around so many different parts of the country you put out a pretty heart felt blog about what we have seen go on here in the u.s. in recent weeks, the storming of the capitol and the like i just wonder what your thoughts from a socioeconomic standpoint are on what we've seen in the u.s., whether i guess brand america has been tarnished >> yes, the brand america, for those of us living outside america, we're incredibly sad to see this speaking of democracy being damaged in a way it has been but we're hopeful and i think we're hopeful that, i mean, i am lucky enough to have gotten to know biden over the years. i am hopeful that he really will do everything he can to bridge the divide he'll do everything he can to understand you know what it was about from trump supporters that they liked about trump and addressed those issues and, you know, he's going to get

out there to try to tackle things like climate change, tackle things like the virus quickly and efficiently. he's a great delegator he's got a great team of people around him so, i am hopeful that america can get back on track in the next few months and i am hopeful that the inauguration will be peaceful and it will be a potstive example for the world and not a horrendously negative example. >> well, we appreciate both of you being with us today. congratulations again on just an amazing flight over the weekend for virgin orbit as it reached orbit. sir richard branson and dan hart, thank you for being with us we look forward to hearing about more space milestones as 2021 unfolds. congratulations. >> thank you very much. >> thank you >>. morgan as you are talking, yellen's mentionedthe climate, infrastructure, covid-19 relief,

a salt tax and a lot more. good morning, everybody, it is 11:00 a.m. at the sec headquarters in washington "squawk box" is live. ♪ happy tuesday, welcome to "squawk alley. i am here with carl cantonea and julia boorstin we will talk about what could be screening regulatory changes from theen coming biden administration ahead of tomorrow's inaugural jags and fcc chairman ajit pai.

and platform getting citrix buys reich. parler has found its way back online partially. angel investor and founder joins us to talk about what big tech has been through over the last couple of weeks. welcome back, jason, good to see you. >> good to see you, carl >> where has your head been on parler and what is significant about their return, if they can make this stick? >> yeah, i mean, parler was like the island of like the misfit children everybody who got kicked off of twitter, you know, found a home there. and it was pretty gnarly i have been on it since it started. and they were doing very little policing people were saying some pretty crazy incendiary stuff on there, including somebody who was pretty high profile saying they

should take bp pence and you know have him face the firing squad for treason and this kind of inciting of violence we saw on january 6th is no longer a theoretical somebody screaming "fire" in a crowded theater. people are dying because of this dog whistling. and my belief is that, you know, some group of law enforcement folks went to amazon, google, apple, i don't have definitive proof of this that's been the chatter here in silicon valley hey, listen. here's the receipts. do you want to have another january 6th? and do you know if you could have avoided it? and the other thing that's occurring is the employees at these companies simply do not want to go to work knowing that they're supporting trump's unique brand of chaos. and so, you know, trump did, he gave them an off-ramp. you know, in the final two weeks

of his presidency, he gave not only the gop an off-ramp to disconnect from him, he gave twitter in very easy youtube a very easy exit ramp to disengage from him and cynically, they were very -- the social was very much in favor of trump and the ratings he brought, not unlike some people cynically feel about the media business giving him a lot of air time for ratings. >> right. >> and you know cynically two weeks before trump's gone, you know, and you know that would certainly appease the blue wave that's about to hit our shores on wednesday >> right so, but where does it end, jason? are you worried about as we've moved from you know twitter suspensions to actual cloud service that this will bleed into areas that do not reflect any true danger that are more politically motivated. >> yeah. this is a very interesting question

what i have encouraged my friends to do is not take the black swan event of trump and make policy based on donald trump's unique brand of chaos and crazy in the world, basing things on the joker's behavior in the batman movie. he did crazy things that stress test not only our democracy but stress tested everything he touched. if it was me and it was twitter, i would have given him a 100-day suspension and then just to not give, you know, the right wing, you know, the alt right too much ammunition but these are private services and they have the right to serve who they want and all of this is going to do is create a whole another class of startups for us to invest in and for us to back and the free market will do its work so there will be an aws competitor that says, hey, we will put our foot down and we're going to allow freedom of speech on a level that might make some people uncomfortable so it will be a business

