good morning it is 8:00 a.m. in silmi valley, california, 11:00 a.m. on wall street "squawk alley" is live. ♪ ♪ ♪ good monday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." i am jon fortt with me at post nine, morgan brennan and david faber. carl has the morning off >> we begin with the amazon ceo speaking at the defense forum

where i was over the weekend among the headlines and there were a lot, a warning about potential risk for the u.s. if tech companies decide not to do business with the pentagon. >> my view is if big tech is going to turn their backs on department of defense, this country is in trouble. that just can't happen so we have to, it is up to the senior leadership to say i understand these are emotional issues, we don't have to agree on everything, but this is how we're going to do it we are going to support the department of defense. this country is important. >> meantime, heavily redacted 103 page document that was just made public a short while ago, amazon says president trump launched, behind the scenes attacks against the company, which led to it losing out on the major jedi contract for cloud services that we have been covering so closely. guys, in general the bottom line from jeff bezos at the event this weekend is amazon, you

could make the argument origin, the space company looking for national security work as well is really open for business with the pentagon, with the government he, himself didn't comment on jedi specifically, made comments about a level playing field. you want a level playing field for monday night football, don't want that for defense and military, voicing that he is concerned perhaps we are losing the advantage we have in places like space >> that the united states has, right. they want a level playing field between them and microsoft, but -- >> a distinction although also in that complaint basically suggesting that artificially that everything that happened has artificially leveled the playing field for amazon >> amazon and microsoft have both been pretty specific on this that hey, we hear you, that group of employees that says we shouldn't be dealing with the federal government, whether it

is with defense, whether it is with i.c.e., but we're going to do it. here's why we have old line tech companies, the likes of ibm and oracle in that camp a long time. the question is google and others, is there going to be more of a shift toward this point of view of we got to deal with the government or not. >> i think that's the question huge theme, huge discussion all weekend at this forum. i also did a panel with peter teal he weighed in on this, he has been outspoken about google, things like ai and china are concerned, and basically said he thinks that the tech community in seattle has been much more in the forefront in terms of working with the u.s. military, which is the case. microsoft and amazon that's who we're talking about right now. >> let's get more on amazon and the tech landscape, talk a bit more about aws joined by goldman, sachs director of internet equity research

heath terry. curious to get your thoughts they say in various parts here, one of the keys despite a clear factual record establishing aws technical superiority over microsoft, including broad consensus among industry and lists and experts that expressed it as the frontrunner. do you believe they're technically superior to microsoft? >> if you look at market share numbers, it would imply that aws market share in the most generous standards is roughing three times that of microsoft's within cloud it is clearly a decision companies macon a regular basis. they had the developer conference 120 different products that were announced or talked about at the event. you see independent sort of

i.t. analysts make the claim that aws is that far ahead of competitors in the space, so i think it is an easy statement for amazon to make that they are tech logically superior. >> it is valued up to $10 billion over ten years in terms of dod contract work, not the largest contractor program by any means part of the reason we cover it closely is future government opportunities. have you punched the numbers, what does it mean for amazon, microsoft and others >> one, obviously government is the biggest single consumustome. for amazon, it was an opportunity to draw a line in the sand because you had a very public record of the administration trying to sway this on twitter and elsewhere and making it clear that they had a view on what amazon, what

the outcome of this contract should be. you have the same thing with the postal service negotiations a few years ago that led to a lot of amazon investment into their own last mile delivery, when you've got something that vocal in the public record, being able to suggest there was something more going on behind the scenes isn't that hard. >> talk google, alphabet just a few days ago larry page announced he is stepping back. he is still on the board, but not ceo or chairman. now ceo of alphabet and google a, does it matter, b, does it blow up the reason for the alphabet, google thing if there's one ceo of both? >> i think it is a realization that ultimately at the end of the day, google is what mattered within alphabet. 98% of revenue, well more than 100% of profitability within that business. so to the extent that sundar was the one running google,

