the fireworks and/or hot air on thursday. thank you so much for giving us the preview on what you see ahead.

all right. coming up, bitcoin jumping to $50,000. the record-breaking rally continuing as crypto surges past a new milestone. how sustainable is it, though, for the asset people love to hate? that is next. this is bloomberg. berg. want to save hundreds on your wireless bill? with xfinity mobile you can. how about saving hundreds on the new samsung galaxy s21 ultra 5g? you can do that too. all on the most reliable network. sure thing! and with fast nationwide 5g included at no extra cost. we've got you covered. so join the carrier rated #1 in customer satisfaction. and get a new samsung galaxy starting at $17 a month. learn more at xfinitymobile.com or visit your local xfinity store today. (announcer) do you want to reduce stress? shed pounds? do you want to flatten your stomach? do all that in just 10 minutes a day with aerotrainer, the total body fitness solution that uses its revolutionary ergonomic design

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>> another milestone for bitcoin which has been on a rocket-like surge over the last couple of months. the world's largest cryptocurrency crossing the $50,000 mark just six weeks after breaking $40,000. the most recent catalyst, tesla's announcement that it added one and a half million dollars of bitcoin to its balance sheet, that sent the price up 16%. february 8th and over the weekend, bloomberg reported morgan stanley may addtites list of possible bets to discuss. olivia, thank you so much for joining us.

talk to us about the recent surge here. the question everybody keeps asking is right, but is it going to last? >> hi, and thank you for having me. and yes, that's a great question. the 50k milestone i think is something that industry participants have been watching very closely, and it has been considered as a significant milestone that industry participants were hoping to reach that would indicate a wider mainstream adoption, like we saw with elon musk and tesla and morgan stanley, like you just said, but they aren't the only ones. microstrategies, for example, has been adding bitcoin to their balance sheet since last year, and bny melon recently made announcements that it's developing a team to help with digital assets and mastercard

has said it's going to begin to allow card holders to transact in certain cryptocurrencies on its network. so there are lots of different institutional daughters that are all of a sudden flooding into the crypto space. >> i'm actually going to be interviewing the ceo of mastercard tomorrow, michael nebock, about their crypto plans. but look it's one thing to invest in bitcoin as tesla and elon musk did. it's another to say maybe we'll accept bitcoin or cryptocurrency at a later date. it's something we are strongly looking at. how many of these companies do you think are actually going to make a commitment the size of tesla's? >> it's actually so great that you just asked that question because we just had a study come out from gartner that said that actually a majority of chief financial officers that were surveyed, it was a survey of 77 incentives, and only 5% said

that they were considering making a corporate sas investment in bitcoin this year. and a large majority said as of right now they're not considering to do that. this is not necessarily something again -- this is based on just one survey, if you speak to michael sailor from microstrategies, he says that there are a lot more demands, so i think it's really a narrative that we're going to have to wait and watch and see. some people are saying that it's a little bit too soon for more companies to jump in and do this, while others, they usually are the people who are more of these bitcoin evangelists as you could say who really believe bitcoin is the wave of the future who are saying there's going to be a surge in demand. right now, i think it's more of a wait-and-see to what kind of companies actually make the

commitment. >> and last quick question, we've got about 30 seconds left. michael saying it's going to hut $100,000. it seems like we're hearing from a lot of supporters and less from the doubters. are there folks out there? who are the folks out there saying this is speculation? w. >> that's a great question and you're right to say that there has been more people than not that are saying that you know, this is here to stay and that's because of the institutional adoption. it's because names like tesla and one river assets and blackrock are starting to dip their toes in this, and it's different from the 2017 rally because that was mostly driven by retail investors. now, finally bitcoin -- the main stream a bit more and that's why we're getting this slew of corporate endorsements essentially.

>> all right. well, we'll continue to follow your reporting, thank you so much for stopping by. coming up, what could life be like without google? well some in australia may soon find out. we'll take you there next. this is bloomberg. is bloomberg.

