But first, to our lead. Russian bots were caught to be targeting certain hashtags, including gun control now, gun reform now, and parkland shooting. It is just one way to widen the divide among u. S. Electorate on how to handle gun control, making compromise even more difficult. This has happened with past issues like the nfl anthem debate and the 2016 president ial election. This ultimately led to Robert Muellers indictment of 13 russians for allegedly meddling in the u. S. Elections. Twitter and facebook are facing renewed pressure to do more to expose these bots and fake accounts. Are the tech giants doing enough . We spoke to Bloomberg Technologys selina wang and tara maller, senior policy advisor for the counter extremism project from washington. Tara not only did you see that russian bots come out in full force after the horrific and tragic events in florida, but you also saw the Robert Mueller indictment, citing facebook thirtysomething times, twitter, and youtube all mentioned. That is because the Tech Companies have a number of problems on their hands. The bots, which came out after the florida shooting, creating hashtags, trying to create division with divisive rhetoric and fake news conspiracy theories. This is not new. The real concern here is that the same tactic and strategy is going to be taken again in the midterm elections, and the same tactic is also taken by terrorist organizations who operate on these platforms. What you are seeing right now is another issue area, a Tragic School shooting, that russia is trying to exploit across these platforms. They clearly have the ability to do so, despite the minor reforms that have been made. Emily selina, walk us through the tactics step by step. I spoke to the researcher of the hamilton 68 project, who has been tracking this, and he says it was almost exactly the same as what happened in vegas. Day one, these bots are taking the very innocuous tactic of tweeting and retweeting the breaking news. By day two, they are starting to tweet amplifications of the most extreme and divisive issues and opinions on gun control. By day three is when they start to promote conspiracy theories, and they want to start to destabilize American Trust in the public institutions, saying that the government, the media, and the police are all lying to you. This is something that we have seen over and over again. You mentioned earlier the nfl anthem issue and the president ial election, so the fear is that this playbook will then be applied to the midterm elections coming up. Emily how big of a concern is it that this could move not just from sowing discord on social media but fabricating reallife events . We now know that the russians were behind creating a reallife islam protest in texas. As could we see more of that . Tara absolutely. This is right out of the russian playbook. They are going to continue to repeat it. It doesnt require them to employ a lot of resources. It is easy and they have been effective. What really needs to happen is the Tech Companies need to take steps to not only get down content that violates their terms of service, but there are other measures that they can take. You arent going to be able to control every individual writes online if they do not cross a particular threshold. Having said that, on ad buying, there are specific measures that congress is pushing them to take going into the elections. On bots, Tech Companies say they are not in favor of it and are trying to cut down on it. Why are there so many bots still operating on these platforms . That is a measure that if twitter was serious about, ive seen Different Levels of reporting, i think 15 of accounts are bots. 5 are what the Tech Companies claim. In any case, there are enough bots that are amplifying the messages of these fake news, russian propaganda, counterintelligence operations that may influence our midterm elections. If the companies are serious, there are clear measures that they can take to crack down on some of this that make a real dent in the problem. Unfortunately, we have not seen that happen yet as evidenced by what has been going on this week. Emily so, selina, you cover twitter extensively, and you know what they are doing and not doing. How are they actually cracking down here . We know a lot of bots have been kicked off, but there is still more than enough. Selina twitter is doing all that it can, but they have multiple constraints. This is a company that has had financial issues. They only recently just reported their first profitable quarter. They are dedicating as many engineers to the issue as we can, but we have not heard them actually take steps to hire new people to address the problem. Another issue is that even though these algorithms that twitter has are getting better, these bots are changing their tactics much faster than twitter can keep up. Ive spoken to many people on background who work at twitter or used to work at twitter to who describe it as a whackamole problem. The moment twitter changes algorithms to address spam and bots, we see a new type of pattern emerge. Thats the challenge that they are up against. They have made steps for transparency. Theyre starting a center for transparency in political ads. They said in the 2018 elections, they will be working with candidates closely to make sure to try to keep it as free from russian meddling as possible. Emily tara, when you hear that twitter is doing all that it can, would you agree . Do you think twitter can be doing more with the Financial Resources and power it has . Tara i think you hear that rhetoric coming out of all the three big players, twitter, facebook, and google. You hear them repeatedly claim that they do all that they can. If you look at these