effectively running alphabet, running what mattered, running what mattered most to investors. >> isn't anybody going to ask how long bf sundar cuts the alphabet stuff does this put them in a worse situation for investment in the future >> i think sundar is certainly going to take a more serious look at those areas of investment but a company like google has to invest for the future. things like autonomous driving and investments they're making >> they spent 22 billion or more is that roughly right? >> it is around there. more than at&t spenlds, more tha verizon spends. >> they have profitability levels to put it back in the business you want to see companies like that investing if they're not, you have to question whether or not the future is there. if google snois not investing a those levels, have they run out

of good ideas and that's not the way sundar wants to take the company. they're considered the leader in the space, certainly not something they're going to step away from. >> do you think amazon, back to amazon a second, in this complaint talking about what they say was the president's intervention in the award of the jedi contract, do you think they raised stakes more, perhaps raised threat to them, given the president made it no secret. tries to make things difficult for them >> there's only so much them do, this is the first step in the process, i think they'll see how far it will take them. >> talk about sass companies, they took a beating in the fall. shopify is really a platform do you think that it makes sense fundamentally that those

rebounded and the others haven't or do they -- are they likely to come down or those like workday going back up? >> i am more focused on the internet space if you look at tech broadly, there's a dispersion in terms of outperformers and underperformers, something like shopify with exposure to e-commerce that they do, seeing strong numbers out of black friday 20% growth in e-commerce spending you have seen the kind of outperformance across that group, benefitting them as a whole. you have underperformers within tech that missed this kind of rally. the ones that are sort of most exposed to regulation have been central to that. so i think this hasn't been the kind of rally that's been across the market it has been much more company specific because of factors like that >> huge year for ipos, some of

them good. a many more underperforming. in terms of the next classes or generations of tech companies vorlts need to keep an eye on, what the trends are, what the ipos will entail, what are they? >> we have seen investment into early stage areas. you look at seed and series a venture capital, that's been declining significantly every quarter since q3 of 2016, we have seen it declining as more money has gone into late stage things like mobility, food delivery, you have a lot of that going into areas like ai, machine learning has been a huge area for investment. we are starting to see some companies begin to make their way to market. probably what our classic 2020 will look like also things that were supposed to make it in 2019 pushed into

next year. this will be the first year we have seen in a while where u.s. venture capital was done in q3, chinese venture capital was down the last four quarters in a row. there's a real step back taken because of performance of ipos this year, by venture capitalists saying we need to get a hold what's going on with valuations within venture capital, need to see if the public markets will be there on the other side. >> speaking of ipos, certainly this year we think of uber often times, underperformance there. $44 price target, four times enterprise value over sales. why are you positive >> we're positive mainly because we see what's happening in mobility, right? we're not going back to standing on the street corner, holding up our hand hoping for taxi to pick us up. this is clearly something we all use. people value it, people are willing to pay premium for it. seen prices for uber and lyft go up on average 20% a year the last couple of years

hasn't hurt demand still seeing 25, 30% growth for these services because consumers value it these are marketplace models, should be able to generate 30% plus margins, and those kind of companies typically trade 6 to 8 times sales when growing in this 20 to 30% range. that's where you see the up side as they get closer to profitability. >> spending it on eats and freight, other areas that may eat capital awhile >> i think they will you'll see rationalization around the eats business clearly the amount of venture capital, one of the biggest areas of decline is in the food delivery space it is starting to get more rational, not seeing the same coupons and subsidies you saw even six months ago. that's what happens for it to get to profitability, justify investments they've been making.

>> appreciate you stopping by. thank you. >> heath terry. peter teal was at the reagan national defense forum over the weekend as we mentioned. we will fill you in on investing lessons and what he considers a decade long process. don't go away. be right back. it's them, calling us. it's going to be a week before they can get through on these roads shhh, sorry, i didn't catch that. i said ask how soon they can be here right now? what's now? he says they're surveying our property now they're probably at the wrong house i don't see any hovering his name is hovering? look up? by automating claims with machine learning and analytics, cognizant is helping insurance companies advance how they serve even hard to reach customers. cool ♪

