>> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this is "bloomberg technology" with emily chang. ♪ emily: i am emily chang, and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, reckless. why russian president vladimir putin is being accused of nuclear terrorism. we bring you the latest from the white house. plus, how the war is affecting

tech employees on both sides, from ukraine, and russia. we will talk to two tech employees on the crowd. and how crypto exchanges are navigating the crisis and sanctions. we will get the view from the crack and ceo, jesse powell. all that in a moment. first we want to look at the market. stocks are falling where the dollar crimes. the risk in the global markets as credits. kriti gupta has more. kriti: a really risk-off tone in the markets, it is not letting up anytime soon. the s&p 500 closing 0.8%. even the bid for tech not working. specifically when it comes to commodities, at a time when inflation is already surging, what does that mean for things like food and oil prices? at what point does that start to eat into the consumer spending ability? those concerns are showing up into where people are putting money.

they are fleeing to the dollar, to gold, even into treasuries in the face of a hawkish federal reserve. 11 --basis-point move in the 10-year yield. the real take away is that it is a risk-off time in the market. doesn't seem like it is letting up anytime soon. emily: thank you for that quick update. president putin now being pronounced for his, quote, "recklessness," after russian forces attacked a nuclear plant. foreign ministers meeting in brussels condemned what he described as an assault on the zaporizhzia facility in southeastern ukraine, europe's largest nuclear power plant. annmarie hordern joins us from the white house. we know president biden spoke with president zelensky about this. what is the administration's position of what is happening here? annmarie: president biden was on the phone with president zelensky when that was happening.

zaporizhzia, the biggest nuclear power plant in europe, it makes up 20% of ukraine's electricity. immediately they were imploring russia to pull back from that site. i spoke to the i.a.e.a. director-general just hours before this happened, and he was aware of what was going on on site. he said it was almost face-to-face contact between the russian military as well as the locals that were outside of this massive facility. then of course at night we saw the fire, seems like it was just at a training building and no new active materials leaked. the concern has certainly heightened the tension. should also note, this is the first time ever that a country being invaded has a vast amount of nuclear power plants, and this is why the world was on edge today. emily: on edge, indeed. we also want to get an update on the oil situation. obviously, there are increasing calls from congress to act.

the white house continues to insist they don't want to disrupt the global supply of oil, especially coming from russia. what is the fittest on this? annmarie: speaker pelosi came out saying, ban it now. the white house is considering banning russian crude imports. we should note it is relatively small, pure crude is about 3%. but when you start to factor in other petrochemicals and fossil fewer products, it is about 8%. when you look at the rankings, russia is third behind canada and mexico and ahead of its key ally in the gulf, saudi arabia, so this would be very symbolic, and also they are getting a lot of political pressure. but by and large, you are right they have said for weeks that yes, energy was on the table. but just yesterday, jen psaki, the press secretary, said

strategically he doesn't make sense because there would be a spike in price, and that is exactly what we are seeing in the market. this administration is dealing with high inflation said anything to try to quell the oil prices will be impacted. emily: annmarie hordern at the white house, thank you as always. i want to dive deeper into the situation following the nuclear power plant being hit. i want to bring in mark nelson, managing director at radiant energy, and an expert on nuclear power. thank you for joining us. there has been misinformation about this and a lot of fear. i want to hear your version of what happened at this nuclear power plant, and the status of it today. mark: thanks, emily. there was a lot of fear. some of what i will say about the timeline is definitely hindsight, we know about what happened. the plant -- we know that it is in operation with one out of the

six units. but what occurred last night, you could say it was the peak in three days of escalating interactions between the russian forces and very angry locals. the plant is located in a city named "energy's gift." the locals are very proud of their plant and didn't want to give it up. there appears to have been some clash between russian forces and people outside of the plant, outside of the, you might say the nuclear-safety area of the plant. there was a very bright light, what looked like crowd-dispersant munitions, and later, video of some armaments found on the un-guarded or un- armored crosswalks. what occurred was a fire that we can see in the video. in the employee training center.

