Plus, relocation, relocation, relocation. Read it has a plan to let its employees work from wherever they are. But what are the consequences of such an arrangement question we ask the ceo, steve huffman. The u. S. Has identified in iran and russia for meddling in the election. We talk about how pervasive the menace is and is potential harmful effect on democracy in our continuing to electioneering series. First, it was an ugly day for u. S. Markets. Tumbling in the worst stock rout in months. Rising cases of covid19 in the u. S. And europe and locked on measures in countries like germany and france accelerating the drop. We get the big picture from Abigail Doolittle in new york. A lot of forces at play today. It. Us through abigail over all a brutal day for stocks and risk assets on a combined basis. You mentioned the different forces. Of course there is uncertainty around the election, but i would argue the biggest force is the virus resurgence in europe. The german dax fell more than 4 , its worst day since march 18. That fear around the virus and resurgence and future lockdowns could do to the economy really hit stocks hard. Down three point 5 . The worst sector for the s p 500 was this years defensive sector, the s p 500 tech index was down 4. 3 . Bank index down 4 . Chip stocks down 3 . Folks want out of what has worked this year. Defense not working that well on the day. That was the bearish action. It seems to have more to do with the virus. We will have more information. The s p 500 has reached key Technical Levels similar to those european indexes suggesting that more selling is ahead. Stay tuned for that follow to lily. As for some earnings movers after hours, we have some reprieve with interest soaring up 29 . They put up a big beat. Driving their strength was digital ad sales. Similar to snap. Seems like these companies with digital ad sales on the internet are doing well. Clearly its consumers on the internet on their home more so than not. Ebay Beat Estimates for the last quarter but for the current quarter, they are saying that it will not be as great as hoped for for the holiday quarter. Stock falling on the guidance. Not clear what is behind that, because they actually beat. They sell the homemade masks, etsy. Could be the fact that they stocked up so much in the sales enough. Strong investors taking some chips off the table especially in the wake of the week we have had folks want only the very best. Emily interesting, all those ecommerce holiday stories to watch over the next few weeks. I was also watching the hearing on capitol hill today. Facebook ceo Mark Zuckerberg, sunder pichai of google and jack dorsey of twitter all in the hot seat, all of them reporting Earnings Results this week. What are you expecting . Abigail the testimony was very colorful in terms of language, as these bigtech internet ceos are trying to defend the section 230 that protects their companies. Lawmakers obviously going against them or trying to bring something about. In terms of any change that would actually affect the numbers or fundamentals for these companies anytime soon from this testimony, that is unlikely. So the big picture is what youre talking about, earnings tomorrow for apple, amazon, alphabet, and facebook. And interesting report. They had huge selling pressure. These were the big drags on the day. Investors are taking chips off the table, perhaps profit where it has been working. Over the last five days, these stocks are down as well. We dont have stocks trading well into the report, sometimes it can raise a red flag. But price for affection, that bar is very high because these are companies that have done very well, so any hiccup from these companies, you could see some serious selling pressure. Today is maybe a small tell. Investors are shaving some of their risk off into those reports. Emily bloombergs Abigail Doolittle, thank you so much for that update. As abigail was discussing the biggest names report tomorrow after the close apple, alphabet, amazon and facebook. Those big tech ceos were on capitol hill today ceos of alphabet, facebook them and twitter. Brody, who covers tech lobbying on washington was watching every minute. What do you think the main takeaway was . Obviously we knew there was going to be a little political fireworks ahead of the election six days away. This one was a lot more colorful than some of the testimony we seen in the past. I took the partisan theater to be one of the main takeaways. Of course, in six days, and platforms will face their biggest test. There will be a lot of disinformation, there may be false claims of having one Member States or the entire election and it was interesting to see how the tried to stand up to a republican or democratic pressure to basically treat contentkinds of certain ways. The tension was definitely high. Frankly, it seemed like a fair amount of anger from the lawmakers. That really came through. But i think the platforms are andng to parry that particularly assure that them across the they will keep this information off the platforms. But it remains to be seen in less than a week mother or not they will be able to do that. Emily lets listen to some of the we heard today, some of more Heated Exchanges between lawmakers and ceos. Take a listen. So you are testifying to this committee right now that when twitter silences or sensors people are blocks political speech, that has no impact on elections . People have choice of other communication channels. Not if they dont hear any information. If you dont think you have the power to influence elections, what did you block anything . We have policies that are focused on making sure