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welcome back to "squawk alley. peter thiel, influential and at

times controversial name in tech making news this weekend, speaking at a panel i moderated in simi valley, california he was investor in spacex had lessons of co-founding and funding palintir >> in both cases took wickedly long time, close to a decade, to start getting significant contracts from the u.s. military and you know, in some ways they were not conventionally venture fundable eel on personally funded spacex, gotoutside capital maybe six years in to both businesses, so if you have something where you have a six year gap and can only get funded by someone putting in tens of millions of dollars as a

sort of slightly quick project, that's a tricky template to repeat i think the lessons are learned from palintir and spacex, we made a lot of mistakes, made ways to sort of develop these things more quickly, mature things faster. if you have a decade long process. >> no time line when palintir may go public. it is one investors are watching closely. also saying on that topic, one of the challenges of taking companies public that's a danger when it comes to tech companies, he sees it as almost a coup by the accountants and lawyers when you're still innovating fast and hard, but basically reaffirming at some point in the future he expects palintir and spacex to go public. a company's bigness may be its weakness, according to peter

thiel who co-founded paypal. >> when i started paypal years ago, very different context. i was asked why can't a big bank do this. i never had a good answer to that, in theories banks have scale, longer time, capital, a lot of talent. i think the general answer is that it is just the internal politics are unbelievably bad, and this is true not just of large parts of the government, also true of a lot of large corporations, become incredibly politicize in ways that aren't good for innovation. you can acquire a technology company at that point where you don't need to innovate any more. so if it is a fully formed thing, maybe that's a point it makes sense for prime minists to acquire them. >> he also did weigh in on as we talked about at the top of the hour, the fact that google

pulled out of its military work with project maven last year in u.s. while continuing to have its ai research capabilities in china, talking about that, reaffirming this notion of ai, artificial intelligence as dual use technology, one that could be first applied where defense, national security and military is concerned, why he sees it as such a cause for concern he weighed in on this idea of reframing this ethical debate, saying it is not an ethical debate, but around companies, american companies, tech companies working with the u.s. military, but so did the rest of the panel. it was an all-star panel there's a notion or theme that came out throughout the weekend of this idea if you're not working, sure, you need guidelines and regulations, if not working with the u.s.

military, there's a civil, military fusion that's happening with china. >> if you think what the u.s. government is doing at the border, say, is fundamentally immoral, sure, there's an ethical question there, not saying which way people should come down on that. i'm going to ask a hard question you're a smart person, talked to smart people there >> thank you, jon. >> and i am not smart on this stuff. what is the u.s. cultural or academic advantage in military technology going forward versus the likes of china or russia how much of it depends on immigration, on being a place where smart people want to arrive, how much depends on policy and how much is home grown in u.s. >> the immigration piece of this i don't think was talked about enough it was touched on on this panel from josh wolf from luks capital, the other vc funding

startups in the space, touched on this, this idea of -- this idea of he didn't use this word, but almost like patriotism and being beholden to the country, the fact that silicon valley has its roots in electronic warfare that so much that came out of silicon valley, earliest funding was from the u.s. military, but the immigration piece is involved because when you have engineers, we have technologists from other countries to come and work and maybe go back to their countries, they don't have that same feeling they want to work for the u.s. military. >> one of peter thiel's friends, maximum lunchen, the paypal, sergei grand, so many of the companies we are talking about even involved in the military

issue, immigrants. >> i suspect you'll hear more of the piece of the discussion, and especially at a company like google i think the majority of silicon valley, mike brown, head of the defense innovation unit, was on this panel, former ceo of symantec, he finds the vast majority of companies in silicon valley are not like google in the tech community but perhaps you're going to see more scrutiny of the types of employees that are within ranks when national security is part of the debate. chinese nationalists, for example, at a time there's an idea of an ai arms race, innovation arms race or so-called tech cold war playing out. >> okay. >> we'll see as we head to break here, look at two big deals in biotech, another part of technology sanofi buying synthorx

these are deals for seiaesntlly what is science. more "squawk alley" when we return