companies and the amount of money and the size of these companies, they are sort of technical wizards. They are able to do a lot with your data when they want to do a lot with your data, and i think they can do a lot more to address some of these problems that are hitting society, from terrorism to russian meddling in the elections to other nefarious foreign actors that are trying to meddle in various ways as well. Particularly when the line is being crossed and i would argue that laws are potentially being violated, in terms of ad buying. If they dont fix that, thats going to continue to be a violation of the realworld Campaign Election finance laws. I do not think the Tech Companies will have the luxury any longer of being able to operate in this free space where laws are being potentially violated and things that wouldnt fly in reality are able to fly online. I think what is going to happen here is that you are going to see not just the public start to get fed up with it, but you are seeing other parts of the private sector, most notably advertisers. You had the unilever executive a week or so ago threatening not to buy ads on these platforms because to be frank, ad companies dont want baby product ads or ben and jerrys ads running on platforms where there is jihadist content, russian bots undermining our elections. It is bad form for advertisers. I think you are going to hopefully see the Tech Companies step up. There have been a number of hearings on capitol hill, and i think you are seeing pressure out of the u. K. They grilled tech executives here in d. C. Emily selina, Robert Mueller companies and individuals related to russian meddling in the u. S. Election. How is that related to the activity we are seeing now . Are these the same parties who were behind this . Selina what we are seeing from the indictment is what russia is doing is much more wellfinanced, wellorganized, and sophisticated than what congress could have even imagined. I definitely think that creates some fear among lawmakers and these Tech Companies themselves. If they can be as well organized themselves to combat these issues. They had operatives in multiple countries. They had very sophisticated measures to try to cover their tracks. They were buying servers in the u. S. , computers here, doing all sorts of very sophisticated tactics to cover up what they were doing. There are many tactics that these companies could employ that they are not doing. Clint watts, who testified, from the Foreign Policy research institute, said that twitter should ban all social bots. Knowing what twitters mission is, this is not something that they would do, but there are obviously more drastic measures that they could take. There also calls of these Companies Need to integrate and talk to each other more, and have some sort of shared database about these foreign influence network of bots, and figure out how to more easily and effectively target them together. Emily that was tara maller, senior policy advisor for the counterextremism project and bloomberg techs selina wang. The federal Communications Commission officially published its order rolling back obamaera Net Neutrality rules in the federal register. That is the federal government journal that lifts the agency rules. The move is likely to open a floodgate of legal challenges from parties opposing the changes that empower Internet Service providers. Mozilla and vimeo have already filed legal challenges to the fccs repeal. A loss for at t in its proposed time warner deal. This week, a judge ruled the Justice Department does not have to identify whether there were communications between the white house and attorney general jeff sessions. At t has suggested that President Trumps dislike of time warner cnn swayed the Justice Departments decision to oppose the takeover last year. An antitrust trial date has been set for march 19. Still ahead, elon musks spacex successfully deployed a satellite thursday and looks to offer Broadband Internet around the world. That story ahead. Plus, facebook cofounder chris hughes on his new book, fair shot, and how Silicon Valley can push back on income inequality. This is bloomberg. Emily apple is in talks to buy longterm supplies of cobalt directly from miners for the first time. Thats according to people familiar with the matter. It is one of the Worlds Largest users of cobalt for in its gadgets. Apple wants to ensure it has enough of the key battery ingredient amid industry fears of a shortage driven by the electric car boom. The spacex rocket carrying three satellites roared into space thursday from the california coast. The falcon 9 deployed a spanish imaging satellite and two smaller test satellites for a system that would provide Internet Access to remote regions. We spoke with chad anderson, space angels ceo, for more. Chad one is that it carried two of the test satellites for their megaconstellation. Its going to have 4000 plus satellites. It is delivering communications to earth. This is important for a few reasons. One, it is going to connect the other 3 billion like you mentioned. It is going to give people options to their current cable providers. Most importantly, spacex is still going to mars, so this is going to be a key piece in their financial architecture that is going to get them there. Emily talking about this effort to bring Internet Access to the farthest corners of the world. This is something that other internet entrepreneurs havent shied away from like Mark Zuckerberg and google. How is what elon musk is doing different . Chad satellites provide an alternative in a way to deliver these Communication Services that go beyond uavbased and balloonbased things that we have seen previously. Typically, these