♪ emily: i am emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, we will talk to microsoft cofounder bill gates about his new book, "how to avoid climate disaster. how tech can help solve the biggest problem the world has ever faced." plus, his thoughts on the bitcoin mania. and the grim toll that covid has

taken around the world and at home. expected to testify on capitol hill. top execs from solarwinds, fireeye, and microsoft. we will have the latest. and a bumpy monday for bitcoin. the cryptocurrency falls below $50,000 for the first time after elon musk says that prices seem high. those stories in a moment, but first, the tech sector dragging the nasdaq through a three week low. walk us through the day. >> it looks like a risk off session. look under the hood and you will see those tech major averages. microsoft, apple, tesla. looking at the chart in front of you, the index in front of you, the nasdaq 100 is taking it on the chin by the most in three weeks. all of those grouped together. flip up the board and i want to take a look at the semiconductor index.

taking a look at a 20 dhr and you will really see that you have started to pare back some of those gains. -- gains that you saw it earlier this month. the biden administration helping out, getting a little bit of a reality check. you can look at some of the individual stock stories. as much as 19% for churchill capital, a spac that was reported to go public with lucid motors as soon this week. one of our reporters, ed ludlow. elon musk tweeting the prices of bitcoin. tesla really taking a hit. they seem a little bit high. that tweet itself is taking a hit. a quick nod to those stay-at-home stocks. zoom and peloton taking a bit of a head as well. -- hit as well.

let's go to that bitcoin chart. look at what it is doing. coming off a record high after -- record high of $50,000 after elon musk tweeted that tweet that the prices seem a little high. it shows the power of what one man's tweet can do. emily: all right, thank you so much for walking us through that. i want to stick with bitcoin, again, falling as much as 17%. elon musk tweeting his concern that the world's largest cryptocurrency has risen too far too fast. katie, is elon's tweet the only reason that we saw this slide, or was there something else going on here? katie: it's tough to really ever know with bitcoin, it's such a volatile asset. throwing cold water on the rally was a factor in why we had a dramatic drop. elon musk tweeted that prices in bitcoin and ether seemed high. bitcoin proceeded to hit another record on sunday, just below

$59,000 a coin before dropping today. the thought is that bitcoin trading on the weekend is primarily individuals and day traders, institutional traders tend to follow traditional market hours. monday morning would be the first chance that they would have to react to musk's tweet. that could explain the delayed reaction. another theory that we heard from janet yellen today, she says that bitcoin is an inefficient way of conducting transactions. that could be denting appetite in addition to elon musk's tweet. emily: what does bitcoin following -- falling mean for tesla? katie: that is the interesting part of the story. musk's tweets are always a little bit bizarre.

but this one especially so, since tesla now has a business reason for wanting bitcoin to continue to move higher. they made waves earlier this month after announcing that they purchased $1.5 billion of bitcoin, following the likes of microstrategy, for example. that endorsement alone from tesla was a big reason why bitcoin is still up 58% in february, even with today's drop. given that the company now has bitcoin on their balance sheet, you would think it would be in their interest for it to rally but again, we are talking about elon musk here. he has done things like this before. he tweeted in may that they were -- that tesla's shares were too high. it is not out of the ordinary for musk to tweet something like this. emily: all right, bloomberg's katie gray failed -- katie gre

field, the story is not over. i will ask bill gates about this later in the show. that interview with microsoft co-owner, bill gates. how tech can solve the biggest problem the world has ever faced. his new book, how to avoid a climate disaster. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ when you switch to xfinity mobile, you're choosing to get connected to the most reliable network nationwide, now with 5g included. discover how to save up to $300 a year with shared data starting at $15 a month, or get the lowest price for one line of unlimited. come into your local xfinity store to make the most of your mobile experience. you can shop the latest phones, bring your own device, or trade in for extra savings. stop in or book an appointment to shop safely with peace of mind at your local xfinity store.