that more heard. Are we see a lot of abuse and harassment which ends up sentencing people and having platform. The we do continue to see coordinated influence operation items. We have been very vigilant. We appreciate of the corporation we get from the intelligence agencies and these companies we are sharing information with. We cant stop countries like russia from trying to interfere in an election. Only the u. S. Government can really push back with the appropriate leverage to do that, but we have built up systems to make sure that we can identify them much faster when they are attempting to do that and i think that should give the American People a good amount of confidence leading into this election. Emily lets remind folks why the hearing was called in the first place. It was about section 230, which companies from legal liability for content their users post. Republicans wanted to focus more on how twitter and facebook have handled particular posts from the president , the New York Post story about hunter and joe biden. In terms of what we heard today, how will this impact the actual law, and will that law be changed. Ben it was a very interesting pretext because section 230 was discussed. There was one comment sort of in the middle of the hearing about the republican proposal on 230 and what it might do and there was a comment from Mark Zuckerberg at the end about trying to tackle the issue of transparency. So it really doesnt focus on that. What i think you are saying is 230,that issue, section which has come under bipartisan criticism, is increasingly going in the other direction. You have a set of republican criticisms and a set of democratic criticisms and they are largely opposite. Unless lawmakers can find a way to come together, obviously, this would be in the next congress, but it will be really hard for them to advance anything that really changes how this law and how it treats the tech companies. Emily right. Republicans are concerned about too much moderation and democrats are concerned about not enough and there is a big election standing between now revisited. Is will be we will continue to follow this story. Ben, thanks so much for that commentary. Bloombergs ben brody from washington. Coming up, more from the tech hearings, from a Silicon Valley veteran. Should these companies be held accountable . Do they have too much power . That is next. This is bloomberg. Emily as we have been following all day, major tech ceos in the hot seat before congress today, fighting allegations of negligence and bias. All facing tough questions from lawmakers about how they are handling political speech and misinformation with just six days to go until the election. With more on how the tech regulatory landscape has changed, tech veteran tom ceo andc3 founder, which makes a. I. Software. He has quite the interesting Historical Perspective on this. Tom, i would like to get your thoughts on the pressure facing facebook, google, and twitter. Did these companies have too much power . Tom i think this is an unusual example of the United States government stepping up and doing its job. We have a situation where we had these social Media Companies that have become more powerful than the governments about regulate them. They providelities are becoming a substantial Public Health hazard. They are being weaponize by bad actors and they are being manipulated by the people that run these companies to filter the information that is made available to voters and to the citizens at large. So this power is being abused and i think if this is a situation where if government does not regulate, we will be very sorry. Emily give us some Historical Context on how the Political Landscape is today than when it was when you started back in the day. Tom i think the idea that you will compete against facebook or google, i think it is highly unlikely. People today dont really start withnies to compete google, they Start Companies hoping to be acquired by google. These juggernauts are insurmountable. Whether or not there are trust issues, that is beyond my pay lawyer, but it a do know that these companies are misusing their power. A. I. In reallyng malicious ways. Y are many manipulating people, causing a Public Health hazard among teenagers, a loving bad actors to weaponize these systems to manipulate elections, and they are clearly filtering the information that is available to voters so that voters are unable to make wellinformed decisions because they are not being given the news. Emily so you do think this influences the election and the results, the way that these companies operate. Tom unquestionably, they are influencing the election. They know they are influencing the election. They know exactly how theyre doing it, with forethought. I dont think it is manus, they think youre doing the right thing but i dont think it is malice. They think they are doing the right thing. They have an agenda and they want to overthrow the current government and they are doing a pretty good job of it. Emily lets talk about what you are working on now. We are working on a new generation of a. I. Software. We hear ceos often refer to technology and a. I. Is a way to take bias of the process but the reality is that people make these algorithms. So what is the way forward . 