Fight the virus. This as deaths in the u. S. Surge past 50,000. The numbers are Getting Better in spain and italy but seem to be getting worse in places like russia and germany. The World Health Organization also forming an International Alliance to ensure that vaccines and treatments are distributed fairly. We are just ahead of a big week in earnings. I want to bring in taylor riggs. Sammys buoying the markets. What were you watching . Taylor exact reversal of yesterday. Outperformance within the tech sector but we are still lower for the week. We are waiting a bunch of being earnings coming next week. We got some chipmakers reporting this week. I will also talk about crude. Monday and tuesday, you had crude go below zero for the first time ever. Some of the losses we saw on monday and tuesday, even though the Energy Market rebounded, not enough to offset the big losses in crude. Contract still on pace for their worst week ever. You are starting to see some of that pessimism. Pandemich curve of the did show some signs of leveling out. Emily theres this issue of human to animal, animal to human virus transmissions. The stock way up. Taylor what a cool story this is. A 150 millionn dollars revolving credit line to take on new initiatives. They also said they got a new deal in china with starbucks. If you go to a starbucks in china, you can get pasta, lasagna, and a tortilla wrap with beyond meat. Hase know, this pandemic highlighted a lot of outbreaks and animal to human transmissions. Some of the pandemic response, you did have a analyst come out and say they do think that beyond meat could benefit from this. Market, an attractive given the supply shortage caused by the african swine fever among others. Landbased meat is produced in a clean controlled environment. As people become more conscious about where their food is supplied, they think beyond meat, the entire fake meat market, could benefit from this. Emily interesting. Meantime, weve got trillion dollar earnings next week. Just about everyone. What are you watching . Taylor the three that im watching, trillion dollar market cap companies. Amazon, a lot to digest here. We knew that amazon was trying to get into the ad business. That will be a focus. And then how they continue to build around all their businesses. Apple, the biggest risk to apple as we know is a big slowdown in sales. Supply Chain Disruption and a lack of demand. The good news, 100 billion in net cash. If anyone can withstand the storm, it is apple. Microsoft is interesting as well. It is the Hardware Versus Software story. Software may shine while hardware may slow. Some of the latest analyst reaction, they did cut their price target on microsoft, saying that they are not immune to this pandemic. That is just the beginning of it. I could go on and on. Emily and we appreciate that. Thanksriggs in new york, for that insight. On apple andand googles partnership in Contact Tracing. They are releasing an early version of what they have been working on two developers next week. Also with increased privacy protections. Data that will be transferring between phones will now be encrypted. What more do we know about how this is going to work . Thank you for having me. What they told us this morning in a call is that they are upping the privacy protections. They previously used a certain type of encryption, basically anonymous characters assigned to a device. They are shifting to a different type of encryption. They are upping protections around bluetooth. And like you said, they are going to start providing this technology to developers so they can Start Building applications with it before the public rollout. Emily meantime, youve got the e. U. Leaders, especially in france, asking them to relax some privacy protections. Something apple has made clear in the past that they will not do. How will these companies balance concerns from Global Leaders . You are seeing basically the exact opposite here. They spoke to many governments and Public Health organizations, some of which said they want less protections. Apples decision along with google was, right now we are going to put more protections in place. What apple doesnt want is a government or other organization to use this beyond covid19. They dont want a scenario where a government can use the iphone or Android Phone to basically create a map of where everyone is and what they are doing, who has coronavirus, who doesnt have coronavirus. If you input the data into the health application, if you cross paths with someone, it will notify them. They wont know where it happened or the location and apple is sticking to that. Has beenntact tracing well underway in places like singapore but it is not necessarily working. Hiringgot new york state an army of human beings to do Contact Tracing the oldfashioned way. Do we believe that what apple and google can accomplish can be significantly better than what humans can do on their own or what they have already been trying to do in singapore . Great question. The difference in the way humans are doing it is going to speed up the process by a factor of infinity perhaps versus singapore. The only real way to have done this effectively is through a phone. Half the population has a smart phone running ios from apple or google. I feel like they had no choice but to do this, to release a tool that works between the iphone and google, not a fragmented approach. Just embed it into the operating system. I think this is going to start slow in may, but they are saying it is going to become more deeply embedded. Integrated to be as as maybe the messages app. It is going to raise awareness. Theres all this talk about the second wave. It is important to have this technology in devices. I think it is going to be far more successful. Emily a second wave, so terrifying. Mark, thank