♪ emily: microsoft cofounder bill gates is a self-described optimist. and probably nowhere more is optimism needed than when confronting the grim reality of climate change. his new book offers practical

advice and describes how technology can be deployed to fight. i sat down with bill gates and -- bill gates, both of optimist and realist, and asked how much worse than the pandemic climate change could be. bill: the deaths will just go up over time if you get more heat waves, forest fires, and most importantly, the inability to go outdoors and do farming anywhere near the equator. it will get worse and worse. the temperature rise is based on the total human amount of co2 that we put into the atmosphere. certainly by the end of the century, you will have your have permanent die outs of these important ecosystems. no beach will be around. there will not be a simple solution like a vaccine to get

out of this thing, because it is the entire industrial economy responsible for these emissions. emily: now, you have no choice other than to get to zero. i know you are optimist and you say it will be hard, but i want to hear from bill gates, the realist. is there a percentage that you can give me? bill: unless the younger generation adopts this as the moral cause important to them beyond their individual success, and they are loud about that in all the rich countries, unless we have them putting it first on the agenda, then i don't think we will meet 2050. i do see signs that it is coming into place. what could be more important than improving the livability of the earth and these natural

ecosystems? my rule is to say yes, this goal is a good one, but hard. talk about how to accelerate innovation and make people realize that because we are trying to get to zero, it is every sector of the mission. there has been a tendency to focus on two of the five, electricity and transport, but kind of ignore agriculture and buildings, then manufacturing, including cement and steel. it is a dose of realism for anybody who thought it was easy. but also, a roadmap to help people who don't think it's possible to see that it is possible. emily: you mentioned you 2050. many people say we have nine years left. they said we had so many years left back in 2009. bill: 2050 is probably the soonest that we could get emissions near to zero.

the more you heat up the temperature, the more you get sea level rise. it is bad when it warms up. -- it is bad the more it warms up. for subsistence farmers, they are already seeing it. we see events in the u.s. including, you know, weirdly, because they call it warming, the ability of cold fronts to come in and cause disaster. all of these things become more likely. i think that is creating an awareness. i wish that we could get it done before 2050. there is just too much to replace. the next 10 years, we have to do a lot of invention. when you are talking about all kinds of steel and cement factories, scaling up deployment, globally, will take the next 20 years. emily: let's talk about the inventions.

you have been looking for solutions that have scale and reliability. where should investors be placing their bets right now? bill: this will change a lot of industries. the car industry. people like gm saying after 2035, they will make -- they won't make gasoline cars. all of these manufacturing businesses will have to change their processes. i have put about $2 billion in to a variety of things. both indirectly and directly through ventures that i created, trying to make sure that there is high risk capital for every area of the mission. the failure rate will be fairly high. there is promising work. we talk about the green premium, which is the extra cost to buya

a ton of green cement versus regular. green premiums are very high. that is actually the best indication that the world will be able to achieve this very ambitious goal. you can make reductions and not solve the hard parts. we need all of the parts. emily: so much of the problem involves big things, as you pointed out, like steel, cement and fertilizer. i wonder how much individuals and individual decisions really matter. if i stopped eating burgers, which you pointed out are a big carbon corporate, -- culprit, would that make a difference? bill: yes.

your carbon footprint would go down if you do not eat meat. one way is to be a customer, some portion of the time with these new ways of making ground beef like these companies -- that these companies like impossible and beyond meat are doing. as demand goes up, they scale up their factories, improve the quality and get the price to come down. that demand is catalytic because we are trying to re-create what we saw with solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. the volume actually brought the cost down. for the passenger car, within 10-15 years, all of these improvements will mean the green premium, what you give up with an electric car and the tax credit, that will go all the way to zero. the market will be green without the government having to impose regulations or tax credits. those things are key to help us get to that end state.

emily: now, we know you love burgers. i am just curious, what do you do when you get a craving? how often can you just not resist and you just eat a good, old-fashioned burger? bill: about 50% of the time when i have a burger, it is one that is made with impossible foods or beyond meat. they are essentially made with zero greenhouse gas emissions. they improve their products, and they are quite good. i recommend that people try those. i will get to the point that i am 100% buying those burgers. i am also spending money on direct or capture and other things to offset my carbon footprint, which is very high because of the way that i travel, and i have more than one house. i am, in a sense, one of the

most guilty, but i am pioneering offsets that are more honest. emily: you are planning to give meat up 100%? bill: the cow based meat -- some people are trying to change the cow's diet or capture the methane. there is a lot of ingenuity, but the protein-based approaches have surprised me by how far they have come in. when they have been offered in burger chains, the demand has been quite good. emily: some of the critics said you do not focus on the political obstacles enough when it comes to climate change. you are solely focusing on technology. if there is one thing that the biden administration could do to solve this faster, what would that one thing be? -- faster, that would really make a difference, what would that one thing be?