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." details on 13 filings from big investors are tumbling out this evening in one of the most notable coming from warren buffett's berkshire hathaway. we are seeing in the last few months of 2020, berkshire cut holdings of apple even though it was still valued at $120 billion at the end of last year. berkshire also added stakes in verizon and chevron. all right. turning to another story, what would life be like without google? that is what some australians

are asking, as the country proposes a new law that would require glenn facebook to pay news publishers. google has threatened to pull out of the country altogether is the law passes. facebook has threatened blue limit -- threatened to limit features. doctor, thank you for joining us. where are we at with talks? sounds like the australian government is closer to a possible agreement google and facebook at this point. guest: right. the government are debating it in parliament this week. what we heard this morning is that google has come up with a deal with nine who own a number of media outlets in australia. so google now has a deal with

nine. those are two of the major publishers in australia. they have still yet to make a deal with news limited. but this will make the government feel safer or more secure in making some concessions in the coming weeks. emily: is google pulling out of australia still an actual threat? belinda: they have backed down on that threat. i think when they realized that the government was going to make some amendments to the legislation. so, coming into this week where it is being debated in parliament, it looks far less likely that google will pull its search engine out of australia, and far more likely that they will get what they want. emily: so, there's some

interesting implications here in terms of how this new law or code could impact the negotiations with these companies worldwide. do you see this as something that could take off in other countries? belinda: certainly. lots of countries have tried to make google and facebook pay for news content. in france, france has managed to secure deals for some your publishers and google is doing it through its product called news showcase. so, this is a separate product from google search. what they have essentially done first and what they are doing in australia is to offer a second product for organic search results and say we will pay for this product on our terms and at

a price we consider fair. so it insulates google search, their main offering, in a way. emily: so, we have been following the reporting that seven west media, one of the biggest media businesses in australia, did strike a deal with google reportedly in the area of $23 million u.s. do you think that we're going to see more of these deals being struck? do you think some of the littler media outlets are going to be able to strike these deals with a giant as big as google? belinda: so far google have signed up a number of smaller media outlets in australia to their news showcase product. the conversation, a number of smaller publishers. the big news the last few days

is they have gotten these large and more powerful publishers like nine and seven west to sign up to their offering. emily: so, as i understand it, it is not just news, but also videos from all sorts of contributors that are shared across youtube that could be impacted. do you think that we could see the definition of who it supplies to, and what with the implication of that be? belinda: the government has been very clear, and originally they made the recommendations that were very clear that this would only apply to google and facebook for now. there is the potential going forward to sign up other monopoly or large platforms, but i do not think we will see a generalized widening of the code. it's really being written for

monopolies, for larger companies. emily: all right. interesting. it has been fascinating to watch this tug-of-war from this side of the pacific ocean. belinda barnet, senior lecturer at swinburne university of technology. appreciate your insight today. conservative social media site parler is returned to the internet for now. amazon's cloud unit pulled their web service after some users planned and supported the attack on the u.s. capitol on the site itself. the cloud -- will, give us the state of play. where is parler today and can new people join, essentially? will: thank you for having me. so, parler is back. that is the big headline here. but it is back intermittently. but the fact it has returned,

the fact it was able to get back on the internet is kind of an incredible feat. it's hard, as we have learned in the past few years, when sites get blocked out of big tech providers like aws, to get back online. the fact that they are back right now, even though it is intermittent and crashing here and there, the fact it is back shows that parler will probably be around for a while and will probably be a force in social media in conservative politics. emily: so, is it something that you believe will be a long-term solution? will: that is one of the big questions. can parler get to a state where the site is as usable as competitors in facebook and twitter? they are appealing to people who feel like the platforms like

facebook, twitter and youtube are censoring them, and they are century -- are essentially saying we are this alternative were you can say whatever you want, just about, as long as it is not illegal. so there are other websites that do that, although the audiences they attract are less palatable for your average person. so, that's kind of the big question with parler. emily: so, we're talking about this cloud hosting company supporting them, sky silk. do you see a company like this becoming a kind of haven for some of these more right-leaning sites that have been perhaps shunned by more traditional hosting providers? will: well, it is going to depend on the quality of their service. and for the most part, a lot of sites are not clicked off the platform. i mean -- not kicked off the platform.