you for your reporting. Coming up, we are going to speak to fcc commissioner brendan carr about moves to combat challenges facing the nations broadband infrastructure and get more connectivity. We are standing by for the Daily White House briefing scheduled to start at the bottom of the hour. When that begins, we will take you there. This is bloomberg. The u. S. Federal Communications Commission has moved a step closer to a fund that would distribute 9 million for rural 5g across the United States. We spoke about that and what else the fcc is doing to keep americans connected with fcc commissioner brendan carr. This is the single biggest effort to date to truly close the Digital Divide as we look to get 5g built out. Tmobile has committed to bringing 5g to 99 of america. Now this funding is going to help make sure that every Community Gets a fair shot at 5g. The stakes are too high to have a gap there. Emily we put together a map that shows connectivity issues across the country. Darker areas show where the most people dont have access to the internet. It is kind of shocking to see how many people out there cant get online or dont have access to a computer. Especially when we got so many people working from home. It that weconcern is might come out of this pandemic with greater inequality and a , just given the circumstances out there . The stakes truly are high. More americans than ever, just e relying on the internet, working from home, educating our kids, so we are taking steps to close that Digital Divide. Over the first two years, we narrowed the divide by about 30 . We are making great progress but we are not flying the Mission Accomplished flag yet. Billion,hy this new 9 building out internet infrastructure, closing the divide is so important. Emily the fcc has got broadband providers to pledge not to cut off. What happens when the 60 days is up . What can the fcc do . The chairman has spoken recently to that pledge. I think it has been very important. The private sector stepped up to make sure low income americans and students dont get caught off during this vitally important time. Im really proud of the work that has gone into that pledge. Do you think you can get providers to sign on to do that . For another 60 days . These are some of the most capitalintensive networks in the entire u. S. System. We had to make sure the funding is available, the capital is available, to keep investing, keep building out. That is the balance we have to strike. Making sure these companies have access to capital to invest those dollars back in the network. Emily what about expanding programs like lifeline to get to more low income people that cant afford broadband . At fastess is looking tracking some additional funding. That will be very welcome and helpful. There are some limits on our authority. Our Funding Authority is limited to supporting classrooms, which doesnt make a lot of sense right now. Theres some legislation that will give us authority to go beyond classroom funding. Emily there have been some conspiracy theories about 5g that it affects peoples health, causes Serious Health problems, causes even the coronavirus. What do you want to say to Companies Like facebook and twitter about how they should handle that . Weve even seen attacks on 5g cell phone towers in the k in the u. K. A lot of these conspiracy theories are coming from the deepest and darkest depths of tinfoil hat land. There are state actors behind it. They have been reporting about russia being behind misinformation campaigns because they want to sow confusion among the american populace because the u. S. Is leading the world in 5g. Theyve been using this as a technique to try to slow the u. S. Down. Emily what would you say to Companies Like facebook and twitter about this information and how they should be controlling or monitoring or pulling it down . My position on free speech on the internet is clear. More speech, not less. Attempting to shut down particular speech like this, lets put more speech out there, whether it is through platforms that i use like twitter, we need to put information out there rebutting these conspiracy theories. Emily theories about something as grave as a virus that can kill you . 5g is not a virus that can kill you, but if there is misinformation about covid19, for instance youtube has said they are going to take down information that is inconsistent with who recommendations. My view is that we should just put more speech out there. The people making sensors that decisions are either fallible or pushing their own agenda. I think we are far safer in the , even though it seems tempting to censor speech like this. Emily you think what youtube is doing is censorship . I have some concerns about it. Youtube, facebook, these are private platforms. They have wide leeway in terms of decisions they make. Police the trying to type of information, we should be out there, putting our own information out there to counter that speech. I was a bit disturbed to see some State Governments putting pressure on facebook to take down information about protests of those State Governments. When a State Government comes in and pushes them to try to take down those posts, that does trigger some First Amendment concerns from my perspective. Emily the fcc has issued a directive to various Telecom Operators to remove components made by huawei. The u. S. Government has alleged that huawei could be spying for the Chinese Government. There is little evidence that this is true. Have you seen some evidence that we havent seen . Do you believe this is in fact happening . And what is the proof . I have seen information that you havent seen. On our decision where we prohibited subsidized equipment network,g into the we put Public Information into our documents and had classified information. 