opportunity for some other companies to service these folks and i do think it's kind of a one-time event and i do think that it was driven by public safety i don't think this was a coordinated "we hate trump attack" because all these, tim cook was more than happy to go to meetings with ivanka and trump for the last four years. he was at the right hand of trump in every photo op. so it's obvious that this was more about public safety than you know the employees of all these other companies hating trump. >> jason, a couple of follow-ups to what you just said there. one is, it sounds like you think there will be a further fragmentation of social media, not just fragmentation of what people are seeing and interacting with on platforms like facebook and twitter, but a full fragmentation of people with different political belief communicating on different platforms. is that right? >> no no i think this is like a one-time stress test on the

system and that we're going to go back to very boring politicians. i think people voted for boring this time with biden, you know, who knows in 2024, we might vote for a very boring republican and i think we'll all get along a lot better and i really do think this was like our system is stress tests by a bad actor, an insincere person who stress tested it. i don't think there is a need for a parler i they lot of these folks from the alt right were driven from the right to be alt right. just like some people were driven into hysteria over trump and got trump derangement syndrome i think the good news in our country, it will be hopefully very boring for 80 years out of washington we don't have this kind of chaos. the real challenge was you had somebody sitting in the president's seat acting, you know, really erratically and that the a very hard thing somebody has the most important seat in the world in the free

world and they're behaving in a very rational manner and you saw it in the people who stormed the capitol. they said the president told me to do it who could ever come one a litmus test like this it's crazy >> jason, it certainly was a very unusual situation and has been a very unusual situation, but i am wondering if you think that the actions we took, twitter and facebook, you know, take this in the past couple of weeks in order to shut down the president's account, do you think that represents a c change in terms of how they are thinking of content on their platform perhaps in anticipation of changes to section 230 and changes to make them more liable for what's shared on their platforms? >> yeah. i think that we're all going to come to a pretty bake agreement, which is don't incite violence don't be a racist. don't stalk people you know, public safety. and we'll get back to some reasonable freedom of speech

approach from these platforms. i think we'll keep 230 and i think the idea that you can throw people off the platform has now been highlighted and that that can be done in an unfair manner and i think that will make the platforms maybe col one an ombudsman type approach like the "new york times" used to have, an ombudsman who would comment independently on their reporting. i think that kind of set up for social media would be very helpful. if there was a group of people who you could appeal to, if you were removed from social media and they could say, hey, you know, they could arbitrate it and that would be a nice solution i think and i think you will see some self regulation from the twitters and facebooks rather than putting their foot down in some way. >> jason, i wonder what is really going on here because there were these talks about amazon squashing free speech and this existential threat to parler it's been ten days since aws

dropped parler and parler is coming back. also, is there a business model for loose content moderation you talk about the idea that maybe there is an aws or a different social networks for like loose content moderation. isn't that kind of an invitation to get your pantsuit off if you are a company and so how much more capital do you have to raise and how much more insurance do you have to have and so, therefore, how much do you have to charge because what advertiser is going to want to be next to that, right? >> 100%. you got that you nailed that one, john. any regulation we add to these companies reenforces the incumbent's position because they have the ability to hire lawyers and moderators and parler doesn't right. so, but i don't think most rational people would like to run a service where people are inciting violence and so that's a very unique group of people who would want to live in that world and it might be offshore,

or it might be some really hard core libertarians, but what they're going to find is not only do people not want to invest in that company or own equity in it you will find people don't want to work for that company if you have been on parler, it's gar back it's a terrible app, it's poorly designed, it's slow. you won't get good class people to be on the platform, support in it, or build it that at the end of the day is a big part of what happened here is jack did not want to come to work and have his top engineers and his top leiutenants leave the company. i think it was getting to that point where it was causing so much chaos just like it did at our thanksgiving tables or christmas or celebrations or zooms. we had to deal with internally in our families fighting this is what every company was dealing with, with trump's insanity thank god everybody voted for him. i am so excited for 72 hours from now to be able to focus on

work and family and defeating the virus and not having to deal with captain chaos anymore i think it will be wonderful to remove this cognitive overhead from all of our cpus >> jason, your broader point is good that is the companies, they are families and you got to hope that behavior in general is self correcting no matter what part of the political aisle you are on it's great to see you. thanks for joining us today. >> better day is coming. the exit interview for fc chairman ajit pai. that's after the break

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starting at $17 a month. learn more at xfinitymobile.com or visit your local xfinity store today. we create broad frame works to insure consumers the marketplace. we shouldn't micromanage how they operate their business in the absence of a market failure. this means that we let this dynamic industry, arguably the most dynamic free market ever known develop. if there are targeted cases where action might be necessary and the sec has authority to act, then we take action otherwise, we don't sit in judgment from washington, d.c. my own view is that the internet should be run by technologies and engineers and not by lawyers and bureaucrats here in the capitol. >> tis his first interview was n

2017 now back here ahead of his departure tomorrow now the fcc chairman ajit pai. good to see you. i want to start off on section 230. because you said three months ago you intended to clarify the meaning of section 230 but the clock ran out on you what do you think 230 should mean >> look, a part of the reason why we wanted to start that conversations about the immunity provisions specifically section 230. now we will be up to, of course, elected officials in both the exit and judiciary branches, there are bipartisan members of congress who want to look at revisions. so i think it is appropriate for the legislature to take a lead on that issue. >> yeah, but i mean, act like you are retired. okay because in a few hours you will be i hear people talking out of both sides here, we don't want

the social networks to have this blanket immunity in second 230 then they complain when the social networks choose to moderate content it seems if they lose 230 protections, they will be doing a lot more of. right? >> listen, the narrow question we were focused on was like i said the immunity revision there has been expressed social media and tech giants operateing in good faith. are they using the otherwise objectionable standard within the immunity provision appropriately. those are the types of things we are hoping to explomplt i think as i said back in 2017, there isn't any transparency to how they make these decision or who makes these decision i think you see a bipartisan platform in washington or around the country, this is platforms where it is held we have no insight into who is allowed to speak and when and why. >> so ajit, i am curious in your advice to the people who succeed you working on this issue of section 230.

as you mentioned, it is a bipartisan issue what would be your hope that they can accomplish in terms of practical reform in the next several months because this has been a priority ofyours since october, i would expect that there might be some regret that you had not been able to complete that. so what is your hope that that can be done now? >> i think broadly speaking, my hope is that congress in a bipartisan way will sit down and put on the page the basic principles of an open internet it might apply to network operators and content providers, google, facebook and twitter, everybody in the stack so-to-speak i think should be governed from provisions, from the consumer perspective is what am i allowed to say and see. to the extent, we have asymmetric regulation depending on where on the stack you lie. that's not something that serves consumers or the industry very well so i hope congress will take a wholistic view as opposed to demagogueing an issue as we

might see in some quarters >> chairman pai, another changes you made to net neutrality what are your concerns that you made that may be rolled back and what are the dangers -- what do you see as the dangers if some of those changes are repealed >> i think the past three-plus years since we made our decision have demonstrated decisively the hysterical provisions made by some of the death of the internet or slowing speeds or pay $15 per month as opposed on twitter have proven false. speeds now are over twice what they were when we made our decision millions more americans have access to the internet than they did in 2017. infrastructure investment has gone up significantly. so our decision was correct. moreover, i think the hypocrisy of those who had advocate for net neutrality rules are given they are the ones demanding that network operators, tech giants and even broadcasters and cable companies sensor views they don't like

here, too, i hope congress is able to put those basic principles on the page, no blocking, no throttling or conversations, transparency and make sure that every consumer is protected regardless of where in the economy a particular company might be >> mr. chairman, i wonder, we've seen congressional hearings on tech policy. i would say the response of the views have been checkered. what gives you hope that a broad swath of lawmakers truly understand the issues at play? and if they don't, do you have hope that they're about to >> well, i do think that on some of the sec's core initiatives over the past two years, we have seen a bipartisan recognition in congress that our work is important. for example, the steps taken to close the digital divide, we finished phase 1 to get broadband up to 5 million americans. the update is coming up, too

on 5g, we pursued the leadership on security. there, too, we see recognition of importance. i think the sec and other administration officials will have to work in collaborating ways with congress to make sure seven on the same page because at the end of the day, these are not republican issues or democratic issues they're american issues. i do hope the future regulators will work in that spirit. >> chairman, over the years, we talked a lot about rural broadband as it relates to these issues of access and during the pandemic, i think we have seen an interesting spin on the question of access. it seems to me that vaccinations could be rolled out a lot more 134509ly if there were better -- digitally if there were better infrastructure as from is talk about infrastructure going forward, what shape do you think that should take? >> well, i in my first major speech as sec chairman in march of '17 encouraged congress in a

bipartisan way to put substantial funding on the table to once again close the digital divide i refer to them on the precise number, 50 billion, 60 billion. that's determined by them. but think about where we would be four years hence had they taken up that charge that said, the sec set out a number of initiatives to close that gap we see more having internet access and more will in the future additionally, we've incurred companies like spacex or electric utilities on the ground from my perspective, i dare say congress doesn't care either we just want to make sure they are connected and so i hope they'll take a technological neutral view of the way forward on this. >> and finally, chairman, american politics is arguably maybe it's not even an argument, more of a mess now than it was when you came in at the sec. what is next for you are you going into politics, private industry what >> i haven't made any plans as i

was telling my family and co-workers that today i will take a nice long nap and swig of coffee from this mug here and figure out what i want to do when i grow up it's been an honor to serve in this position. the first indian american to have the privilege to do so i have been so rewarded throughout my career and especially over the last four years. i am hopeful whatever comes will be a venture intellectually stimulating to me and a value for the american people. that's certainly what i have been blessed through the past several years of my career hopefully, that will be the case in the future. >> i sent you a linkedin invite. use that, we'll have you back on when you have that nap and that coffee chairman ajit pai from the sec, thank you for being with us. >> thank you so much, john appreciate it. >> based on twitter as well, we'll take a break here. watch facebook this morning. it got an upgrade. they outperform price target 325. they say some of the anti-trust concerns are baked from and that

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. welcome back, everybody, i'm sue herrera, here's your cnbc news update at this hour treasury nominee janet yellen says she will soon strengthen economic competitiveness, which includes significant spending on infrastructure yellen says must more be done to stop a pandemic-induced economic downturn >> i see, for example, extended unemployment insurance, snap benefits and so forth as having a very large bang for the buck a. huge bang for buck comes from the money we spend on public health to make sure that we have widespread vaccinations quickly.

>> johns hopkins says the u.s. has confirmed more than 24 million cases of coronavirus and nearly 400,000 deaths. half of the nation's confirmed infections have happened since mid-november. and the new york mets fired jared porter, this a day after espn reported he sent graphic uninvited text messages to a female reporter in 2016 when he was working for the chicago cubs porter was hired just 37 days ago. are you up to date that's the news update julia, i'll send it out to you >> thanks, sue. our next guest is launching a women into executive ranks and board rooms. with us now announcing her new company called the monarch collect siv former vp chairman and ceo debra lee. she is also a board member at at&t marriott and procter & gamble debra, thank you so much for joining us

tell us about this new company and why you are launching it >> thank you, julia. it's great to see you again and great to be with you this morning. i started monarch's collection with my partner lane long because we knew there was a perception that qualified black executives and women could not be found to serve on boards. at least that's what companies s keep saying. and in the wake of george floyd's murder, a lot of companies donated to social justice causes and did psas, but, you know, a lot of people said, well, does your board look like and what does your senior leadership team look like? and i served on corporate wards for over 20 years and i knew in my heart that we can find executives that a board ready and we could help companies with

their so-called problem. we approached this in a new way because we are both business people rafia has done executive coaching and advising for years. she's on several boards. so we know that businesses with diverse boards actually do better and create more profit for the companies. so, you know, with all the chatter going on and companies having to face the music and people asking more questions, we thought to ourselves, you know, we should be helpful with this we know a great net worth of black executives, female executives and latino executives so we will reach out to companies and try to make the connection it's a packs of mine it always has been and it's really exciting to launch the business. >> so, in addition to helping identify some of those

candidates for board seats, what else will you be doing with these companies to help institute more systemic change, to make sure that this is not just a band aid of filling a single empty board seat with a diverse candidate. >> right we are not interested in putting butts in seats as they say we want to help the companies change their culture and you are right, just putting a black person or a woman on the board is not the answer. the first thing is you need more than one you need two or three to really help change the culture and second of all, we want to work with companies to train their executives, to train their board, you know, how to make diverse board members feel more comfortable, how to train them we're actually available for training you know, a lot of diverse candidates just don't know about boards they've never served on them or never known anyone who served on

them so there is a lot to learn about how boards work and companies can provide a service in that way. we hope to be helpful in that way. so our ideal assignment would be to be hired by a company, help them find some candidates, but also help the company train its culture, change its culture and make those for candidates feel welcome and really the next level after you join a board is being appointed as a chairman of the committee, nominating in good aftern governance is an important committee. chairing a board is very important. >> debra, changing a company's culture is no small task >> right >> i am curious, based on your own experience on the board office these major companies such as procter & gamble and at&t, how your experience there is shaping your approach to helping other companies change their cultures >> well, i have learned from my

experience on boards over the years that, first of all, having one ortwo diverse candidates changes the culture of the boardroom. and you can ask tough questions. you can ask questions about the number of executives they have and the number of executives of color. i am always very opened to speak to executives at the company and i get a lot of requests. i just feel that's a part of my job, if the women's group wants me to come and talk or a black affinity group and i'd like to open a dialogue with the executives so i know what some of the issues are so i found that connecting with the ceo, giving advice, connecting with people at the company other than those on the board is really helpful. and then i always feel it's a part of my obligation to get other diverse board members on the board behind me. so that's always a goal of mine

when i join a board so i found it's really helped i've seen, i have been on the marriott board for almost 20 years. >> right >> i am chair of their diversity committee. i have seen their culture change they hold themselves accountable. >> i wonder, good morning, by the way. it's john fort i wonder, do you find that boards are using the right filters and standards to choose board members? because so often i hear part of the challenge is boards decide, well, we feed former ceos of fortune 500 companies. will you not find as many women and people of color in that pool as you might want. is it necessary to have that as a filtering mechanism and, if not, for the quality of the board, what new kind of quality filtering mechanisms should they be useing? >> that's a really great question, john, first of all, will et many essay when it was passed that stopped a lot of the

practice of ceos putting their friends on boards, after enron got in trouble and they're interlocking compensation committees and, you know, you pat my back, i'll pat yours. so that was stopped with them and they ruled that you have to have a certain number of independent board members. but i do thinkthat companies need to expand their filter and they do it for other people. they do it for white people. so, asking them to do it for diverse candidates and black people, in particular, is not unusual. if they need an expert in marketing, they'll look for an expert in marketing or if they need cyber security advice so i have seen boards expand their filters and they just need to make sure they do that for diverse candidates i had a search firm tell me once i said i wanted a black male on the board i was on

i was heavily nominated in governance they told me there were no black male ceos. i was like, well, don't you know kim frazer i mean i named five black male ceos off the top of my head. so, one, the companies don't know the people and, two, they absolutely do have to change their filter and that's not asking them to search for people that aren't competent. there are plenty of competent people that will meet these filters. it's applying the same filters they apply to other people because you've seen you know governors of a state who step down, get on boards. you know, can i name ten instances where i've seen people other than a former ceo be attracted to companies >> well, debra, we appreciate you coming on to talk to us about your new company, the monarch collective and we hope you will come back again to talk

about some other things in the safe as well as your perspective on the streaming industry as you are a veteran of the cable space. thanks, so much, debra lee. >> thank you for having me there is a great week. we will see change of power tomorrow and hopefully diversity will be a priority again >> on that very topic, debra, janet yellen has been making headlines on all the greatest tips for our cnbc audience, infrastructure, taxes, china, climate, elan moy has an update. >> reporter: yellen made comments about the value of the dollar she said, explicitly the value should be determined by the market and treasury would not seek to interfere in that process and in fact they would go over those actors who might try to do so >> the united states does not seek weaker currency to gain competitive advantage. and we should oppose attempts by other countries to do so

the intentional targeting of exchange rates gain commercial advantage is unacceptable. >> reporter: she also talked about fiscal policy and the potential for raising the corporate tax rate she said that would not happen while the pandemic was still depressing the economy and any increase in the tax rate would be accompanied by new investment and spending as well but she dodged a question on the $10,000 on state and local tax deductions that came from the republican chairman of the committee chuck grassley she said the administration would look to understand the decision i don't remember about how to proceed and they would focus on the impact it's had on state and local governments and their ability to offer critical services guys >> elon, thank you a lot of headlines out of yellen we will keep an eye on that with your health. i got a dumb upgrade of axp.

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i'm made to move. but these days, i'm not getting out as much as i'd like to. that's why i take osteo bi-flex. it helps with occasional joint stiffness, while it nourishes and strengthens my joints for the long term. osteo bi-flex. because i'm made to move. microsoft making a big investment in gm's subsidiary cruz fill lebeau sat down with the head of that division. >> microsoft in cruz is one reason if you look at general motors

i'm not sure i saw shares of gm up almost 10% in one day that's what's happened today, in part, because of this kremt by microsoft along with criminal motors 2 billion if total going into the subsidiary of gm cruise. microsoft will invest $2 billion. it's a collective group $2 million. the cruise valuation is now $30 billion. microsoft will provide software, cloud computing for autonomous vehicles here is the ceo of cruise talking about the importance of bringing microsoft into the team >> we are looking for self driving space and what we're doing at cruise, this is going to be the largest deployment of mission-critical ai out into the real world so it's a real partnership to have microsoft and cruise giving those capabilities and opportunities. >> another ev start-up announcing a round of startup.

rivion announced it raised 6.25 billion. the first vehicles including some delivery trucks for amazon. they will be delivered later this year. for a point of reference, rivian's investment valuation $27.6 billion. today is the first day of trading between the new fiat chrysler and psa combined company. guess what the market cap is 4.tuition billion. it shows you where investors think the value is in the future with rivian having that valuation right now. julia. >> just remarkable phil thanks so much for that. and speaking of microsoft, it is also morgan stanley's top stock take for the recovery. these are the reasons why only on cnbc.com. we're back in a moment

welcome back ci citrix of reich stay-at-home capabilities that they can offer. joining us the ceo david henshaw and reich foundered and ceo, great to see both of you, david, give us your theory of the deal here

because we associate citrix, of course, from being able to get work done from anywhere, focus on security and that but reich is deeper into this project management, the actual nuts and bolts of official work. what are you trying to accomplish >> if you step back and you think about this period of time, i mean, businesses aroundthe world right now are really looking to figure out what work in the post-pandemic how they create an kriermt most engaging, most productive for their teams. i think it's clear this hybrid or remote work or teams so prevalent throughout the pandemic is here to say. it works and drives higher productivity so those businesses that succeed are the ones that can really think about this problem wholistically, delivering all the work resources necessary to be effective, to be secure, to work any place that work needs to hoop anappen and bring the t

together in the most efficient way. i think these two organizations gives us the ability to do that, in that it is very wholistic and differentiates from anybody else >> andrew, you and i got to talk a few months ago in the fix of this pandemic. you sold rights to equity partners now you will be a part of citrix tell me as the founder, the ceo of reich, what is the mission of here and kind of what is the market telling you about the value of what reich has created? >> i'll start with a bigger mission, which is we tried to reduce digital work so that individual's innovations can achieve their best i view my job as a ceo of wrike, i want to build the best platform that helps companies to achieve them i want the platform to achieve great marketization and leading

market penetration i feel that under our previous investors, who were eager to build those product capabilities and be a leader three times in the row by forester and other analysts, and this this partnership with citrix allows us to have the market penetration and it's a complimentary product suite and a complimentary customer that now offers that complete solution to the market >> david, give me your sense of the value of doing this transaction now. early in the pandemic i talked to ceos who said boy, the valuations are getting crazy out there and i can't meet potential targets face to face and not do so many deals and we've seep a lot of deals of many different kinds. what's the opportunity that you see and it's $2 billion in cash is nothing to sneeze at tp.

>> it's not, and we spent the last several years radically tr transforming citrix to become clo cloud-delivering, and as we made our way through that transition, the vast majority of the way through you look at what we've been able to post up, and the anr has been rapidly accelerating this entire year and bringing together the cloud native platform as andrew described to be able to solve on a holistic basis is just the perfect outcome. it solves a lot of problems for customers and allows us to advance our strategy of traps forming this company even further than being a cloud-delivered platform and it worked the fact that these needs are real and customers are embracing what that future work needs to look like right now and we'll help them build out that

infrastructure to make sure they're productive, they're engaged and secured as effective as they possibly can be. >> in the wake of the solar winds hack, i've been asking a number of the ceos who come on our network about the risk they see going forward in terms of cybersecurity especially as people are using tools such as yours to have a more hybrid work experience as most people work from home now and we expect to see people going back and forth a lot more moving forward. how do you think about that cybersecurity risk and how you need to try to mitigate it >> i think security has been a tier 1 risk all along and it's been one of the primary issues and reasons why people engage with citrix already. we've taken a people-based approach to security and thinking about it as something that is contextual and dynamic and it needs to adapt with the work styles and as people move from a trusted network to an untrusted network security needs

to follow them and one of the best ways to deliver infrastructure is through virtualization the markets we've created and led for many, many years as we go forward, thinking about security again, holistically whether it's our analytics platform and better visibility into who is doing what where, all of these things play into a security profile they think will continue to raise the bar further and further and it needs to be and companies need to address it in a dynamic fashion. >> andrew, you and i talked earlier about having the right employees and having them engaged and they're the lifeblood of a software company. give me your outlook on the workers at reich and what this means for them and how they remain motivated and kind of the state of the engineering culture in silicon valley during these trying times

>> they're very excited about this opportunity i got a lot of pats on the back as we started discussing this deal coming together and right now both the executive team and everybody in the company is excited. we believe the time is now today's cias are building the hybrid environment and we're excited to get through that opportunity. >> all right david, andrew, great to have you. reich and citrix coming together, $2.25 billion acquisition by citrix. good to see you. >> thanks. take a look at chewy, peloton and fiverr all three of them sell saying we collectively see all three as a market over any semblance of valuation that can be justified. obviously huge gnsai over the past year.

"squawk alley" continues in a minute i understand, let's get started call a dell technologies advisor today.

before we go we want to mention twitter today planning to re-set the followers at both @potus and @white house

the accounts biden will take over tomorrow. that's's change of practice from 2017 when president trump inherited about 12 million followers from then president obama after his tenure, ma meang the 88 million followers that the president had before his ban will not migrate that's a failure, but john, the bidens are going to be met tomorrow by the white house chief usher, not the first family so it's not the first break in traditional practice. >> it's not, and julia, i'm not sure the biden administration really wants those followers i don't know who is in that pool, but it's probably pretty different from what we saw, the tenor and characteristics of who is in that group sometimes it's okay to start from scratch >> maybe it's okay to start from scratch, but i would not be surprised, john, if twitter maybe decides to make this new white house account for the

incoming president biden to make that a recommendation prompting people to be able to follow that to mitigate some of that criticism from -- carl, from the biden administration about the change they're making here. >> yeah. as for the week, julia, i know you'll be watching netflix tonight. >> going to be watching netflix really closely carl, it reports after the bell. that stock is up about nearly 2% today and then roku, of course, another big player in that space. that stock is up today as well and of course, for subscribers, we are watching that key subscriber number. netflix itself forecast that it was going to have 6 million new subscribers in the first quarter. in the first quarter and we'll be watching for guidance as well, guys. >> you know what else is hot, carl, etsy, that stock up more than 4x over the past 12 months and up another 6% today. >> indeed, and gilead, guys,

getting some love for the first time in a while and it will take you back to the best levels since august as morgan stanley goes to overweight and price target 83 and some of the investments in pipelines like breast cancer and hiv are finally paying off so we will continue to watch for yellen and some of the hearings this afternoon for now, it's time for the half. all right, carl. thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report." the one call from a wall street firm to buy big tech again as companies start to report earnings and we'll discuss with the committee. stephanie link, josh brown, joe teranova and jon najarian. the stocks are higher led by tech and nasdaq. josh brown, i turn to you. we focused on the call by j.p. morgan since the vaccine confirmation of november 6th of last year, faang names are the worst-performing stocks in the coverage universe. they have underperformed the s&p. almost all are down over the last 1