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welcome back, everyone i am sue herera. here's the cnbc news update at this hour. the supreme court leaving in place a kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultra sounds, show fetal images to patients before abortions the justices didn't comment in refusing to review a ruling that upheld the law the aclu had challenged that law. russian president putin arrives in paris ahead of a summit in finding a way to end the war with ukraine they're holding a series of meetings to try to revive a 2015 peace deal that's gone largely ignored. young climate activists demand gains from climate change from leaders and negotiators at a global summit in madrid.

the importance of involving indigenous communities in combatting climate crisis. >> it is so incredibly important that we listen to indigenous people because they are suffering and their rights are being violated across the world and they're also among the ones who are being hit the most you're up to date. back downtown to "squawk alley." jon, back to you >> thank you, sue. and when we come back, tesla's cybertruck hits the town we check in with kara swisher on elon musk's latest drive and a lot more when "squawk alley" returns. woman: my reputation was trashed online. i felt completely helpless. my entire career and business were in jeopardy.

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or get the universal smart garage hub, now just 29.98. ♪ welcome back to "squawk alley. amazon's jeff bezos speaking over the weekend at the reagan national defense forum, defending big tech's role in the pentagon's war business saying, quote, we are the good guys, end quote. defending the tech giant's mission and corporate culture. take a listen. >> high in competitor compensation, but we have not created that country club culture where you get free massages, whatever the kind of perks of themoment are, and i have had a bit of skepticism about those perks. you worry people will stay part of your company for the wrong

reasons. you want people to stay for the mission. you want them to stay, you don't want mercenaries, you want missionaries missi missionaries carry about the mission. >> joinings us, recode co-founder, cnbc contributor kara swisher good morning >> good morning. >> in a way, both of these things that bezos tackled, how senior leadership should respond to employees concerned about government contracts and hey, we're not cod elg employees, both of these have to do with culture. do you think his view will prevail in the long term >> well, there is that element of don't be big babies, you get everything, you're well paid, if you don't like it, move on he has been different his whole career amazon is not known as a company that coddles employees nor is it known as a company that tolerates anything but jeff bezos' way it is in keeping with what he has done the entire time he has been running and founding

amazon it is not unusual for him to say stuff like this. it is a point of view others agree with, a lot of silicon valley employees have perks that aren't really the point. at the same time, there's an element employees should be able to speak out if you're critical employees about what you're making and have a say in it. silicon valley and tech does encourage this by stock options, all kinds of ways. they're saying employees are owners if you're owners, you get to say something about it >> i can't help but recall steve jobs had a similar position on these sorts of things. apple doesn't have a ton of perks, free food you have to go to cupertino and buy your food, but google and facebook have more keep them on campus, give them the goodies, and they have big employee uprisings now. >> they trained them like that, not just that, they have meme generators, tgifs where they can

talk to the ceo and strongly in a lot of cases, less of a top down culture that's why you get that. that said, apple campus is gorgeous, people that work there have a beautiful place to work it is gorgeous i wish i worked at a lovely place like that. same thing with amazon in their dome, they have the pleasure dome they created in seattle so i think it is a question of what kind of leadership you have you have a more microsofty and amazon, apple culture where leadership is really what they say goes or you have a more inclusive culture. i think in both cases it is fine if the employees speak up, and it is fine if management says don't, pipe down, don't be a big baby it is fine to have these discussions. and you know what you're going to get when you work at a jeff bezos company, this is the way he wants to run the company. when he says go, that's fine

too. >> the fact that we're having the conversation, companies that do offer some of the perks versus others like amazon maybe that don't speaks to how tight the work force is, and particularly when it comes to things like engineers and some of these potential tech employees that have the skill sets needed for next generation capabilities a, how much does the fact that you are seeing companies like amazon, like apple, facebook, continue to expand beyond just silicon valley and san francisco, speak to that need, thirst for more people to enter their fray, above and beyond that area, and how much does it speak to the fact that at a company like amazon where they're looking to take on more national security type work, they feel like they can recruit more people outside of the valley >> no, amazon doesn't have as big a presence in the valley, they're from seattle jeff made it his thing, he worked on doors.