bill: the real item to drive innovation would be r&d funded by the government. the u.s. has done a brilliant job with the national institute of health, which has driven breakthroughs and creates private companies that take that and offer products the u.s. and the world. the energy r&d budget is way too small. that has to go up dramatically. -- too small, well below the health levels. that has to go up dramatically. some of the tax credits to help the new product categories like green steel and energy storage, -- and cement or energy storage, we need to apply that tactic there. the government is a big purchaser. they can buy more of these green products. and, you know, so we really need to get going, and push the innovation and push the demand side for those innovations. emily: we just saw a major shock to the electric grid in texas.

a lot of deaths. you mentioned the energy plan should have been weatherproof. what changes should we be making now before this happens again? bill: there is two things the texas event shows and one thing it doesn't. it does not show that renewables were the problem in that case. there were shutdowns. the two things it does show are that we are going to have more extreme events. we need to be ready for that. we need to invest in resilience. it is fair to say that if you do not build transmission and storage and some nuclear, which is not weather dependent, you are going to have a lack of reliability when there is tough weather. the politics of permitting transmission lines, you know, we

need to come up with a way to make that more attractive. there is a legitimate issue of reliability. although, it wasn't the problem in this case. emily: your fellow tech titans like jeff bezos and elon musk -- jeff bezos and mark zuckerberg and elon musk are all tackling different elements of the climate crisis. i'm wondering if you should all join forces, like the climate avengers, to really take this on. bill: elon -- tesla pioneered the electric car market, which is great. his challenge for direct capture will be good. jeff bezos has made a gigantic commitment with his climate fund. and actually, i am talking to him. we will end up doing some things in partnership. and we will at least see, understand what the other one is up to. i agree, as we get more people engaged, figuring out, what is the path for innovation? both supply and in demand

innovation? we should brainstorm more. our individual ideas are part of the strength of crazy entrepreneurs working on this problem. emily: how might we see you partnering with jeff bezos? bill: she has -- he has funded a lot of the key organizations. he is part of breakthrough energy ventures. how you create a demand side, even in the early stages, where the green premium is high, that scenario, where we need something. all the missing pieces -- we talked about it as being catalytic in nature. we want to bring companies and governments in on that. having a strong base of philanthropic capital to get it started. -- started will be important. emily: jeff bezos has made that $10 billion commitment, but the amazon cardboard boxes and the

trucks for delivery. shouldn't a company as innovative as amazon be able to figure something like that out? you cannot -- bill: you cannot put every societal problem on amazon. they are part of the economy, delivering goods. their scope for emissions is large. there is jeff, as an individual, where that 10 billion is even more than i have spent. i have spent a few billion and i will spend a few billion more in the years ahead. in both cases, i think you will see thoughtful ways of spending the money, but this requires all of society to get engaged. it is not just one intervention or one company that can fix this. emily: the first part of my interview with bill gates there.

part two coming up later, including his thoughts on the covid-19 pandemic, vaccines, and even bitcoin. much more coming up on "bloomberg technology." this is bloomberg. (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 to help you maintain comfortable, correct form. that means better results in less time. and there are over 20 exercises to choose from. get gym results at home. no expensive machines, no expensive memberships. go to aerotrainer.com to get yours now.