the firefighters put it out. plant remained in operation, one of the six reactors on, it is 60% power and when, the sun came up, we heard news from the iaea that they had been in contact with the professional operators and the plant in the morning was in russian control. emily: there was information from you couldn't officials calling this dangerous, saying that if it does, it could 8:10's chernobyl. was that accurate? how dangerous how was -- how dangerous was this? mark: that was inaccurate. these plants cannot go off like chernobyl. they are not 1x chernobyl. chernobyl was radically different, with no containment zone. these plants are small reactors inside a one-meter thick concrete, very strong and thick

reinforced steel rebar. so it was never going to go off, that was always follows. and if there is any nation in the world that would understand the difference between chernobyl and the reactor that they rely on everyday, it would ukraine. i don't want to question the motives, but it seems grossly irresponsible from my perspective, and certainly that was the headline that captured people's attention. i fielded inquiries from young parents historically wondering about their child as far away as sweden, and i have had to say no, fouls, that's wrong. i have had to walk people through the steps of how this facility is not in anyway, shape or form, capable of doing 10x or 1x chernobyl. emily: so what is the danger if russia captures the power plant. how dangerous is it? what should we be worried about?

mark: each of the plant has a valuable up to city production in the tens of billions of dollars over the next few years. so it is not clear why russian would intentionally damage the plants that they operate over the border in their country. it is not clear what they would try to damage. let's look at what the safety situation would be if something happened. well, first of all, the heavy concrete dorms trap anything that goes wrong inside. very intense bombardment, more than crashing jet planes. they can survive that easily. something immense would have had to happen to cause those things to event. these are not the same reactors like in fukushima. what would have had to happen would be a complete loss of off-site power, say a complete

grid collapse, or transmission lines shutdown, or if the plant was disconnected -- that would lead to intermediate shutdown of the plant. it would lead to an automatic shutdown of the sensors. after the shutdown, emergency safety procedures would come on. this equipment would protect the plant unless that itself were specifically targeted and interfered with. so there are many defenses from the smallest inside of the reactor, all the way out, increasingly massive and strong to survive just about anything, and that is what we would have almost certainly seen in this case if there had been direct bombardment. emily: ok, we will be watching what happens next and how russian forces approach these nuclear power plants. mark nelson, thank you so much

for putting it in perspective for us good managing director at radiant energy. coming up, as the war in ukraine rages, could russia soon impose martial law? we will talk with tech workers, one with employees on both sides of this fight, and one who is grappling with what is going on in her home country of russia,. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: as we continue to cover the situation in ukraine, we are talking to tech leaders and employees where it is hitting closest to home. today we bring you the stories of mathias klenk, cto of

passbase, who is working around-the-clock to help employees who have fled ukraine. also with us is inessa mir, product designer at zalando, russian citizen who emigrated to germany back in august, but still has family and friends in russia. thank you both for joining us. inessa, you decided to leave russia months ago when he felt the situation escalating. your parents and friends are still there. how are you doing, and how are they doing? inessa: thank you for asking. it has been complicated, of course. i hope for the best, that is what i can say. emily: president putin we are hearing, could soon declare martial law. is already cracking down on the media. this means the borders could be closed, it could be more difficult to protest, illegal to protest. i know one of your friends, i

believe, was arrested for protesting. inessa: yes. emily: what do you think about all of this? inessa: it is awful. it is just awful. i cannot believe this situation is happening. we all in the country just missed the point where things get so bad and so wrong. emily: mathias, you have both ukrainian and russian employees, ukrainian employees who are still in the country, and russian employees who have left. how are you navigating all of this, and the challenges both employees are facing? mathias: it is, of course, a very tough situation. what we are trying to do is really try to support our team members with support and safety. some of these team members,

since their currency got devalued, basically all of their life savings are basically gone, so we are working with them on ensuring that they can still get their salary in dollars. some of their financial institutions now under sanctions. helping them and providing them safety. at the same time we are working with the ukrainians and russians in helping them relocate if they want that. some of them cannot, especially the ones in ukraine, they are basically sent back at the border and almost called to arms and told that they have to fight. of course, it is a very tough situation for them as well. what we are trying to do is help them at least to stay and find a location where they can work from and see that they can have access to internet and just trying to somehow manage the situation. emily: you are a young startup.