aws kicked off parler because they received multiple warnings under content moderations were ignored. so it is a twofold question. one, will this company and others like it be able to provide a comparable service to keep them online, and two, willl there be much of a need for it? sites like parler that actually get banned are the exception. emily: talk to us about the status of getting back into the google and apple app stores. we heard tim cook talk about the importance of parler having very strong content moderation, or at least a plan. what is the latest on that? will: right. i have not seen or heard anything from either of the companies about getting back on, but i know there are people inside of parler that think and hope that they can get back on these platforms. if they are able to actually develop a kind of coherent

content moderation strategy that they are able to enforce, that aligns with apple and google's rules, in theory they should be able to get their apps back in the store. their first priority is making sure the service is functioning and works. that is probably their first order of business. but the fact that the site is somewhat online is of note. emily: meantime, president trump is still cut off from twitter. i spoke to the cfo of twitter last week who said there is no path to return. he is permanently banned. facebook, he has been suspended indefinitely. that decision going to an oversight board. but clearly the former still has a lot of power, if you look at the results of the impeachment trial and the way republican lawmakers voted. do you see president trump joining parler? or if not, a social network like it, if there is such a thing? will: yeah, it is a great

question, and i think it will go back to the reliability of how functional the site can be. trump put out a statement through his super pac which has been widely covered. so the president has various means in order to get his message out. and compared to what we are used to, i think the ex-president has been holding things closer to the vest than before. i think it is more of a question of what his messaging strategy will be in the future than whether he will use parler in particular. emily: all right. william turton, thank you so much for that update. of course we are going to continue to follow. coming up, in the crucible of the covid-19 crisis, a leader in biotech says genomic surveillance is central to the solution. the president and ceo joins us next for our work shifting series. this is bloomberg. ♪ this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: turning now to today's work shifting segment on getting people back to the office. physically speaking. in a recent op-ed for the economist, francis desouza, president and ceo of illumina, is calling for a global bio forced to track various mutations of covid and protect against future viruses. such a force could protect workforces in years to come. francis joins me now. explain exactly how this would work, in your vision. francis: one of the things that

really was an eye-opening moment for a lot of people both in public health as well as national defense, was how unprepared we were for this pandemic. as we think about both making our way out of this pandemic as well as preparing for the next one, it is becoming clear we need a surveillance network will do a better job up front in terms of identifying when an outbreak was happening and identifying the pathogen associated that outbreak, but also tracking how the pathogen is spreading, how it is mutating. because all those pieces of information have important impacts on our decisions around policy decisions like when and where should we do travel restrictions. what tools should we be using? are our diagnostics failing and need to change? do we need a different vaccine? we were called into wuhan in december of 2019 to work with the public health team there to identify the source of that

pneumonia of unknown origin. we were part of the team that published the first viral sequence in january of 2019. what was surprising was a few weeks later when in the u.s., it was uncovered we had that virus circulating in the u.s. for weeks and months and we did not even know. so that has huge implications and we need to do better next time. whether it is for another coronavirus or emerging antimicrobial resistance, or even bioterrorism. emily: so, i am curious about how much of life truly changes for good after this. we are vaccinated, in a new normal, do we still have that fear about going into public spaces? are we wearing masks forever on public transportation, for example? what do you see? francis: i think a lot of life goes back to normal, but some things are changed permanently. i think the recognition that there could be outbreaks like this and they could have such

significant consequences i think will change the way we do a lot of things. i talked to the fact that it will change the way we do surveillance. i think we will have a bio force put together, just like we have an air force, a space force we have created, in the u.k. there is a cyber force. we are going to have a global bio force. they will keep watching to see if they are any outbreaks happening. we are going to have public policy much more and better informed on the information about those outbreaks to make decisions around travel. in terms of our day-to-day life, i think that we do get back to normal and back to work. some things will change. and i think it may even happen with the flu. i think mask wearing will be more de-stigmatized and people will wear that more frequently, even if there is not a flu outbreak. i think the nature of work and how we work is going to change. we have invented a new era of vaccines.