3. Ai is the worlds leading provider of a. I. Systems. Logistics in the military, aibased Prediction Software for aircraft, what have you. Precision Software Helps with covid. The social and economic benefits of these systems are simply staggering. Most of these systems can that we are just doing with physics pressure, altitude, torque, rotational velocity, no bias in the data simply physical and natural phenomena. What we get in the intersection of a. I. And social systems, we really need to think about the bias in data. Think about criminal justice, think about using a. I. For Human Resource systems. It is unquestionable that there are cultural bias in these data and that cultural bias will simply be perpetuated by the use of a. I. So this is a real danger zone, and we need to be very careful about the use of a. I. As criminal justice, facial recognition and Human Resource systems. This is very touchy, very dangerous stuff. Emily interesting. What do you think makes your offering better, than for example what salesforce has to offer. Tom salesforce is a crm product. To my knowledge, they are not in the enterprise a. I. Business. Emily they do have their own a. I. Offering called einstein. They also bought another company which connects more disparate data sources. C3. Ai market. Alsoft suggests to the person what is the next up in the sales process. That is not on ai problem. What we solve our ai problems. We are taking the data, massive amounts of data from oil and gas companies, manufacturing companies, companies in the aerospace industry, and building Machine Learning models that are highly predictive. Those are classic ai problems. The kind of problems that salesforce claims they are using a but it is simply not on a. I. Problem. Emily interesting. Fascinating. Really interesting to get your perspective given the many years you spent in Silicon Valley. C3. Ai andep an eye on the important work for you are doing. Thank you. All right. Still ahead, as cases of covid19 surge across the u. S. And europe, Multinational Companies are stealing themselves and her clients for a potential second wave. We hear more on the potential impact with a ceo. Emily european leaders are imposing harsher pandemic measures as cases of covid19 Research Across a continent. Today germany and france announced fresh blood the measures designed to slow the space of this slow the pace of infections. Caroline hyde spoke to the leader of one of the largest i. T. Companies on how his company is preparing for the second wave . Salil having seen what is going on in the last few days, we know that those numbers would have an impact. The way we looked at our business is taking into account some scenarios of a second wave. We have obviously not considered extreme scenarios at this time, but we will have to see how this plays out. Would we have also noticed in , businesseshies have learned to work with some i am notical saying it would not be impossible with extreme sets of numbers, but there are things going on. People are using therapeutics and masking and there are ways people are finding to work and revive the economy even on a personal level. So we will watch how this plays out. Someve factored in scenarios but not extreme scenarios. Do you think you have to factor in extreme scenarios. Salil at this stage, we dont see that. Based on what we have seen so far, the numbers are increasing. No question. But equally, there is a lot of medical knowledge that exists. It was in discussion with a european client recently and they were sharing with us how in different parts of europe where there are more measures of constraining activity, there is also measures which support them medically. We will have to watch how that plays out. I dont think it will impact us way. Neighbo negative caroline talking of European Companies you work alongside. This week we had to phone numbers coming out of the s. A. P. , the key Software Provider in germany saying that actually the lockdowns will impact their business. Trying to invest. But really, what has happened with covid is the work from home focus has strained technology. There has been a force acceleration in terms of that investment. . What do you see the you see the s. A. P. Side of the equation, the uc clients putting things off as the economy turns darker, or do you think there is commitment to acceleration. Salil today, what we are going through, big Digital Transformation programs and a rapid move to the cloud. And here, we have been a tremendous engine with an emphasis which is our Digital Business. The last quarter, our Digital Business grew 25 year on year, half, 47 just under of our economy. For us ismeans partnerships that we have with cloud providers where companies are going on to the cloud infrastructure. Those are the sorts of areas where we see more traction. We are participating in those areas and that is the benefit of the growth we are seeing. Our Growth Guidance is 2 to 3 for the full year. We are not talking about returning to where we were before the medical crisis where last year we grew at 9. 8 , but it is certainly better than what our guidance was before the end of the quarter, at which stage it was at 0 to 2 . We see a gradual expansion in the guidance because we see the efficacy of the cloud. Caroline do you think you will get back to 9 growth anytime soon, with the Global Economy as it stands. Salil the way we see that, a review for this Financial Year 2021,is through march of that is the guidance we have given. My sense is that given the momentum we had heading into the crisis, we think that as we come out of the crisis, we will have equal or more momentum. It is imperative on Large Enterprises to push ahead and accelerate with the journey. The more we are it will to participate and partner with them, the more likely we are to growth. He emily that was infosys ceo salil parekh. We have some breaking news. Bytedance, the Parent Company of tiktok has sued rival killer in a dispute over patents. Killer has come under the microscope, a company that has faced allegations of having to steal some tiktok users. We will continue to follow this story and bring you more as headlines rollout. Coming up, more on the bigtech hearings, and raided making big changes to its pay packages reddit. Emily bloomberg technology. Welcome back to bloomberg technology. I am emily chang in San Francisco. The social platform reddit says it will allow most u. S. Employees to work from home forever, with some exception. They will still be paid the same, even if they choose to move out of high cost cities, like San Francisco and new york. They will pay workers based on their new location. We will now speak with reddit ceo steve huffman. Tech companiesit have said that if you are leaving the bay area, for a cheaper part of the country, your pay will change. You are saying that the pay will stay the same. How did you come to this decision . Steve hi, thank you for having me. We had the original policy as well. There were some obvious flaws. First of all, there are some personal decisions that one may make in life that can affect their quality and cost of living. Whether they have a family, whether to rent or own. Which city that they live in. There are so many variables at play here. We figure the most clear thing to do is to pay at the top of the market and pay for performance and pay for the role. We think that this will be an advantage to both recruiting and call,fying what i would origen garbage out that we were doing. How many employees do you think will take you up on this offer and move to other parts of the country away from headquarters . How do expect this to impact your tablet distribution . Steve it is a great question, and we do not know. We found the only a small percentage need to be in the office. The vast majority laid like to be in the office sometime, but would also like to have freedom in their life. Myaking from my own expense, own feelings have evolved. There are pros and cons to working from home. We are still learning. The core of our approach is to be flexible in that people make decisions. With differentt approaches. I am as curious as you are to see how the dust will settle when all of this is over. Emily what does a return to you, when wee for get to some sort of normal or new normal . Steve the first question is it legal to open our offices, given the various restrictions in different cities . We are not even there yet. Is it practically saved to open our offices . As big question is, do we employees feel comfortable being in our offices . We do not yet know how our habits have changed. The ptsd of being afraid of being around people in general, how that could affect things. No matter what the law says, there is going to be a matter of practicality that will require us to sort of inching our way and feel our way as we go. We are just six days away from the election, and i know that you have spent many years trying to find the right balance of free speech and moderation on your platform. As we get closer to the election, i did that you have made some moves are the last several months, for example, donald,the subreddit for. This . You feel about steve we have been learning from our policies and learning from all of the lessons that we have seen over the last couple of years. So we have learned the hydrate. Some we can have a better some we have learned the hard way and some we can learn with a better balance the word. Theeel well prepared for kind of various scenarios that could come up ariba next week. Watching said, we are things very closely. Our communities are watching things closely. We sent out a message to our moderators, hopefully bringing them all in on the same page. We are ultimately all in this together. I think that is one of the things that makes reddit is that arm moderators and users are sharing the space together. The ceos of Big Tech Companies were in the hot seat today. Take us into this Heated Exchange between senator ted cruz and jack dorsey. Dorsey, does twitter have the ability to influence elections . No. Thatu do not believe twitter has any ability to influence elections . A no, we are one part of spectrum of issues that people have. You aretestimony testifying that twitter has no impact on the elections . People have the choice of either communication channels. Not if they do not hear information. If you do not have the power to inputs elections, why block anything . We have policies that are focused on making sure more voices on the platform are possible. We have found that those that silence the voices have become weak on the platform. Emily what is your reaction to that exchange, as one of the competing platforms . Steve i think the last thing that jack said is one of the point that we feel very strongly about as well. There are multiple types of speech. This is one of the things that we spent a lot of time thinking about at reddit. There is the idea of free speech and open expression, which we feel very strongly about. There is this other idea that some speech causes people to be unsafe and not welcome on our platform. It is easy i think to talk about hypotheticals when it comes to things like speech. For us, these are very real tradeoffs. At reddit, we have our contact our content policies that ban harassment and bullying. Our communities also have their own rules, and we support those in support of the rules of matter how strict they be. The reality is that, context is very important. Is way important. One of the things that is unique about reddit is that our users and moderators all played the Critical Role in making these decisions. You think that platforms like twitter and reddit have the power to influence elections, and do you becauseat section 230 of the power of these platforms should be reformed . Steve the first part of your question, i think that it really applies to all Media Companies. Not just Media Companies, but all media. People get their information and news. I think that the platforms play a role in that. Section 230 is a critical law that allows platforms like reddit and the other platforms to even exist. Without section 230, we would be forced to one of two extremes. We aresion is where incredibly strict on moderation and very limited. That is what some policies want. Goes,her is that anything and that is what other policymakers want. The challenge with section 230 and the fresh ration that i have with the hearing from today, is that it is not even clear what the policymakers want. They are upset with the status quo. And they are upset in opposite directions. At the moment, section 230 allows platforms like reddit to exist in between these extremes and hopefully make decisions over the longterm. To act in the best interest of our community and to people in general. The conversation will most certainly continue, and we will see if it leads a policy change. Reddit ceo steve huffman, it is good to have you back on the show. They do so much for stopping by. , interference in president ial election. We are going to talk about Election Security ways kiersten oft, management director cyber readiness. That is next. This is bloomberg. Isly foreign interference not a new issue. With less than one week leading up to the u. S. Election, American Voters are concerned that this may impact the results. We learned a lot from the 2016 president ial election. As much change to secure the vote . I want to bring in Kiersten Todt , former Cyber Security advisor to president obama. What is different about 2020 and compared to 2016 . How much progress have we made on this front . Kiersten we have made a lot of progress over the years. At the end of the obama administration, elections were identified as could infrastructure. This meant that federal government could intervene and provide support and resources. Over the last four years, you have seen the establishment of a Cyber Security and infrastructure agencies particularly responsible for securing election structure, youve seen efforts up to. We have seen industries really do their part. Most recently, a couple of weeks ago, we saw efforts on both cyber commands and microsoft in separate listing efforts disrupt a bought. Disrupt a cyber bot. Our game, and we can expect our adversaries have upped their game as well. We are in a better place to bury four years ago. Emily what are the biggest threats on the 2020 election . They are out there, even if we have gotten better at sending them off. Kiersten absolutely. They come into categories. Talk about interference and influence. We are consistently seeing our nationstate adversaries work against us. The infrastructure security that we have is in a better place. Why am most worried about is influence. You mentioned that a little bit with your previous gas. Yournfluence previous guests. Social media influence is one of our biggest concerns. The primary influence on the election is social media. The intent is to sow discord. To undermine public space in our democratic institution. Those efforts have improved on the part of our adversaries. We have to be doing a better job. It was infuriating to hear two days ago, youtube, facebook, twitter, talk about the fact that theyre going to reconfigure their algorithms postelection to limit disinformation. That means that they have had the capabilities all along. Until they are sorted back into a corner with threats, are they going to act . What this means is that we United States government desperately needs to be working with social media as a part of our election infrastructure to do better. Emily does that mean that it is too late . That the damage has already been done, or it will already have been done on the result . Half of the people have potentially already voted. Kiersten there is a big difference now as to what will happen postelection and preelection. The biggest in that we can do is to get everybody to go vote. The more the people vote, the more difficult to make it for our adversaries to be successful. The ability to vote is strong and secure. We have to make sure of is that we do not share information we cannot validate. That nobody feels it from voting. We still have the opportunity to manage and confront that disinformation. And it is certainly a good thing that these social media platforms are doing this after the election. But before the election, the most important piece were everybody to feel the freedom and ability to vote. The election infrastructure itself is not vulnerable in a way that we should worry about. It is certainly prepared for the attacks that are coming out of. It can be certain that the votes themselves will be counted, we just need to make sure that everyone is able to get out and vote and is not dissuaded by any information that prevents them from getting out and voting. Emily do you think that we can believe the results will we see them . Kiersten this is the biggest issue. The integrity of the election. The concern that i have is the perceived cover mines of election. That is where disinformation comes into play. We have confidence that the election data is going to be secure. But if we have a few districts that have a mishap, even just a few counties or district that have that perceived challenge, a perceived compromise of integrity will absolutely call into question the integrity of the election. Listens a nation have to to the infrastructure elements of government and what they are doing, as well as the state and local governments to be sure that what is being done is appropriate. Remember, the goal of our nation data average adversaries is to undermine the public space. We have to have competence and the election infrastructure to another it will be handled appropriately and that we do not fall victim to be social influence. Emily what do we need to be most weary of as the american citizens leading up to the election, and the six days leading up in the six days following . Iranten we saw last week, threatening democratic voters. Any boater that receives summary the and anyway it suppresses their safety or ability to vote, to reach out to your local and state authorities to validated. Up until the election, it is about anything that prevents people from voting. Have to make sure that everyone gets talked about. I would say it is not the five days after the election, it is the 78 days after the election. From election date to inauguration, we have to be paying attention. Its0, we saw russia up efforts in disinformation after the election. After very careful in realizing what is and what is not real. Social media has become a part of our critical and perceptive. Government has to be working with them and how to act and addressed the National Conservative the National Security emily 78 long days. Im going to think about that one. Kiersten todt, and managing director at the cyber readiness institute. They deeper being honest with us and for stopping by. Still ahead, a fitbit rival whoop is having a moment during that pandemic. We are going to hear from the company ceo. This is bloomberg. , the maker of a wearable device that tracks sleep. It raised hundred Million Dollars from investors. This, as other technology companies, have raised millions of dollars from investors, betting that the home fitness trend will endure on the back of Companies Like peloton. Will ahmed is here. Thank you for joining us. There are perhaps other wellknown devices out there. Fitbit, the apple watch. What do you offer that they do not . Will thank you for having me on. I think that our mission at whoop is unique and we want to unlock Human Performance. In particular, our technology and overall product is differentiated and that we are able to help individuals improve their health. If you look at people who have been on whoop for over one year, they are getting more sleep, sleeping more consistently. They have a resting heartrate. They are making meaningful behavior change. That is the single, hardest most important thing to do. To change behavior and improve health. I think that fortunately with whoop and a subscription that we offer, we have been able to demonstrate that. Emily talk to us about how you see what you offer a fitting end to the broader fitness trend . Shares seen peloton soar, and we are seeing james shut down and struggle across the country. What does this new world look role and what is whoops in it . That consumers in general once you take all of this information and put it in their own hands. We are building a 24 7 life coach. One component of that is obviously exercise. When you talk about peloton and others, such as mirror, or even going to your jim, is understanding what those have on your body. It isore broadly, understanding diet, and settlements, and lifestyle decisions like Drinking Alcohol or meditating. Various things in your life. Whoop has gotten very good at helping you understand how all of these Different Things help you be a healthier, higher performing individual. Appealing to users who are aspirational. It is not just professional athletes. It is people who want to perform in their to their lives. Executives, cops, lawyers. People who want to be better versions of themselves. Emily can you give us any specific measures or growth targets as we head into the holiday season, which is typically a big time to buy fitness trackers for somebody that you love . Will over the last 12 months, the whoop membership has grown over 5x. Our annual recurring at our annual recurring revenue has grown over that. We are expecting a strong q4. We see a high demand for health monitoring. I think that covid19 has also created a bit of a paradigm shift, and accelerate, or people are now realizing that they can take health into their own hands. We expect a big holiday season. What is your future path . I going to be looking for some sort of acquirer like fitbit did with google . Are you going to go out alone . Will we have the belief that whoop has the potential to be a standalone business. I think the market for Human Performance is new and growing. Emergedthat whoop has as a pioneer in this market for Human Performance. Because we have a subscription business and longterm value of our customers, we see a lot of potential right now. With all of the growth that we are seeing in this new round of investment, 100 million, for financing, we have a lot of room to run here. We expect to build a meaningful standalone business. Whoop founder and ceo will ahmed, thank you for joining us. We will keep our eye on how the company yvonnes. That does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. I am emily chang and San Francisco. A programming reminder. Special, the bloomberg. 20 coverage that starts at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. This is bloomberg. Good morning and welcome to daybreak australia. I am paul allen in sydney. From bloomberg headquarters in new york, i am shery ahn. The top stories, a new lockdown and the state of the Global Economy are dragging wash it down. The s p 500 is suffering its biggest decline and months