are you saying that these employees are still working, still quoting, still doing their jobs in the middle of the war? mathias: yes. it is pretty much insane. about 30% of our engineering team is either russian or ukrainian, and you can imagine probably that productivity is far more than 50%, even more impacted by that. and we have team members also in lithuania and other countries close by, in germany, and pretty much everyone here in europe is heavily, heavily impacted. on the one hand we try to support our team members who are literally in the midst of this, but also we as a leadership team, provide them with the space that they can show basically their support for them. we canceled meetings so they can go on protests, for example, here in berlin.

. that is the minimum we as a company can do, is create the space for them to show social engagement. emily: inessa, europe friends and parents who are still in russia, are they trying to leave? do they want to leave? do some of them support the war? i know many people do not. inessa: that is true. many people do not support the war, and none of their friends and my family, none of my close circle supports, but i do hear the stories also from some of my friends that they don't speak with their parents anymore because they tend to see the situation differently. the majority of people is trying to escape russia right now. i would say that almost half of my close circle managed to escape in armenia and georgia and the closest countries. of course, it is not that easy

with my parents, because they are retired so i don't really know how to support them in this situation. but, yeah. emily: these sanctions are getting tougher every day, sanctions from around the world. how is this impacting every russians? obviously, the target is wealthier russians, but how is this impacting the people that you know who may be had nothing to do with this? inessa: that's true, it is impacting people in every way. basically, my parents lost almost all of their savings basically overnight or in the course of the last week. i can say with some of my friends, also a lot of them was receiving their salaries in the russian ruble.

with all of this situation, with the companies stopping to provide their services in the country, we can already see a lot of change and i think it is going to be only more of them, unfortunately. emily: mathias, is there any way that you can describe how this is impacting your company, given how much of your team is ukrainian, or russian,, and how emotionally difficult this is? mathias: absolutely. what we also offered is mental health support to all of our team members who are affected by this. it is just like being a really tough time and i think we just need to help our team members to go through this tough time and help modeling them, but also their relatives, to come to germany fit is possible and relocate them if they want. it is just such a sad thing what

is happening right now, and at the same time, you also feel a feeling of cowardice, because you have limited impact here from germany, basically. emily: how concerned should we be about the tech industry, given the deep bench of tech talent in both of these countries, and the fact that these people are working for global companies around the world? are you worried for the supply? the great talent that all of these developers and engineers and product designers possess, and have to give back to the world? mathias: what i think is going to happen within the coming weeks is more team members will try to eagerly russia or ukraine to go to western european countries, and just like she

touched upon, some of her friends already tried to leave. in the short-term, this will be the impact especially for teams like us who have a lot of team members in one of those countries. long-term, and this is already what we saw from the european union which has strongly welcomed and been very friendly towards giving visas towards people impacted by the situation , and i think this is absolutely the right move to protect civilians and allow them basically to escape from the tragedy and bad situations in these countries. emily: inessa, you have left your country, your friends and parents are still there, how do you see you in your future? how do you imagine this ending? inessa: that is a tough question. of course, i will try to help my friends to escape, help them to

get the job in germany. with the parents, it is much difficult because, as i said, they are open old age right now. -- they are at quite an old age right now. my only hope is that when the situation starts to decrease, i mean the heat of it, that countries will open their borders. we will still have our borders open with russia, and i can at least invite my parents there and we can meet during a short vacation. that is all i can hope for right now, probably not more. emily: do you think you will ever go back to russia? inessa: that is also a tough question. i don't think so. i wouldn't say never, but unless this regime is in power, i would rather not. i would go there only if i

definitely have to do it, like if i have some family business to do, but personally, i am afraid of my safety if i would go there. i cannot be sure that i can get back to germany. emily: inessa mir, product designer at zalando and russian citizen, and matteo's client, cofounder and cto of passbase. . thank you for sharing your stories and i hope you both stay safe. much more coming up on "bloomberg technology." stay with us. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: another story we continue to watch, microsoft is the latest company to limit business in russia, saying it is halting all-new sales of products and services in russia as it condemned the country's invasion of ukraine. microsoft saying it will help cybersecurity officials in ukraine to defend against russian attacks.