150 been in montana, where Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles are spread across hundreds of miles of big sky country. There are so towers throughout that missile field running on huawei gear. When you look at the performance characteristics, i think it gives you reason to have some concern. There is Additional Information that hasnt been publicly reported. Emily fcc commissioner brendan car there. Facebook wants in on the videoconferencing action, announcing a new video product where you have 50 people in a room at one time. We are going to talk to kurt wagner about that, coming up. This is bloomberg. Facebook is launching a new video chat product to capitalize on the world trapped indoors. This as other Services Like zoom have skyrocketed in popularity. Joining us now, bloombergs kurt wagner who spoke to Mark Zuckerberg about this. What did mark tell you about his ambitions, other than to basically get in on the action . Kurt he said that he looked around at the marketplace and what he thought he saw was that all the Video Chat Services people were using were the kind of things you would use for work or formal meetings. He thought there was room to create something that felt a little more social and more fun. Tot is where facebook tries thread the needle. They have this video chat service, but it has a handful of features that feel less cumbersome and stuffy. You can use ar filters. You can jump in and out of rooms. You can visit different groups of friends easily. Hes hoping this offers a nice alternative to zoom. Emily many consumers are now using zoom. Zoom dinner parties, zoom birthday parties. Can facebook really get a chunk of the action at this point or is it too late, especially given some of the issues facebook had around trust and concerns about facebook knowing too much about us . People,om, for most their first introduction to zoom has been over the last couple months. Ive been using zoom for work for years now and it never felt like the kind of place i would want to have a dinner party with my family. But in some ways it materialized that way because it was the only thing widely available. Massive Building User base. 700 Million People are using messenger or whatsapp for voice calls or video calls every single day. These are people who already used facebook products. I dont think that by next week we are going to see facebook having dinner parties on this thing but i do think that facebook has such a massive advantage when it comes to a built in audience that this is the kind of thing that six months from now may seem like equal footing, if not surpassing zoom in terms of size. Emily it will be interesting to see how much traffic it drives with earnings coming next week and advertising taking a hit. Is this something facebook started working on since the covid19 crisis began, or have they been working on this for a while . Kurt i think they basically pivoted very quickly when all this, the disease outbreak started, and they started building a lot of features around video. They werent starting from scratch. You could already do a video chat on messenger, on whatsapp. They had a lot of the Underlying Technology already built, which reason they were able to launch it so quickly. So i dont think this is necessarily something where they saw zoom and they had to totally scramble. But i do think that this is the kind of thing we are going to see more from facebook. Theres really no tech company that i know that can really pave it and dive into a particular topic as aggressively as facebook does. Mark zuckerberg saw live video as a feature. He just redirected the entire company. They do this quite often. Emily kurt wagner, thank you for your reporting. ,oming up, talking about tictoc as popular as ever but still fairly unpopular with the u. S. Government. We will also take you to that White House Briefing scheduled to start any minute now. This is bloomberg. Emily welcome back to bloomberg technology. Tiktok reminds a viral video sensation and its users are popping up plenty of content through the coronavirus crisis. It is still a big target of u. S. National security concerns. Earlier today, i spoke with the head of u. S. Policy, michael beckerman. Michael tiktok is a platform for creativity and bringing joy and that is something i think all of us need during this time of quarantine. We have had initiatives such as happy at home which has had over one billion views. The platform has been used by people to bring families closer together. You are seeing parents, grandparents and teenagers doing videos together. The platform has been a really great place for spreading information about the coronavirus, things you can do to stay safe and healthy. All the handwashing memes. Really even for mental health, just enjoying yourself while at home. Families have been doing the quarantine olympics together. It has been a good mix of educational content, but also fun to keep our sanity. Emily have you seen a surge in activity . Are there any numbers you can share . Michael i cant share numbers but there has been a surge as more people are spending time on the app. You want your time to be well spent on tiktok. Emily part of what you are doing is a relief fund for musicians and actors that he cannot work during this time. Even concerned about netflix running out of original content. Can that be an opportunity for tiktok . Michael we have a lot of original content on tiktok. Every video you watch is original content. We have created a fund to help the community of people on tiktok, from restaurant workers to musicians and actors. We also have a Health Care Heroes fund to help healthcare workers around the world and in the United States to deploy additional frontline medical workers to some communities and hospitals that dont have the resources