these mnra vaccines are truly fantastic. the ones we saw are the first two, but i think there is a long list of potential vaccines behind them, all because of this new era of the genome. i think surveillance is going to change profoundly. and i think how we live and work will be changed. emily: so, let's talk about how you are handling your own workforce. obviously i know investors are very excited about your genome sequencing products, and you just had a great quarter. how are you making decisions about when to bring your own employees back to the office? francis: we are deemed as an essential service because the tools we provide are used in fighting the pandemic, so we are part of the global surveillance infrastructure here in the u.s. and the u.k. and in australia and 130 countries around the world. so about one third of our

workforce today and throughout the pandemic has been coming into work to help build the machines and reagents and consumables to support our customers. some are fighting the pandemic, we have another set of customers who work in cancer treatment. we are matching cancer patients with the right therapies. our tests are also used to help pregnant mothers assess the health of their babies. we are also used to diagnose people who have genetic diseases. so all of those activities needed to carry on through the pandemic, about a third of our workforce, comes in every day. we have had to reconfigure our workspaces so that we can maintain social distancing. we have thermal scanners. we have reconfigured our work environment so that people can work safely, and about two thirds of our workforce is able to work from home, and so they do so. to your point, we have been able to keep the business going through the pandemic. in q4 we just reported last week, we had a record quarter on a number of fronts.

we had record revenues, record orders coming in, we also had record shipments of our instruments, and the second-highest quarter ever. our customers, hospitals, cancer centers, academic institutions, are still finding a way to get to work and provide those essential services to patients around the world. emily: meantime, obviously we're seeing stocks like yours on the rise, and lots of money flowing into tech, biotech. are you at all concerned about entering bubble territory when we look at this from a market perspective? francis: yeah. i think if we look at biotech specifically, i think we truly are entering sort of a pretty important area in terms of an era of the genome. i think we are still in the very, very early stages of the impact genomics will have on human health.

although the use of genomic testing can really help match cancer patients to better therapies, it's still less than 10% in a traded in terms of the -- 10% penetrated in terms of the overall market. in more severe cases, today they go on this diagnostic odyssey for seven to nine years and many invasive tests. a certain number of families go bankrupt because of the costs associated with that. the alternative is if you days after birth you can do a whole genome sequence, and in 50% of the cases you get a diagnosis right away. and yet because that test is so new, it is only deployed in a very low percentage of patients. we are in the early stages of understanding. there is a lot of research to be done about genomics, but even where we do understand the clinical implications, we are still in the very early stages of clinical adoption.

so i can understand why investors are excited about the potential and why we have seen some growth in the investment in this category. emily: so you think a bio force is necessary, but how likely is it, given how slow things are to change in washington? francis: i think we have maybe in the last year seen a decades-worth of excel or ration happen in -- of acceleration happen. i think we will absolutely have some version of a bio force, because today we are already starting to see it rolled out. not in a hugely coordinated way, but you have seen countries realize the importance of doing this in terms of how the virus is mutating in their environment. countries like the u.k. are a leader in this. today they sequence something like 10% of all infected patients. they were the earliest to call out the virus was mutating. now you have seen a whole set of

other countries follow. you have a national surveillance network being set up in australia. the eu commission the last couple of weeks have asked its member countries to stand up surveillance networks and sequence about 10% of all infected patients. we're behind in the u.s., we do about 0.3%, 0.4% of all patients sequenced. but they are laying out a strategy to increase that and putting a lot of funding to support that. we are also seeing support networks being set up in latin america. we have donated some to africa to make sure this is a global network. so we will have a global surveillance network set up. today it will be set up in batches, and then leadership needed at the national level, which is starting to happen, but at a global level we will need cooperation to align on things like data standards, where the sharing should happen. we also need to make it safe for

countries to share the data, so that they don't get penalized with restrictions. so there is work to be done but it is happening and has accentuated -- accelerated a lot in the last year. emily: cooperation sounds so simple but it is often hard to come by. francis desouza, thank you so much for joining us. more of "bloomberg technology" coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪ s bloomberg. ♪

emily: amazon says it has closed facilities in arkansas, tennessee, texas, indiana, and kentucky because of the harsh weather that continues to grip parts of the southern united states. ice, snow, and arctic temperatures have plunged texas in particular into a crisis that has left nearly 5 million people without fire, power. oil refineries and shale wells

still shut down. the deep-freeze continuing until at least wednesday. we are going to continue to cover this story as it unfolds and stay tuned to bloomberg television for the very latest. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪ g. ♪

>> a very good morning. we are counting down to asia's major market open. shery: welcome to daybreak asia. the top stories, energy prices rise again as the big freeze cuts u.s. daily oil production by 3.5 million barrels. occidental declares a force majeure as output plunges as much as 65%. asia looks set to gain after