everybody got a door, not a desk, whatever somewhat of a stunt. that we are a tougher workplace, put our shoulder down compared to silicon valley. a lot of companies outside of silicon valley, microsoft and amazon which are up in seattle were different in their tonality, they had an easier time of finding a work force in silicon valley, the employees have the upper hand, there are so few of them and these companies will expand and encounter all of the regular parts of running any company, in this case employees are owners again, they're going to speak up, they feel like they can. and again, that's fine and by the way, just as much as employees can take it from jeff bezos, jeff bezos can take it from the employees if they object to whatever he wants to do, they can do that by leaving or just speaking up. >> all right let's move on, talk about elon

musk bump in the road for him over the weekend, taking the new cybertruck out for a spin in los angeles this weekend, wearing manufacturer plates, and had a little moment of drama, seen hitting a traffic marker, not a road sign but traffic marker in the road as he exited a restaurant parking lot kara, elon musk, he is just like us, hits the orange cones. overall, decent few days for him, right >> yeah. he won in the defamation case which was a twitter fight gone wild he shouldn't have said it. he apologized. i think the outcome is probably the way it should have been in this case. he shouldn't have done it, he apologized shouldn't have gotten to trial should have ended sooner i love that he drove the truck, good for him, showing off the product. it is a big truck. i guess he is sort of getting used to it

i don't want to comment on hitting things, i have done that before, which is why i don't drive cars any more, i'm certainly not driving that truck, i would run over more than a traffic cone. it is good that he is out there. he is such a -- i don't want to call him pt barnum, but he is a showman. he is going to take it out, show it off this is typical of him to do so, and i like it. >> i think this is the first high profile case where somebody with a huge social media following has been accused of defamation what do you think the legacy of this is, are we going to see more of this as long as you're vague, maybe you can't be pinned down for defamation, or is this like wait a second, digital stuff is real, may have to show up in court several days >> it is a waste of time for a ceo of several companies to have to appear incourt, not that

there's anything wrong with having legal proceedings, he made a stupid mistake, should have immediately apologized, done something for the guy first of all, should have not done it, but that's besides the point, this is elon musk whose trigger is a little shorter than the rest of us so you know, it is a waste of time for everybody, but certainly i thought the trial was kind of okay, which was essentially a twitter war. it was a rude remark that he made and paid the price for it by having to appear. this guy got his day in court. it was well aired. i think it ended exactly the way it should have ended >> he should be more like you and me >> i am terrible on twitter. i can't believe we're not in court more often, jon, you and i! >> before we let you go, kara, a hearty congratulations to you and the media team recode decode named the 2019 pod cast of the year, that's a big

deal. >> yes, thank you. it was great i love doing podcasting, started five years ago when nobody was doing it really. and i think it is an amazing medium it is on a growth trajectory, there are issues around so many of them, but it is an exciting medium, great way to communicate with people. the other one, pivot podcast with scott gallaway, but it is great. a great medium, great way to communicate. we love our fans and appreciate the award from ad week there will be no living with me any more really pretty much. that's about it. >> you have so many jobs new york columnist, cnbc contributor, a few podcasts. >> i am well employed. >> mom there's a big job. >> it is >> thank you, kara when we come back, t mobile

and sprint in court to defend the 26 plus billion dollar merger we discuss when "squawk alley" returns. into formation. flying south for the winter. they never stray from their predetermined path. but this season, a more thrilling journey is calling. defy the laws of human nature. at the season of audi sales event. we believe in education built for all people., - [woman] snhu was the best experience of my life. - [man] without snhu, i wouldn't be the leader i am today. - [woman] i graduated high school 19 years ago. i still finished. - [man] in the military, you feel that sense of accomplishment. that's what snhu is. - you will march from this arena and say to the world.. i did it.