♪ emily: some tech related stories we are following this hour. media channel discovery saying its discovery plus streaming service has passed 11 million customers. more than 50 original programs and a library of over 55,000 episodes aired. twitter is on a roll. a couple of months ago, it permanently banned president trump from its service. that sent shares below where they opened when they went public. the stock is now up 33% this year.

last week, it set a share price record. and coming up, microsoft cofounder bill gates shares his take on tesla, bitcoin and the 500,000 covid deaths in the u.s. -- in the united states. all of that, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in san francisco. in his new book, bill gates says technological innovation is the only solution to the impending disaster, but one could argue that technology is standing in the way, given how social media perpetuates the misinformation that climate change is a hoax. in the second part of our interview, gates addresses the responsibility of companies like facebook, twitter, tesla, bitcoin, the pandemic and more. bill: in the case of the pandemic, there are a lot of crazy conspiracy things about that. you know, it is widespread and

affecting mask use and openness to vaccination. climate, yes, we are probably likely to get that, particularly as we succeed in getting government to have aggressive policies. understanding why some people do not see this problem or feel a need to deny the problem -- we have to be very thoughtful about who they will trust to be convinced. who can go out and look at coral reefs or look at the heatwave, just look at the model it shows. the beaches and lots of places will be gone. because this is a multidimensional task, being shrill may not be the way to get it going. that is the goal of the book is

to get people talking about wow, if we are going to commit, there should be a real plan, not just things that seem important. which is a fine thing to do, if people feel like that, but to actually reduce the emissions, you have to change the way you make steel. there is no metric or divestment or blocking traffic that will get rid of those. emily: you have never wanted to pick up the phone and call mark zuckerberg to say, hey, this is really slowing me down? bill: mark, he has to kind of maintain an open platform. on vaccine things, they have stepped up. i have a good dialogue with him. i think he has been put in a

tough position by the government rules to let debate continue while eliminating the extreme stuff that drives people into a sort of non-reality position. how do you distinguish those things? and who is supposed to do that when you have millions of messages an hour? emily: you recently said that trump should and eventually will get let back onto twitter. why support that when he spreads misinformation about things like climate and the vaccine, which you care about? bill: there is a question about whether labeling things is better. i mean, those messages are likely to show up somewhere. it's a country with a first amendment, and so, do you want to have one party have one social network and one party have another social network? unlike climate, where i am in talking to the best scientists.

and funding it. the way that we draw the boundaries on social networks, i do not have that solution, but i know that we need smart people at facebook and universities, trying to say, how do you draw the line there? i have not seen a proposal where you go wow, it is as open as it needs to be and the crazy stuff goes away. i look at every idea. this is a societal challenge. emily: while you are pouring money into vaccines, some of your peers are pouring money into rockets. is this really what's going to save the human race? bill: i think that we should preserve this planet and make it hospitable to human life.

the idea of mars or even artificial planets, you know, it is great that other people are doing that, but i do not see that as part of the solution. i do not think i am missing something there. when you talk about elon musk or jeff bezos, they are in the climate game in a constructive way, so i am glad that they are putting some of their resources in this direction. emily: speaking of e line, you said that we need hundreds of elon musk's. with tesla's expansion in places like china and india, that is only going to increase their carbon footprint. should they be more upfront about that? bill: tesla reduces your carbon footprint. if they get an electric car, as we convert the electric generation to be zero emissions, is one of the few categories

that we see a path to zero. it is only about 7% of emissions that come from passenger cars globally. you cannot declare victory there, but as the cost comes down and the range goes up, the charge points are more numerous, you will feel like a gasoline car is less maintenance, quieter -- the market will eventually take care of this. you will not need regulations, even though they have been used, including a tax credit, to get the volume up to get to that point. every category needs to go through that process, bringing its green premium down dramatically. emily: now, i understand you own a porsche electric car yourself. elon has in the past claimed you shorted tesla and i wonder if

there is any truth to that. bill: i think tesla is an amazing company. i wish i owned -- been more on the long side. it is great and i have a lot of relatives who on tesla's -- own teslas that i have helped buy for them. nothing but positive thoughts for tesla and its role. emily: i am curious about your thoughts here. tesla can potentially make more money from its bitcoin investment then profits from electric cars in all of 2020. what is your take on that? what is your bitcoin take? and the fact that the price can just go up or down based on a simple tweet from him? bill: elon has tons of money and he is very sophisticated, so i do not worry that his bitcoin will randomly go up or down. i think people get bought into these manias, who may not have

as much money to spare. so, i am not bullish on bitcoin. my general thought would be, if you have less money than elon, you should probably watch out. emily: why aren't you bullish on bitcoin? bill: look, there are things we invest in in society that produce output. bitcoin happens to use a lot of energy. it happens to promotes anonymous transactions, they are not reversible transactions. the gates foundation does a lot in terms of digital currency, but those are things where you can see who is making the transaction. digital money is a good thing, and there is a different approach that is local currency and attributed and deals with all the money laundering and terrorism type regulations and