coming up we will look at how silicon valley is reacting, and how it is impacting not only big tech, but also small startups, and venture capital. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ if you're a small business, there are lots of choices

when it comes to your internet and technology needs. but when you choose comcast business internet, you choose the largest, fastest reliable network. you choose advanced security for total peace of mind. and you choose fiber solutions with speeds up to 10 gigs to the most small businesses. that's virtually everywhere we serve. the choice is clear: make your business future ready with the network from the most innovative company. comcast business. powering possibilities™.

emily: welcome back. how are investors hedging political risk in ukraine? kriti gupta has been digging into that. kriti: it is a pretty straightforward trade, we are seeing surging commodity prices. you get that exposure in the stock market but you also get it through defense names. you see a lot of european nations ramp up their defense, seeing those lessons from ukraine. they go to the number one maker or exporter of defense

companies, the united states. check out this etf. you can see the flows have skyrocketed going back two years , moves you have not seen even during the trade war between the united states and china. this is not the only kind of defense they are looking at. we are in day nine of the war and you can see people are betting on cybersecurity as a key piece of that offensive strategy. we know russia has an upper hand, they are strategic in using cybersecurity measures, that has been one of their criticisms in the past. if you look at the stocks over the past two weeks, you can see that these names like palo alto, crowd strike that specialize in cybersecurity, they are getting the bid, an assumption that a lot of corporate america is going to be looking to cybersecurity names. emily: thank you for that roundup. the tech world has wasted little time announcing plans to cut business ties with russia over

this invasion of ukraine. this week, we saw apple, disney, spotify, microsoft, microsoft, to name a few. not everyone is following suit. the ceo of wework had this to say. >> we have four locations in moscow. we are doing incredibly well. we are overnighted percent occupied. it is a small part of our business, revenue is about $10 million on our base of several billion dollars. not much of a financial or business impact. emily: since that comment, wework announced it is partnering with the u.n. to help them more than one million refugees who fled ukraine, adding it is offering flex space to help displaced businesses, however wework still operating in russia. i want to talk about this with alfred. i want to start, a picture, you

are no straighter to witnessing global conflict and the impact on global and local economies. how chilling do you think the impact of this invasion of ukraine will be on the global economy and on the tech industry? alfred: thank you for having me back, good to see you. this is a -- this is personal for me because when i was ceo in sumter 11, we lost employees -- september 11, we lost employees. it was a very tough time. it is a chilling memory. for me, i think the impact is going to be long-term and very big. we have been running our own -- morning our own officers and employees to take measures and

backup plans for having backup offices in neighboring countries. at this point, we have everyone accounted for. they have moved to safe places and they have been able to resume working. but it is an extremely scary time. emily: money has been pouring into start ups over the last couple years. do you think that is going to slow down? alfred: i think likely not because of just this invasion. we are going to be seeing softening and the ipo market, some people believe the market is temporarily closed. when you have liquidity, we will be seeing late stage deals softening up on valuations or early signs of difficulty in fundraising but it is going to take a long time before it trickles down to the early-stage deal.

the view of those companies over time will change. our own companies take sanctions very seriously. we have to assume some of the customers we have to say goodbye to. the european market has an early side in the last few months and owed out of that will be impacted. those impacts we are going to be feeling pretty well. for start ups, i invite them to be careful with their cash. be careful if they go out to fund raise, do it early and do it diligently. emily: we just went through a list of businesses cutting ties to russia.