communication satellites are in geostationary orbit. That is very high up over a particular point on earth. These 4000 satellites going to be much closer to the earth, a which gives you a smaller distance that the signal needs to carry. This is going to be incredibly fast broadband connection to the farthest reaches of the planet, on par with new Communications Innovations coming online, like 5g. Emily each of these launches, also there are new learnings and progress when it comes to rocket reusability. What did we see happen here today . Chad this is very cool to see. Spacex continues to push boundaries and keep us all interested. Even in the shuttle and apollo years, we saw viewership start to fall off and its because people want to see what is coming next, what progress are are making and what we are doing. Spacex continues to push the envelope. Today, the shield of the payload of the satellites came back to earth and they attempted to catch them with a giant net on a boat. While they missed, they came really close, and it seems like theyve got a good plan to catch them next time. Emily you were at the National Space council meeting. I know they talked about space entrepreneurship. Theres a move toward the future of space travel as a commercial rather than government endeavor. What kind of progress are you seeing there . Chad thats exactly right. It was good to be in the room yesterday to hear the conversations. It is really good to hear the emphasis on streamlining regulation and licensing. They have moved a lot of Space Operations and space oversight into the department of commerce, which is another key signal that the future of space is commercial. The overarching focus in that meeting was really about space entrepreneurship and how the government can continue to partner with them as a customer of service, rather than a benefactor or funding the development of new systems. Emily what is the mood, given the messaging coming from President Trump about turning space into the next freemarket paradise . Chad well, we have certainly all been working towards that for the last few years, so its good to have the government getting on board with that message. I think the data is starting to back up the story here in a major way. We have kind of reached a Tipping Point where the government has really started to sit up and pay attention. Emily we talked about this in the past, but as space becomes more commercial, what are the sort of safety concerns, regulatory concerns that you expect to see pop up . Chad there is a great one with the spacex launch today that we can talk about. They have three key challenges. One is the fcc licenses for spectrum. Its a scarce resource and how you send radiofrequency down to earth. How you bring this unprecedented amount of data back down to earth, and then also how do you navigate the ever increasingly crowded highways in space . Space is very big, but a lot of the key orbits are in demand, so how do you monitor all these things . They provide a lot of opportunities for startups. We are seeing startups addressing each one of these concerns with Laser Communications to bypass the radiofrequency spectrum, new ground stations that allow them to steer them electronically, you can do them for much smaller, much less upfront cost. And in debris tracking, we are seeing Companies Come in and really do this in a way that we have never seen before and a cost point that we have never seen before. Being able to track to two centimeter objects and really give us a lot more Situational Awareness in space. Emily that was chad anderson, space angels ceo. Still ahead, facebook cofounder chris hughes joins us on his new book, fair shot rethinking inequality and how we earn. Why he says the American Dream is on life support. If you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. You can listen on the Bloomberg Radio app, bloomberg. Com, and in the u. S. On sirius xm. This is bloomberg. Emily japans softbank is working with nomura on what could be a 19 billion ipo of its Domestic Telecom business. According to people familiar with the matter, softbank may market most of the offering to japanese individuals. That ipo would be japans largest in two decades. Facebook cofounder chris hughes was at the epicenter of the start of one of the biggest Tech Companies in the world. Since stepping away from facebook, hughes has become increasingly aware of wealth inequality in the united states. We caught up with him for a future episode of bloomberg studio 1. 0, and began a conversation on his new book on income inequality called, fair shot. Take a listen. Chris i do think that my story is indicative of an unfairness at work in the American Economy today. Three years worth of work can lead to half a billion dollars in financial reward should give people pause, particularly in a moment where median wages have not budged in 40 years. We havent created fulltime jobs in a decade. We create parttime, contingent, flexible jobs. We talk a lot about robots in the future. Work has come apart and income inequality is only getting worse. It is important to be honest about the unfairness at work in order to usher us into a conversation about how guaranteed income could restore the American Dream. Emily just being devils advocate, why should we listen to a 1 er about what the solution should be . Chris im not here as a spokesperson for anybody but myself. Im here to channel a lot of the conversation ive had over the past couple of years and a lot of the people i grew up with who tell me the American Dream is on life support. When you cant find 400 in the you will case of an emergency, which is what half of americans say, you cant find the gas money to go interview for a job, for child c