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i am scott wapner. here's what's coming up top of the hour we are at one market in san francisco taking stock of a year, where money is likely to be made in 2020. brad gerstner is with us, and

fra the co-founder of octa is with us find out whether software valuations are too high. that and more when we see you at noon from san francisco on the half morgan, 15 away or so. see you then >> looking forward to it, scott. in a mostly redacted filing, amazon taking a shot at the administration, saying president trump's attack on the company led to aws losing the pentagon cloud contract to microsoft. this weekend ahead of the filing, exclusive conversation on the sidelines of the reagan national defense forum, brad smith in a wide ranging interview did touch on jedi, alluded that overconfidence may have led to amazon losing out. >> we are best serveed being humble whether you win or lose there will be protests, they

come and go. i think there are a couple of interesting lessons for all of us to think about as the dust settles from this. in any technology race, if you think that you're so far ahead that you can't possibly lose, you're probably going to lose. that's what we've learned time and time again because this procurement lasted 13 months, it wasn't about selling a product that stood still, didn't need to stand still, and there's a second lesson, the lesson we tried to apply to ourselves never conclude that you're so far behind that you can't catch up if you work harder than your competitor we put more and more engineers on this working pretty much seven days a week for thirteen months to constantly create a better product so by the time the contract was awarded, we didn't know if we would win, but thought we had caught up. and we also know that we need to

keep going forward every day or we'll fall behind. that is the real essence of any technology race. >> those comments in response to andy jasse over at aws smith saying they're continuing to do work for this program, on this program right now as i mentioned, it was a wide ranging interview. we sat down to talk, he has a book he co-authored, tools and weapons, and was on a panel there, focused on the idea of a technological cold war he was focused on the idea of interception between tech and national security. we talked about things including china and on that where ai was concerned, he said ai fueled by data just the way a combustion engine is fueled by gasoline any country with 1.4 billion people will create more data

than another with 3 billion. that's why he believes we need some sort of u.s. alliance around ai with our allies and partners when you look to the future, think to the future, the role technology will continue to play in national security. >> that is interesting i can't get over that sickest of tech history burns, microsoft telling amazon, if you think you're so far ahead you can't lose. >> i thought he would have reaction. >> that's the story with so many microsoft stumbles anytime microsoft says you have to check yourself before you wreck yourself, that's like the tech version of that phrase, which i know you know well, david, being a new yorker. >> i do. i do tried not to wreck myself too often. >> done well. >> holidays it is tougher with all of the parties not to wreck yourself. >> that full interview is on cnbc.com for folks to check out. another quick programming note as well as we go to break,

don't miss my exclusive interview, bob bakish. heading uptown for that. first interview since the deal closed last week, around 1:00 p.m. eastern. quk le wl rht back hnson is a baby company. but we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you.

welcome back to "squawk alley. sprint, t mobile head to trial in a manhattan courthouse up the road from here the number three and number four

u.s. wireless carriers will defend the $26.5 billion merger, contested by 13 state attorneys general and district of columbia joining us with more, with moret mobile founder and former ceo of that company great to have you back on. >> thanks for having me. good to be here. >> so much of this seems like it's going to hinge in court on this idea of if these two companies merge, the creation of a new fourth wireless carrier with the assets that dish is going to take over, you certainly have a dog in this race, given the fact that you would like to be able to perhaps be able to buy some of those assets over dish, where boost is concerned, how would you expect this to law out? >> i think that's an important point. the point you have to look at when you see how the process is played through, the department of justice disagreed with the fcc. the fcc said the divestiture of

boost alone would be enough. the department of justice said we don't think there is enough we want a fourth competitor. it's when john got on the phone to charlie and said i need you to stand up a fourth network the whole matter comes down to one thing, and that is, the judge is going to be looking at this as you said and rightfully said, is dish truly going to be able to be a fourth competitor the first answer to the question is from the day that merger closes there's no way in the world they can't, they can put that structure up in place so now the question -- >> why not >> well, i mean simply can't put up a network the day the merger closed these guys will need until 2021, 22, i would argue '23. if i believe the merger is going through i have to believe dish is going to be the fourth competitor and if history is a lesson that's a big question and the problem you have with the question is that the jump will

have to say there are 9 million prepaid subscribers, 30,000 employees in the dealerships and small independent dealers that have to come along for the ride and take the risk that charlie and dish can do this that's too big a risk for them to take. >> right i mean not to mention the capital outlet he's going to have to commit to and the numbers a lot of people say don't add up all that said sounds like you're a sore losers. would you have done any better with it and been a fourth competitor were you going to get the money? >> the interesting thing to say i'm the to loser out of this is a little bit disingenuous -- >> i said sore loser, not fourth loser. >> if you look at us being a sore losers the losers in this are the dealers, are the networks i have a great family and life i will go on and continue to live the great life and family and a great business outside of america. but you know who won't have a great life, 30,000 employees,