i spoke with the ceo of airbnb a couple days ago and asked whether or not airbnb would cut off service to russia. listen to what he had to say. are you willing to consider tougher self sanctioning in russia even though it sounds like posts are limited -- posts are limited, but would airbnb consider going so far as to cut off the service? >> all things are on the table. we are focused right now, i have been working with the team to try to figure out how can we house 100,000 refugees from ukraine, we have another team working with local governments, trying to answer these questions. if we have an update, we will let you know. emily: brian chesky tweeting last night that airbnb is now cutting off service to russia and belarus. is this something you think all companies should be doing? alfred: we actually, most of our

company has come to me over the last weekend in particular, we are seeing open source companies . i have been advising, you must lock. we don't know how the sanctions, what our responsibilities are. we also have to play our part. this is a time where we have to step up, know what thereby thing to do. the russian people are innocent. most of them have nothing to do with this war. we have to be careful. we would end up discriminating many of our fans that are doing the right thing that are russians. emily: there's a line between who is this affecting and clearly these sanctions are impacting every russian

citizens. to that point, how much money is in the venture capital ecosystem, how much russian many , and should founders be question whether to take that money, should they return that money? alfred: for us, we have never taken russian money for our funds. i'm sure that for this time, there are people that have directly and indirectly invested in these companies over time. those are the things where we need our government to guide us to know what is that line. money that is ingrained in the spending of the company, what we do with them? we need guidance from the state department to know what to do. we have seen this movie before. when we shut down funding from china. overall, very smoothly, in industry and tech companies were

able to work quickly and be able to comply to all the needs. at this point in time, it is very chaotic. the most important thing to do is very about the people. we have employees, we have companies, we want to make sure them and their families are safe. emily: what about venture capitalists? venture capitalists have a lot of money, they are typically more quiet. should they be taking action, cutting ties, pulling people out of funds, cutting off partnerships? alfred: i have good friends, they are very active, i a lot of actions have been taken to help the ukrainian people. i'm sure in the weeks to come, we are going to see actions from venture funds, also in terms of

sanctioning the russian money coming in. we have to do our part. it cannot just be at a macro level. we all have to do our part. i'm sure this is coming. emily: alfred chuang, thank you for sharing your perspective with us. coming up, we are going to be joined by jesse powell, a deep dive on the role of crypto, and how has crypto exchange is navigating the crisis and calls to cut russia off. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the crypto industry has

gotten a lot of attention. some government officials wondering whether russia might be able to skirt sanctions using crypto and ukraine seeking donations via digital assets. but coinbase, kraken, and more have come out against blinken bands on russian users -- against blanket bans on russian users. i want to bring in jesse powell. given the events of the last 24 hours, putin's escalation of this war, does your position still stand? jesse: it still stands. it is hard to know as a private business which does not have a major global geopolitical analyst function, trying to evaluate these situations play-by-play, we look at our ball as being able to follow executive orders, follow sanctions coming from the

government, we are happy to comply with those, we have a long history of working with law enforcement and the government. for ourselves to decide to impose account freezes on individual russians who probably don't support this invasion i think is a step too far and it is freezing someone's finances is more than just stopping selling them shoes or photo filters, it is an extreme measure and we will not do it until we are forced to by the government. emily: the department of justice is going after luxury assets including crypto assets. having been contacted? are you cooperating? what do you think the role is of exchanges in that respect? jesse: kraken dealt with 2500 law-enforcement requests last year. we are in regular contact with law enforcement and regulators and governments pretty much at

all times, we get more than 10 requests per day. we are in communication, we have a 24/7 compliance team of 600 people monitoring the situation and buddy to respond to sanctions or any executive order. as a u.s. based company, we are following the rules of the united states. when we hear from the government that there is something to do, we will comply and do that. emily: do you see the legal risk escalating and are you consulting with officials actively to figure out what kraken could be doing? jesse: it is an ordinary course of business for us. we are monitoring the situation. we are sort of passive in that the government can cap -- can contact us and many governments around the world. there is not an active dialogue about what we are going to do

outside of any formal regulatory requirement. emily: analysts reporting data that shows russians, residents, sanctions had russia, they are not in a hurry to trade on tiptoe -- on crypto exchanges. is that what you are seeing? jesse: kraken does not have a ruble market. if russians did want to get money into kraken, they would have to go through the euro or the dollar, generally through the swift system. now that banks are shut off from swift and russia, it is going to be hard for people and russia to get money out of the country and into the crypto exchanges. i think they are going to have a tough time. we have not seen much activity coming out of russia. people might have already had their money in kraken, they are free to withdraw their