gives you the convenience and low cost of transaction. our foundation is very proud that in the pandemic, and a lot of the countries we funded to do this were able to get money out to their citizens, very -- citizens very efficiently. that is one thing it is not. it does not have the visibility of bitcoin, but the move towards digital money we are engaged in is a super positive thing that we will eventually get to even the poorest countries. emily: let's talk about the pandemic, obviously your other biggest focus aside from climate change. the u.s. just hit 500,000 deaths. how does that number strike you? bill: it is unbelievable. it is more than any war that we have been in, except the civil war. it has touched almost everybody.

we count on government to, both before something bad happens and after, to protect us. it did not work in this case. hopefully, it is a lesson going forward about investments in global health that the u.s. and u.s. cooperating with other countries needs to get done to get ready for the next pandemic. emily: how concerned are you about the new variants and vaccines keeping up? bill: well, amazingly, our foundation was starting -- studying trials in south africa when the variant showed up, so we were able to gather detailed data showing that they all had some beneficial effect, but particularly novavax and johnson & johnson. even though they worked a little less well, they were still a great tool there. weirdly, the u.s. did not sequence enough to see the variants, like the u.k., and

even what we funded in south africa is being remedied. just another miscue by the country that should have done the best job. we will get on top of the variants. but we might need to look at how quickly they could get it done. it will add to the transmission in deaths, but if we get vaccination rates up by a month or two. emily: are pfizer, moderna and johnson & johnson doing enough to prioritize populations in developing countries? and what is the ideal shot for the developing world? bill: the private sector, including those three companies, did a fantastic job. we have been backing mrna approach for about a decade now. it is not mature. you cannot scale it up as much as we would like. it is not cheap. vaccines three through five can be scaled up through indian

factories, to a higher degree. for developing countries, those three and sending the right ones to the right place will be most of the solution, not to take away from anything that pfizer, who funded its work, or moderna did, but those were mostly land in rich countries. emily: what are the biggest headwinds you see in the vaccine manufacturing process? bill: every day, there is a complex discussion about, do we have enough glass vials? do we have all these different ingredients that come from different countries? i do think some of the, you know, vaccine nationalism, where people are trying to look good in their own country by coming -- by somewhat blocking things going around -- there is huge downside in that. we need to get the vaccines out in large numbers.

we need to end this epidemic globally. from the beginning, the foundation has included not only moving faster but this equity question. over the next four to five months, the world can behave well. it is mostly governments now that are limiting how much we can help countries that do not have vaccine factories. emily: my conversation there with bill gates. -- bill gates, cofounder -- founder of microsoft, cofounder of the bill and melinda gates foundation. you can catch the full interview at bloomberg.com. also remember, check out his new book, "how to avoid a climate disaster. the solutions we have and the breakthroughs that we need." coming up, a lab of the future, where drug discovery can be done from a coffee shop. we will speak to the ceo of a

startup pioneer in robotic labs in the cloud. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: in the age of remote work and social distancing, scientists can now conduct research experiments from anywhere, using a fully automated robotic lab. the silicon valley startup aims to transform the traditional techniques that require researchers to work in the lab itself. it says it's remote lab can shorten the drug discovery process and allow scientists to collaborate virtually around the world. joining us to discuss, ceo mark fisher.

tell us a little bit about how the technology works. mark: we are excited to have a platform that is a foundational seachange for the future of wi-fi discovery. science needs to be pushed more towards information science. in order to do that, you need the ability to generate a lot of data with high fidelity. to accomplish that, we have created a platform representing over 200 instruments in two locations. with the ability to run 100,000 tests a day that encompass the full-scale capabilities of making compounds and chemistry, and rapidly testing those compounds in order to accelerate discovery. when you combine that with the promise -- sorry. go ahead. emily: what kind of demand has

your technology seen in the midst of the pandemic and remote work demand? mark: it has really escalated. they have increased about 400% and we are expecting double sales, year-over-year. we have had a substantial increase in the kinds of transactions that people are interested in doing on the platform. by way of example, the department of energy is about to kick off a project with us through the cares act that ties together artificial intelligence, designing drugs for covid on our test platform to drive the validity and approach for what we are doing today and future discoveries and for future pandemics. emily: what are the challenges of not having scientists directly in the lab, or the limitations? mark: scientists do not really need to be there.