the 5 to 6,000 dealers, and the consumers in prepay. i sit here fighting very, very hard it was a long shot for us to be able to get boost back in the first place. i'm a realist when it comes to this we were willing to step up with my own funds, time and money both the commercial and professional costs to me to fight for these consumers. we now have a judge sitting there, he's going to get rid of the hype the pink wearing magenta t-shirt will be left out of the room and he will look at the facts and if you look the a the facts it comes down to one thing and one thing only, be that is, is the consumer going to be better off from this merger and the way it sits today there's not one person in the industry in the media or in that court that's going to be arguing yes, it's going to be better off >> peter, no matter which way this goes, isn't the most likely scenario that we don't have four healthy, viable competitors in the u.s. wireless market i got real questions about whether sprint can make it if this deal doesn't go through and you have raised questions about

dish, right? >> yeah. absolutely you've got two very weak options. the question becomes is what is the weaker option of the two and you got to look at it, that's got to be dish. i sit back and go, okay, sprint has assets you know why, because there's a company in seattle that has promised the world to get this merger through, when most smart businessmen would have walked away from this merger they stayed with it they stayed with it because it has value. the same value that t mobile sees you can't tell me comcast, charter and other cable operators and tech companies aren't looking at that same value. >> the synergies are enormous for them, the numbers, would be nowhere near that for any other potential merger partner/acquirer. >> i will take you point remove the spectrum and argue would they be taking this based on synergies alone and the answer is no synergies means job losses and closing stores so if you look at the sipper

ingys they're talking about it's one of the febtss you have there. make the clear this is all about one thing. they want to get their hands on that they launched the 5g network with 20% increase in speed, they've launched it with prepaid 5g, it's a thousand dollar phone which they discounted to $800. the naivety to think that it's an acceptable level for someone to come in, telling them they have to buy the golf member of the club, by the way, you can go and play the game for fre once you ponied up the money. all of this is to me a farce and the judge is going to see that and look at this and if he truly believes in keeping the consumers in mind, the way that it sits today it simply can't and won't work. >> given the conversation we're having right now, peter, i mean if you think about the broader i guess theme or push here around 5g, and the u.s. being a dominant player in the adoption of that technology and those capabilities, it almost sounds

like we're talking about dammed in you do, dammed if you don't in terms of competitiveness on the world stage and in terms of rolling that out what's the solution? >> the solution is simple, there is no race going on today with the carriers internally. it's a marketing hype. 5g is nothing more than a marketing term there's no one set standard. there's mid, low band spectrum, we've got, you know, buildings, you don't have buildings, put a tree up, doesn't work. there is so much hype going on the consumers are just getting confused and frustrated about what is 5g even if 5g became the holy grail they say it is i don't think consumers will buy it because they don't know what it is because they've been confused. >> peter, always great to get your thoughts. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you >> as we head to break take a look at the markets. s&p, nasdaq, about flat. the dow down more than the others, being dragged a bit lower by apple, eibong and

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welcome back just getting a check on where we are with the markets right now slipping back towards session lows the dow, the s&p and the nasdaq are all red.

the dow down 69 points, back below 28,000 in today's trade. >> that's a little bit red though >> just a little bit. >> fractional. given the positive news that apple is getting, reviews on air pod pros and impact on the stock surprising that will do it for us to the judge and the half. >> all right guys, thanks so much i'm scott wapner welcome to san francisco where the "halftime report" is looking ahead to 2020 in silicon valley and where your money will work best in technology and investing in the year ahead. as you know it's been a volatile year out here with high profile booms and busts. >> a wild year for tech and venture capital. a flood of ipos. >> lyft popping more than 8%. >> uber set to make its public debut. >> a blowup sparking questions about valuations in the valley. >> co-working company wework will withdra