cryptocurrency out of kraken, but there has not been a lot of activity and that is largely due to the sanctions on the banking system. emily: what about crypto going in and out of ukraine? ukraine has raised millions of dollars worth of digital assets. what liquidity are you seeing? jesse: huge uptick around the ukraine. tens of millions of dollars have been donated with cryptocurrency. that is an amazing story, that the government has directly raised money from all over the world to finance the defense, and people are able to, through crypto crowdfunding, able to support people directly without any intermediary and we saw something similar in canada when the government sanctioned its own citizens and turned off protesters from the banking system, cryptocurrency was there to continue to support people and be that rail of last resort

where the government had revoked those permissions. emily: ukraine is calling for more crypto donations, not just in bitcoin, but doge, we have seen some results. do you see the scope of digital assets as a force for good or is it more complicated? jesse: definitely a force for good. i think the de-weaponization of the financial system is a good thing. we look at sanctions against russia as generally a good way to nonviolently respond to a policy that we don't like. those same weapons that we impose on russia can also be imposed against your own citizens and we have seen this in many countries. canada most recently.

often regimes turn inward against their own people and when that happens, once funds are frozen, it is hard to leave that situation. cryptocurrency is something that exists as cash under the mattress that you can take with you if you want to get out of a bad situation, if your bank account has been frozen. if your funds are frozen without due process, it is on view to fight to get that back -- on you to fight to get that back. you're worried about paying -- feeding your family, you're not paying a lawyer to get your money back. a lot of people are looking at crypto as a backup plan against their government turning against them. emily: what is your take on the macro risks? what are you most concerned about, especially as it pertains to cryptocurrency? you and i have had conversations about a prize and bitcoin going to the moon, and we have seen

bitcoin rallying, but also pullback. are you concerned about the risks to crypto given what we are seeing in global equities? jesse: i think you look at the long term chart of bitcoin and it is outperforming everything else. i'm not worried about it. canada and russia are great examples of where bitcoin shines. it is solving problems for people on the ground and more people are going to see that and it is going to become a bigger thing as people look to bitcoin as a safe haven. emily: jesse powell, always good to have you here. thank you for sharing your perspective with us. coming up, apple plans to unveil a new iphone in a few days. is it the right move for the company?

we will discuss. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> in early march, apple plans to unveil an iphone se with 5g but the big announcement should be a significant price cut to the current se. the model costs $400 but if apple wanted to, it could lower the current model to $200 and turn it into a low-priced phone for areas like south america, parts of asia, and africa that are enjoy the stronghold. a $200 phone would make the current se a hot seller for those who don't need 5g or $1000

plus iphone 13. by expanding its user base, apple could create more long-term services revenue and add more people to its ecosystem fairly quickly. dropping the price of the current as a to $200 would give apple an easy answer to its ipod touch conundrum, that would allow the company to discontinue the three-year-old ipod at the same price. a device could also assist apple and india, a market that apple wants talked up as its ninth china but one that has been a roller coaster for the company. recent data shows a sub 5% market share for apple in india but the phone price is not $200 meaning apple could have a winner on its hands with a price cut. still, it is unclear if apple will do this but there may be no better time than this march when apple plans to release a new high-end five joey -- 5g iphone se. emily: you can subscribe to

mark's news later at bloomberg.com. we will be following that apple event next week. apple updating its return to office policy, the company setting april 11 as the deadline for corporate employees to return to end person work at least one day a week. it will be a bellwether as to whether the company can run office life and a postman to make our. meta is looking at halting all advertising in russia. take a listen aboutmeta's actions in advertising when it comes to russia. >> we are taking extensive steps to ensure the safety of our community and to support the people using our services both in ukraine and all over the world.

we have established a special operations center, it is working around-the-clock, it is responding to activity on our platforms in real-time, and we are monitoring the situation. emily: we will be monitoring data. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> as putin continues his attack on ukraine, economic ramifications continue to unfold. this is "wall street week." this week, larry summers on the direct impact of the sanctions and the ripple effect on financial markets around the globe. >> they are delivering a real jolt to the russian economy. romaine: