♪ tonight on "kqed newsroom," california's top law enforcement officials seeks to block the merger of two wirelesss provid as the government investigates the dominance of big tech companies. also we'll talk with a ceo ose digital academy has revolutionized online education for kids and life long learners. and we'll hear how an innovative lab isne pioneeringw ways to improve the health and well-being of teens and young adults. hello, welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. we begin with the growing battles of tech against government. california attorney general becerra is leading an effort to block the telecom giants

t-mobile and sprint and they said i would hurt the consumers spcial for those in local income and minorities. it would cut the weless providers from four to three and meanwhile, the number of antitrust inves against google, facebook and apple and amazon areg. grow here to discuss are law professor kathlyn sandoval and tech editor and san francisco bureau chief, jeremy owens. nice to have both of you. >> thanks for having me. >> on the proposed me ger of sprint and t-mobile there are ten states led by new york and california filing suit to block it. professor sandoval, you're a former commissioner of the lifornia public utilities commission. what are your concerns about the proposed mergernd how would it affect consumers? >> right. i'm not -- thankou so much for the invitation. i'm an antitrust law professor. sboth as a former regulator and as an antitrust professor, a couple of tngs jumped out at

me. first of all, the complaint eleges that t-mob and sprint already have over half of the market share in both los angeles and new york city. in the first and second largest markets in america they have over half of the market share. >> it is hue. >> it i huge and there are a number of markets where they have very large market shares. and as you mentioned especially these are both marketed as value brands soav they been especially important for lower income consumers for value s consumers because the compete on price. so the concern isu hat as y have two head to head competitors who already have huge portions of themarket, who compete on price, if they merge which they're going to lessen the incentives or exemptions from ta caps that are important for people to be able to watch content like yours or e to watch content like some of my videos that i use f my law classes.

>> and jeremy, sprint and t-mobile did agree to a set of concessions, they agree not raising prices forthe years and improving the broadband service especially in rural areas and this seemed to satisfy the fcc chair ajit pai. why does becerra feel differently though? >> this is one area that you can come down on either these guys cannot compete against at&t ad verizon very ll on their own. those are two companies with so much behind them. and in terms of other things they canffer consumers, deals they can make with other services beyond wireless and telecom. so if you want to look at what they're competing against, putting them together makes a stronger competitor against the two stronger competitors that are already there. you cansay, well, these two compete against each other if we combine them we're not getting thatompetition and that's a problem. c i can see both sides of this from asumer point of view. that there's a reason to like it, there's a reason not to like so it's not a very easy issue.

>> well, what the telecom companies say they need to invest in the 5g tecology and to ward off competitions from chineseompanies. is that a legitimate argument? >> there's a way we look at this through the antitrust lens and regulatory lens. through the anti lens the concentration is already incredibly high. and makes it way higher. so in terms of antitrust analysis b the books this is presumptively anti-competitive. and so what they need to do is t actually show there are enough of what we call merger specific benefits so that the benefits outweigh the harms and the concern is that especially in places likees los angend new york as well as in places like el centro and, you know, companiet where the have large market shares that their promises of for example low prices for three years, three years expires pretty soon.

my law schools will graduate in three years k >> you donow what will happen after three years with the prices. jeremy, what is interesting 'sout all of this is if you look at europe been so much more aggressive on cracking down on tech companies and issuing major fines. why is it -- why is it so much more aggressive than the u.s. andow has that approach helped the consumers in europe in which these other tech companies compete like google, for example? >> you have to ask u.s. politicians why the eu has been tougher on these tech companrse than othan they have. and i think that's a really strong question to ask as we roll into20he elections is why have we allowed europe to take that claim of we are the ones establishing rules. they have beenas able to data privacy regulations that the u.s. is trying to get to. >> and huge fines >> and huge fines and the u.s. is saying that europe is doing it. in fact, donal trump said, europe is going after it. e we following europe

these are our companies. this should be our issue. but because we have been slow oe it, becauseave been looking at other issues we have fallen behind. now we're getting there, but we take so long to do everything. will the tech market still be ehe same when we do? there are some problems starting this late. >> i think the difference isre lly a jurisprudence and not enmply a political difference. the major diff is in the united states in order to have monopoly power, that's no magic number but we're generally looking for certainly somebody who has over 90%t of the mar share in the relevant market and that's a whole debate about how do you dine the relevant market. for example, is it all advertising or online advertising? is it is a segment of online advertising? >> none of the companies seem to have 90% market share. >> right. is 80% for monopoly

power? maybe. is 50% enough for monopoly power? whereas in europe the legal standard is dominance. you can have 35%, maybe even 30% market share and have market dominance in europe. this is -- >> lower threshold. >> yes. yes. so this is a legalce differe and this is why europe was able to reach things like th fine they did against google. because their legal standard is different. >> yeah, they put three fines against google. the android fine they levied wouin cer not happen here. >> let me ask you something about on a related front. lots of anti-competitive talk around the big tech companies, like google, apple. facebook and amazon. the justice i committee looking at antitrust complaints against the companies. what kind of potentnsl regulatre they looking at? it seems like they talk a lot

about it, but nothing really happens. we'll spend years on the inquiries probably and absolutely nothing might happen. right? i don't think they're going to be able to bring charges. i don't think there's going to be an antitrust trial for any of the companies but what might happen is what happened with microsoft. they eventuly settled withb microsof in the time that they fought microsoft over five years in the late 90s and 2000s it gave breath to yaho and the younger services that microsoft may have tried to strangle butal they had to with the government and that gave them the breath to get hathrough. >>about breaking up the companies? presidentialandidates like rren is calling for that. >> you can answer this, katherine, to go after the ompanies yes i would love to see youtube have a spotlight shown on it because alphabet hides it unr google a says it's advertising. no, google is one of the mo portant things and kids are addicted to youtube. we need more light shown on that.

we need to know mort that property but google justhides it within everything else. >> you put your law lessons on youtube when there's a power outage or another situation tewhere you can't actuallh them in class. >> yeah. so last year when we had the terrible fires and their cam, and we all had terrible pollution in the bay area santa clara university the president closed itecause the air pollution was so bad. and so i was able to use youtube and to ouupload on -- can do a private youtube channel to upload v eos for myclass. and you deliver the content. absolutely it's important for educational content. >> let me ask you about e privacy issues as well. because our lawmakers aremi ing the mark when they only target the tech companies because phone companies have lots of data on where you have been, what you he been doing. so if they're justocused on facebook for example with stricter laws or on youtube with stricter laws, but aren't phone

companies what does that mean? >> i thinkthat's a real problem. so i worked for the fcc as a regulator, i directed their department there. i teach cmunications law. nd i don't have a facebook account. bmy i can't escape internet service provider, so if my internet service provider can sell my data including my location be a huge loophole if you only put privacy protection on facebook azon or some of -- ultimately what are the apps that ride on the platforms. so that's why it's important to also look at what the internet service providers are doing when we look at privacy because actually they have arguably f more data than any one of these other companies do. >> i don't see any legalis mechfor them saying you have to break up. >> so katherine s there alegal mechanism where they can break up the companies? >> meeting the legal standard is tough because you have to define the relevant market.

e to find that there is monopoly power and there's abuse and monopoly power or they could change the laws and look at whethe law is more important -- is more appropriate for the shift in technology. >> and as you pointed out that nopoly standard is very high. thank you. professor katherine sandoval and thank you both. >> thank you. to education. today, practically anyone can hop onlinelpto get mastering an a academic subject and this is one of the pioneers. it uses technology to make a quality free education available to anyone, everywhere. ach month 18 million people visit the site to take fe courses in 40 languages on subjects ranging from algebra to world history. last they included free test help for the law school entrance exam and joining me now is the ceo and founder of cannes

academy. >> good to be here. >> first, i would like to ask you about the nationwide collegd cheating st scandal. because a coach was the first to be sentenced, he avoided prison time. he was ordered to spend six months in home confinement and that was tar lighter tha 13 months that the prosecutors had sought. what do u make of th whole scandal? >> well, it's in some ways i have to look at the silver lining of the dark cloud. it does put a light on how much inequity there's been around the process and how strange a's process ibeen. and so the scandal has a lot of extreme behavior that i think all of are shocked to know it was going on. but i think there's a lot of other area in the gray area where people hire consultants to help their kids write essays. at the end of the heday, children should be themselves and should represent themselves authentically in order for it to

really be a level playing field. >> but it also ignited a national conversation about the s.a.t. test and wheth should have it at all. because there are some -- you know, ineities baked into that whole process. the caes academy offers a prep course. what do you think ab? >> my view on testing is there's nothingor inherently good evil about a test. it's a matter of how it is used. if someone us an s.a.t. score to be the defining number of who they are, then that is a very bad use of an s.a.t. but if it's used as a dimension of -- you look at wholistically, the student grades, extracurricular, essays thou write it be interesting for folks to look at and the value it provides to colleges -- i'm not an admissions officer and i talk to a lot of them. but kids go to high schools around the world and they might -- that's a rigorous place so if they have a high gp i cani know what means.

for other places i don't know how hard it is to achieve the t things ngs like the s.a.t. give a signal -- not a perfect signal. no assessment -- in fact no dimension, none of the things are perfect but in aggregate they could help indicate what a student -- how ready they might be. >> all right. let's talk more specifically about the academy because you have more th worldwide and that's an astonishing number. congratulations on that. ls of companies offer online tools and where do you fit in >> well, we started off as a nonprofit because there's a lot of thinhat for profits can do well. but there's certain parts of oue life wh there's market failure and education is one of them. where the buyers, the beneficiaries, all different there are certain values that we have, hey, if someone wants to learn something there should be no friction for them to do it. ey shouldn't have to get out the credit card. >> be more democratic, available

to everyone? >> we made that a hundred years ago by introducing free pass public education. w can empower anyone and say it's something like s.a.t. we hope to l pel theaying law schooled a administrations test. just your core work from pre-k up to college, one, foreople to learn, to have access and then prove what they know to th world. i see that as the core role. that's why you see so many user comingit. >> what do you see as the biggest problems in education in the way it's taught today? >> we are trying to tacklewo head on. well, there are more, but there are social and weal issues but one big issue is access. even in the ited states, the majority of minority majority schools, they don't offer things that we would take for granted for your or my chil like an

algebra ii class or biology vclass. and in rural areas there's not someone who can teach a proper algebra class. so you have t access issue. not just access to something that's called class x, but is a world class level. then the other is traditional schools have been built on a fixed pace model. this is a compromise that had to be made to practically educate most folks but as you get moved into the model, even though gaps are identified which then build on top of the gaps and eventually kids hit walls. 70o of kids o to community college in america have to take remedial math. which is a euphemism for sixth or seventh grade math. >so you call it the swiss cheese model. there are all the little holes and a personal passion of you to try to build a customized learning model. you have a new partnership now with the northwest evaluation association. tell us what you hope to accomplt.sh through t >> the newa is not a household name for a lot of people

watching this. but if they talked to their school or their kids, they're probably taking thisassessment. 25% of all kids in grades 3 through 8 take this three times ayear. it's called an interim assessment to just understand where they are and how much th're growing relative to their peers. what we saw in our s.a.t. world now that the p sat which is taken by the kids in america it's a practice for entry into ae cannes academy. so the otheressment map growth assessment now when the students take that in the past the test is likokay, you grew by this much or you d what do you dow with that? so teachers have asked us, can we have an actionable path base? on th what we have launched is as soon as they take that test the next day thebeachers are to give personalized learning planning on cannesad y. we call it the map accelerator and then the principal, the district and the teachers can erstand how that work is driving growth on the map. >> andnt i w to also ask you

about charter schools because back s a lot of push against charter schools for not only public schoolteachers but from politicians. like governor gavin newsom, he wants them more accountable. is there a role for charter schools here? >> i think there's a role for anyone helping the students which is moving the dial. >> how do you think they're doing right now? >> i think charter schools are almost like any other -- i'm not an expert at charter schools but my view is i have seen traditional public schools that are doing amazing things.y i actua think the majority of them -- sometimes the lens goes on some of the' places th struggling but the majority of schools are doing really good work. the sa t thing is charter. there are some charters that are doing some excellent work and nhere ar some like yeah -- so i generally in anystry in any space i always like more transparency and accountability. that's a good thing. i don't think there is anythinne

particularltive or positive about charters in general. there are specific cases in either case. >> then 20 seconds if you can, the current generation of young people, they grow up with mobile phones, facebook and do you hoink their attention spans are shorter? do you address that? >> that's true but i think their expectations arenow different. and the good thing is we can now give things to them in more -- but there are research studies we have only a ten minute attention span. i don't want to blame the millennials. >> that the challenge. all right, founder of the cannes academy, so good to have you here. turning now to health. hope lab is a san francisco based nonprofit that's using technology and scientific research to improve the lives of teens andoung adults. one of their creations is the computer generated chatrogram to ease stress and anxiety experienced by young cancer survivors. it was created more than a those ago that's helped

with cancer stick to their treatment plans and they're working on an app to tackle loneliness among college students, two-thirds who onreported feelingy in the past year. joining me director at hope lab, danielle ramo. >> thank you. i'e happy tohere. >> well, hope lab has an interesting model where it tackles health challenges facing teens and young adults, whether it's loneless or recovering from cancer. can you walk tusrough that? >> sure. it helps people with a whole m host ofntal and physical problems but we don't know how to t translate th the digital environment. so aai hope lab we behavioral science and human centered design tong help c their lives and feel meaningful and engaging. specifically to gen-z y today.

>> it promoting on the young children, and not the other issues li bullying and ? obesi >> well, we started off as a mission to support young people who had a key problem with sticking to chemotherapy, medication. it's r that has extreme side effects every singl day. that's what's needed to undergo chemotherapy. there was a real need there to support something tt was affecting deeply the lives of young people. now, we're focused more broadly on mental health as well as other physical health conditions that are really undersupported by other apps in the market. mental health is unecedentedly problematic among young people compared to older adults or other generations of young people. >> it is such a big issue and one of the groups hope lab has been working with since the launch nearly 20 years ago is the cancer survivors, you have

talked about thant. your latest work involvers a comp generated chat program and how does that work? >> well, we generated viv abot with the idea that there's a particur risky time for teens who have undergone ca treatment. as they come back into the world after the treatment. they're at risk for depression, anxiety. evbe suicide. use coming back to the community is not as easy ashey would hope or they might expect. ositiveabot delivers psychology skills things like expressing gratitude, in ulness. looking at the positive side of situations. alldevered through facebook messenger in a bot format. a text program. we work with teen cancer survivors to put content in there that would be meaningful to the population we aim tove send we have finished data collection on a randomized clinical trial that shows that engaging with viv abot is supporting anxie reduction among young people after cancer

treatment. a>> how do you get chatbot to sound like a teen or something that young people would want to engage with? >> we went directly to the young cancer survivors themselves. our model at hope lab is to cocreate allhe products with the young people we aim to serve so we invited those who had cancer to comefito the , spend a day with us, recording video, sharing their lived experience. and reading and sourcing contenh for how talk about cancer. how they talk about coming back into the world. how they tlk about anxiety and depression and all of that directly lives withinhe bot. >> you know, with all this work that you do and then especially a lot of work you do with generationyo z, thg adults who were born between the mid0s nd early 2000s what are the misperceptions that peophave? with. >> i work at the intersection of digital and emental health and there are some real problems with experiences of mental

health among gen-z today. itis higher than in previous generations and a onmiption that social media is entirely to blame for that. we conducted a naonal survey at hope lab last year with over 1,400 young adults where we found of course that social media is quite widelyos used al entirely ubiquitous among thez but you can address problems like depression and anxiety directly using technology. so wouldn't say it's necessarily only the cause of the problem but also really can be part of >> on the one hand, you're seeing an increase, right, in some of the anxiety and emoonal problems th they're experiencing but you're saying that social media isn't eirely blame. so then what is the cause of this increase in what they're feeling? >> i wish i could give you a direct simple answer to that. i spend my career studying things like that.

there's no doubt that information that is negative and that can be associated with depression and suicidality, things like bullying is perpetuated over social media. but i wouldn't say it's clearly a cause that we know. there are certainly in some ways people aref more awarental health problems. parents are more aware of autism and adhd. some of the mental health problems that we have seen before are quite similarrehan they in the past. depression, anxiety. yit awareness is one thing and we're focused on to make a real clear impact. >> what are your current projects -- one of your rrent projects is building an app to help first year college students overcome loneliness. you would think that college offers lots of opportunities to haveocial interaction. you can pledge for fraternities, rorities, dorm life. why do you think they're feeling so lonely? >> actually, college students are also unprecedentedly lonely in the united states today and in the past two weeks a third of

college students say they felt very lonely. two-thirds say they felt very i lonel the past year. and we think it might be in part because they have unrealistic expectations of what the college experience will be like. they think they'll come, meet the best friends of their life and everythin they have heard about college that will happen. so our app is helping people to develop the skills to actually meet their social goals when college isn't necessaly the experience that they expected once they get there. >> so then what skills or exercises do you enco college students to engage in to help them eas the loneliness? >> we have created a set of social challenges and that is ndgoing out into the world trying to support making social connections. something -- tngs likeo dare leave your dare room door open for a week or walk down the campus, look five people in the eye and say hello. but we also have the internal piece, that part thatakes it easier for them to process if

well. don't go as so asking them things like what would you tell a friend if they tried something and it didn't work out? >> thank you s much for being here. >> thank you. my pleasure. and that is our show for tonight. but before we go, we'd like to mark the passing of a beloved friend and colleague linda rkeyny. she here for more than 40 years in multiple roles including as a assistant director on our show.er and ot productions. she was also the chair of the national emmy awards committee and had served as president of the san francisco northern california chapter of the national academy of television arts andnc sc. we will forever miss her generosity, her warmth and remarkable dedication to her craft.

robert: fallout over foreign intelligence. i'm robert costa. welcome to "washington week." tensions between the united states and i ran, following explosions on two oil tankers. >> i rand shoulet displomesi not with terror and extoion. robert: backtrack. president trump now says he would alert the f.b.i. if a political power offered him political dirt, one day after he scoffed at the idea. while pelosi holds the line on impeachment.o > you have t handle it with great care. robert: we cover it all next. ♪