what they really need to have is the data. in order to get the data, we have the full ability to use robots and mechanization, which is common across our industry. -- across all other industries. and allowing scientists the ability to have high reproducibility of data sets. everything has to follow the computer code behind that. what that means in turn is that scientists can still observe experiments online and track and watch it to make sure nothing is going astray. but at the same time, they have a high degree of confidence that they are getting clean data. emily: interesting. the ceo of stratios, mark fisher, thank you so much for sharing your technology with us. lawmakers preparing for the first major hearing into one of the biggest cyber incidents in

the u.s. we will bring you our interview with mark warner, chair of the senate intelligence committee, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: top executives from solarwinds, microsoft and fireeye are set to testify in the first major congressional hearing following a massive russian breach of the federal government. mark warner, chair of the senate intelligence committee, spoke earlier with bloomberg's top washington correspondent, kevin cirilli. sen. warner: we have seen well-known attacks over the last number of years. we saw the sony hack, we saw the hack by the chinese into our government files. we saw what appeared to be a chinese hack into equifax. these were giant sucking information out of individualized enterprises,

again, closer to classic espionage. albeit, for malicious purposes. the fact that this went fully into the supply chain, that this could have been passed into any enterprise like a daisychained effect really raises this attack to a different level of seriousness. the fact that the adversary did not use it to create multiple trapdoors, back to your analogy. we were lucky. they got in without us seeing them. and they had the possibility of doing that. one of the things that we have also found that has been in the public press already is that the adversary was able to generate this attack from domestic servers. in the past, we have some of the best cyber assets in the world, in the nsa and at cyber command. our rules do not allow those -- do not let those enterprises

touch domestic assets. if the bad guys can figure out -- we cannot bring our a-team, if we can launch this from a domestic server. then there is no mandatory requirement for private companies, or for that matter, the public enterprises and public agencies, to report that attack to any responsible party. we are extraordinarily vulnerable. in this particular case, but for the forward leaning actions of the private company fireeye doing the right thing, we could potentially be still in the dark. thank goodness that they came forward. starting in december, we started to try to remedy this, but we are still three months in. while we have got a pretty good handle on how extensive this was, we do not have it 100% buttoned-down. kevin: here we are in washington debating a stimulus, talks starting to look into infrastructure. there is chatter that digital

infrastructure should be included in that. you mentioned at the start of the interview that everyone expects for countries to participate and partake in some type of espionage for their own national security interest. we are the most developed country, technologically, on the planet. and yet, i am struck by an analogy that i grew up with, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. does our capability, does our strength in cyber and digital infrastructure in this situation make us more vulnerable? sen. warner: kevin, it does. the fact that we are more reliant on the technology makes us more vulnerable. in many ways, it is one of the reasons why we have been reluctant to punch back. and frankly, gave russia, china and other first-tier

adversaries kind of a running field, where they could attack us with almost impunity. we have done very little to respond to equifax. we still do not have high enough responsibility standards for the private sector companies. this is how the living in a glass house analogy makes sense. this is not going away. and this asymmetric type battle is one of the reasons why we need to create, i think not only for ourselves, but for our partners and allies, something the last administration was loath to do, we knew to create these -- need to create these international standards that say, if the bad guys come in and attack this broadly in the supply chain, because other countries were affected with solarwinds, there needs to be, potentially, a stronger response, not just from us, but from the international community at large. emily: senator mark warner there

with kevin cirilli. of course, we will be following that hearing on tuesday throughout the day. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. i am emily chang in san francisco. bloomberg daybreak: asia is coming up next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ yousef: this is "bloomberg daybreak: middle east." manus: hsbc says it is cautiously optimistic for 2021 after profits beat estimates for the fourth quarter. we hear from ewen stevenson this hour. yousef: the white house chief economic advisor tells bloomberg it is risk. manus: