Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology 20170914 : vi

BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology September 14, 2017

Kaspersky lab software on federal networks. The Washington Post says they have given a timeline to scrub that russian brand of security software. The u. S. Believes kasperskys kremlin connections make its software a security risk. The death toll in the u. S. After Hurricane Irma is now at more than 20. A 55yearold florida resident died after falling off a ladder while preparing his home for the storm. The deaths of now eight patients at a nursing home in hollywood, florida, are being investigated. Global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. Im alisa parenti. This is bloomberg. Cory im cory johnson in for emily chang, and this is bloomberg technology. Coming up, waymo gets the green light. U. S. Appeals court clears the way. A bloomberg exclusive. Special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into russian collusion has social media firmly under the microscope. Why prosecutors are zeroing in on hackers. Another bloomberg exclusive. Blue apron ceo talks about the transition from unicorn to publicly traded company to stock market dog. The meal companys strategy for fending off growing competition. A u. S. Appeals court has cleared the way for waymos lawsuit against uber to proceed to trial in october. They claim uber stole secrets for self driving cars. A judge declined ubers request to send the case to arbitration. Anthony levandowski is claimed to have taken thousands of proprietary files from waymo to uber. They also say they tried to scrub the proprietary information. Joining me right now is eric newcomer, who covers all things uber for us. I want to backtrack a little bit. Basically, this guy worked was highly sought after, an engineer, working with waymo, a google thing. Eric anthony levandowski, a super influential engineer, leaves, starts this Company Called cory and all of us are like, self driving trucks, whats that about . Eric uber buys the company. Cory paid by the trucking company, but they are not pursuing that at all. Eric ubers focus is, as you know, self driving cars, and they put him in charge of their self driving car effort, then waymo digs around to see if any of their trade secrets have gone with him. Thats the basis of this suit. Cory uber wants arbitration why . Eric they dont want it in public. There are lots of embarrassing details that could come out. They were basically saying that waymo should be bound by its agreement to arbitrate things with anthony levandowski, even though they are only suing uber and not levandowski in this case. Cory they are trying to take the arbitration clause that they had with levandowski. Eric exactly. Cory so, now the trial happens. We will get some discovery. The trial seems real soon. Eric the key of the ruling uber sort of suspected that maybe there would be issues, so they did all this diligence and had a cyber Forensics Firm looking to everything that levandowski had. That report is tightly capped. Uber has refused to give it up, didnt even mention it in the beginning. Finally, a judge has said, you need to hand that over to waymo. It will be interesting to see what that cyber Forensics Firm said, because we havent been able to turn up these 14,000 files. That was the explosive claim at the beginning of the suit that there were all these files that uber had, and so far waymo hasnt been able to say there they are on ubers computers. Cory did they make it from google waymo to the next employer . Eric right. Cory uber must might know it now. Eric ubers argument seems to be we did our best to wall it off. Even if this firm has it, which we dont know yet, that was part of our effort to keep it out of ubers hands. Cory what does it mean for the struggles of ubers board right now . Hey, this is the former ceo, lets stick this problem on him, or are they going to have to own this . Eric self driving is important to uber. I think its a key case. Its hard to imagine. Anything is possible, honestly. And i dont think its clear right now. Cory its a peculiar Business Model for an assetlight company to pursue an assetheavy strategy. Great stuff, eric newcomer. Waymos ceo is on stage at the bloomberg sooner than you think conference. Here he is speaking with bloombergs brad stone about when we will all get our own self driving cars. I think the answer literally is the name of this conference. Its sooner than you think. We have been working on this at google and now at waymo for over eight years. We have driven well over 3 million miles. We have started to talk a little bit more about some of the simulation models, which are even more important. Last year alone, 2. 5 billion miles in simulation. To the point now where technology is feeling mature and ready, which is why we are spending a lot of time, in particular in phoenix, but also Mountain View in something in phoenix called the early rider program, where we have actual families driving around in our cars and we understand how people in real families would like to use this technology. Thats the last part for us, understanding that, as we continue to refine the technology before we are ready to deploy. Brad yesterday was an interesting day in terms of the regulatory framework. The transportation secretary put out a vision strategy statement that called which some consumer groups criticized for taking a little bit of a handsoff approach, allowing manufacturers to test their Driverless Cars on highways. In the same day, the ntsb came out and said highway regulators need to be more active, pointing to the unfortunate, tragic crash of a man last year in a tesla. Where do you see the Regulatory Environment right now . What are your concerns about taking this tech forward safely . Thats a great question, brad. If you look at what the administration has done and what weve seen in d. C. The last couple of weeks, its very encouraging for this technology, because we are in the early stages. We really havent served our first users yet, so it makes sense that we are careful and flexible so that we dont unnecessarily or inadvertently squelch innovation. What weve seen in the house, which is something pretty special when you think about it how many things have the house of representatives united behind recently . I can think of none other than self driving cars. A bill was passed recently that i think is very supportive and in line with what we saw from the secretary, so i think thats great. I think it bears reminding everyone that there is a difference between the problem we are trying to solve, which is fully self driving and removing the human from the car and letting are sensing and technology and our compute do the whole driving task, and the different problem, with driverassist technologies. There is a difference between those things. Brad thats what the ntsb ruling was on. Are drivers getting a little too comfortable with some of these technologies, taking their eyes off the road . John its the fundamental conundrum in this space. We had a pilot experiment where we put some of our employees in some are selfdriving cars. We told them they had to be very attentive, that we would be watching them with cameras in the car, and if they didnt behave, we would take this free car away from them. We ended up having to stop that pilot experiment after just a couple of months, because those google employees couldnt stop taking their eyes off the road. They very quickly came to trust the technology too much, and thats the fundamental conundrum of the driverassist technologies. If at some point the car needs to ask the human to Pay Attention and you need to take over and the human has fallen asleep, got distracted, is in a very deep conversation with someone, that could be a big problem. Its one of the reasons we pivoted to a full selfdriving solution, where we never call on the human to take over. We are going to do the driving for you. Cory the waymo ceo, john krafcik, on stage at bloombergs sooner than you think conference. When asked about the lawsuit, he said that ubers behavior was something that waymo couldnt afford to ignore. The saudis aramco deal, looking to ipo possibly the biggest ipo in the history of world markets. It might wait even into 2019. You can see more on bloomberg. Com. We will keep an eye on that story as it crosses. Saudi aramco may not be coming to a market near you. The world has had a day to digest the big news out of apple. How does the deal look in retrospect . We will talk in great detail, next. Cory wall street should be worried about technology taking their jobs, but maybe they should. According to vikram pandit, who ran citigroup for years. He told bloomberg that develop its developments in technology could see some 30 of banking jobs disappear. He pointed to Artificial Intelligence, robotics, reducing need for staff and roles like black like back office functions. Apple ushered in a new era with the iphone. The ceo tim cook unveiled a suit e of new products. You probably knew that. Everyone has been talking about iphone x and so much more muted stock reaction. What does it mean with a day to reflect, by both journalists, wall street, and the like . The stock is down about 1 . Alex webb joins us now. You cover apple in great detail. Whats the reaction a day afterwards . Alex its sort of business as usual, really. Cory is it the breathless hyping of apple products we all get forced into . Alex part of the breathlessness, the bags under my eyes tell the story of fatigue. Weve been reporting about what was to be expected. Some leaks in the previous weekend. Mark gurman is really good at this stuff. Analysts were relieved to see what they expected. There were no big disappointments. There were also no big surprises. Some thought there might be a rear facing 3d scanner. That wasnt the case. Perhaps that leaves some space for upgrades in the years to come. You dont want to do too much too soon, then people wont buy the next phone. Cory the self driving phone . Alex not there yet. Cory as wall street has started to look at this, some of the financial news, which seemed a pretty good guide for the quarter, maybe a disappointing release date, did not seem to hurt the stock too much. Alex we had reported going back almost a year there were likely to be delays. There are only a handful of factories in the world that make oled. This created some some delays. This was expected going into the quarter. The forecast that apple gave did not necessarily include the sales which will come from the topline iphone. Analysts and investors were relieved that other parts of the business, the iphone 8, and things like services, were things likely to prop things up in place of the iphone x. Cory a little trivia, oled was created by kodak, and they failed to benefit from this invention, but managed to license it out. Whats interesting and the question remains, kodak, once a great innovator, lost its way. Has apple regained some of the notion of apple as an innovator or are these phones being criticized rightly as copycat stuff . Alex there is stuff which other people already have. Oled has been in samsung phones for years. The front facing 3d thats innovation. A lot of it is technology off the shelf, and apple has finetuned the software element. Whats interesting is what apple is doing in the chips. Its the sort of thing which drives the ability to bring software innovations, and therefore they can update ios 11 and 12, but that means old phones become updated. You and i as the consumer are forced to buy the latest handset in order to get the latest software updates. Cory and they are not handing over the profits of the chipmakers. Alex thats why we are starting to see increasing tension with qualcomm. They cut out a number of suppliers. Imagination technologies announced earlier this year they were losing apple as a customer. Apple announced its own graphic processing unit, gpu, this chip which is used for games in iphones. The more that apple brings inhouse, the more pressure they are putting on their chipmaking suppliers. Cory alex webb, thank you very much. So, coming up next, we are going to take a look at more news coming out of our big conference. Things coming sooner than you think. This is bloomberg. Cory a developing story out of washington that we are watching social media is now a, quote, redhot focus of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into the 2016 election. Possible links to president trumps associates, that is according to u. S. Officials familiar with the matter. Muellers team is narrowing in on how russia spread fake, damaging information via social media. It is seeking information from Companies Like facebook and twitter about information that happened on their networks. Facebook said it discovered 100,000 in ad spending, likely from russia, on fake accounts. President trump blocking a chinesebacked company from acquiring lattice semiconductors. The president citing that the security clearance would not happen. Who is lattice . They are based in portland. What kind of chips do they make . They are a very small company. 1. 5 billion is nothing in market cap for a company like this. They make programmable logic. Cory these are the kind of chips that a company can use, whether its an automaker, refrigerator maker, cell phone maker, and they dont have to design the whole chip. They can just make the trip do chip do certain things for them. These chips are used when you design another chip. You map it, know it works. Then away we go. Cory they use it because it has a lot of optionality. Then you specify a chip once youve done that. You can change its function after it has been locked down. Cory it doesnt seem like really complex semiconductor technology. No. And this is a company that is not a large company. The product itself, you can argue, could be used in various ways. It could be useful to the military, but thats not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a policy, thefius change in policy in washington and the hardening of the stance from washington towards china. Cory in other words, if france frenchbacked capital firm or a germanbacked capital firm, it might not face the same pressure. That would apparently be the case. Cory is there a suggestion that somehow there could be embedded ability to monitor the use of these chips, if a chinese company, governmentcontrolled company could see what was happening with these chips . They are used in networking. Cory 25 or 28 of revenue for the company last year. A lot of networks have these chips in them that can control various functions and the updated. I want to stress quite clearly of course security is the stated reason. But, fundamentally, the u. S. Semiconductor industry, the u. S. Government does not want china coming in and taking those key capabilities away from it. Cory who else competes in this area . Intel, altera. Cory and the business was a lot more focused on networking and also a lot bigger. They divide the market up between them. This is a bit player. Cory there was a suggestion that this was being used in a lot more stuff than it used to be. I thought at the time that the chip was kind of an accelerator into a networking chip. This has always been the argument, that these chips have had a specific use case, nearly narrowly confined to communication for a long time, but even more narrowly confined to the design of other chips. The suggestion was that they would spread. Microsoft is using them in their data centers now, so that is happening, but not very quickly. It is not so much the market opportunity, but how these chips can be used. A broader point here is we are seeing the chip industry consolidate massively over the last couple of years. We are down to 60 market share for the top 10 companies. Essentially, the market has shrunk. China needs to get into that industry. It doesnt have anybody in the top 10. Its going to throw a lot of money at buying its own expertise, buying its way into domesticating the industry. With things like today, how is it going to do that now . Cory other Companies Get higher prices with the notion that there might be a chinese bidder out there. If you are a company like lattice, what do you do . Everybody else is getting together. You havent been bought, and you cant buy anybody else that would make sense. Where do you go . The one haven, with all this money china had said it was going to spend that will be our rainy day fund. Cory lattice at home on a saturday night all alone. Its sad. Toshiba, speaking of chips, is getting closer to funding its selling its chip division. Toshiba originally announced a deal with the bain capital, may be ending it at the end of the month. They originally announced a potential 19 billion deal with the bainled consortium in july. The memo does not prevent toshiba from working with other parties, if they can find one. Lots of internal problems at toshiba. Coming up, we will have a sit down with the ceo of blue apron after the companys ipo has face planted. Whats next . We will see. This is bloomberg. Is 11 29 a. M. In hong kong. I am Rosalind Chin with the latest first word news. President trump has blocked a chinesebacked investor from buying a semiconductor, citing National Security risks. They are a private equity firm backed by a chinese stateowned asset manager. They are seeking u. S. Security clearance, including moneygrams takeover. The pace of chinas expansion after further last month factory output, retail sales, and Asset Investment slowed. It rose 6 from a year earlier in august. Retail sales expanded over 10 . Efforts to weigh in expansion appear to be working. A u. S. Judge has reversed the veil of former pharmaceutical executive martin shkreli, ordering him jailed immediately after a bizarre facebook host. The judges deemed the 34yearold poses a danger to offering aty, after bounty for a strand of Hillary Clintons hair. He was convicted on three charges. Global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. This is bloomberg. I am Juliette Saly in singapore, checking markets in asia. It is looking like the rally we have had on the regional index has stalled somewhat. Hangan see hong kongs seng index down 4 10 of 1 . Weakness coming through from the industrial players and the consumerrelated docs. We do have a miss on the china data. Taiwan looking better than it did yesterday, a little rally from apple suppliers. Honhail see on high under pressure. The aussie dollar still with that 80 u. S. Sent handle. Cent handle. Always very volatile. Unemployment at 5 percent 5. 6 . Big falls in terms of metal prices. Bhp down 2 in sydney. There is upside, tencent in hong kong one of the best performers. Samsung electronics up 1

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