Ts russia probe. Tesla is warning that Syrian Government allies will strike and american positions inside syria if it crosses any red lines. The Lebanese Military group made the threat one day after u. S. Forces bombed forces there. They condemned the terror attack in tehran and are asking for perpetrators and financiers to be brought to justice. The statement was drafted by japan on behalf of countries in asia pacific region, and was approved today by all 15 council members. Global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. I am alisa parenti, this is bloomberg. Emily i am emily chang. This is bloomberg technology. Oneonone with meg whitman in a bloomberg exclusive. She joins us live from las vegas on maintaining profitability in the age of the cloud. One day before former fbi director James Comey Testifies before the senate, President Trump tweets of the name of his potential successor. We will tell you more about former doj official Christopher Wray. With hours to go before the u. K. General election, online voting is front and center. We break down the pros and cons. The annual hp discover conference is happening this week and the company has outlined how it will continue to grow and stay competitive in the age of cloud computing. Hewlettpackard Ceo Meg Whitman joins us live a for a exclusive interview in las vegas. Thank you so much for joining us. Meg happy to be here, emily. Emily it is almost two years post split. What is your number one message to customers today as Technology Shifts beneath us . Meg there are two very important messages. First, we believe the world will be hybrid. We want to make hybrid i. T. Simple. Applications will be on and off and in the cloud. Each customer has to find the right miss for them. They are rethinking, do they want to put as much effort and applications into the cloud as they thought . For reasons of control, another big opportunity for customers is that the edge. When you think about factory floors, the edge, everything other than your data floor is exploding in that in terms of the need to collect data and store it. Emily there have been questions about margins in particular. Why is the environment so difficult right now . Meg our margin in enterprise group, a major part of hewlettpackard enterprise, was down in q2. We had costs from the best teachers divestitures. We had significant increases. We anticipate it will go back to historic levels by q4. If we continue to grow highmargin growth products, gen10, the most secure server in the world, you will see nice Financial Performance from us. Emily what is the strategy to get cost down to help with the margin issue . Meg we have to really we have a much smaller, much more focused company. I am the only ceo enjoying a Smaller Company rather than a bigger company. We have an overhead cost structure we have to get down to be more in line with the new company we run. We have to reengineer policies to make things simple. That will lead us to stake out more costs and be more cost competitive in a very competitive market. Volume servers, a very competitive business. We need a more costeffective cost structure there. Emily when we spoke of this time last year, you said dell was making a big mistake i merging with emc. Cost structure there. That said, hpe stock has been under pressure. Has that led you to reconsider whether smaller is still smarter . Meg no. Were really proud of our Financial Performance and stock Price Performance since the flipped from hewlettpackard, to hewlettpackard enterprise. When you think of the stock price of the company as a whole, which reached a low of 11. 62 in the fall of 2012. If you add up hp ink, our share of dfc, and the Software Company, it is almost 50 a share. We have done very 58 a share. We have done very well. Emily can they play hard ball better because they are private . Meg there are advantages to being private. But dell, because their debt is publicly created, we have a window they do not get the scrutiny we do. We really like our hands. We have no debt on the company. We have about 6 billion of net cash on the company. We have gotten more strategic, focused. We are smaller, nimbler. We can turn on a dime now. It is a different strategy for dell. We are getting they are getting bigger, we are getting smaller. We are leaning into more technology and they are doubling down on old technology. I like our hands. Emily how reasonable are valuations right now . Meg they have become a lot more reasonable in the last six months. We made an acquisition of almost one a month for the last six months. Valuations are coming down because Venture Capital is getting tighter in Silicon Valley. The willingness to fund losses for indeterminate time is shrinking. We bought rights, we have cloud cruiser rights. They are dead on to our strategy of making hybrid i. T. Simple, empowering the edge, and the services we need to make it all happen. We are feeling good about the opportunity to make reasonably priced acquisitions that fit our strategy. Emily what are the attractive targets . What areas are of interest on your radar . Meg we are interested in a number of areas, but the first is the software decline data center. It is more a Software Company than a structure company. It is around deploying applications easily in a hyper converged environment. We are interested in software defined, allflash storage. We are also interested in the edge. Aruba was an incredible acquisition for us, growing 33 in the last quarter. We are super excited about that. We bought Machine Learning for security on the edge network. We continue to look for opportunities at the edge. Emily you spun off your Enterprise Services business, how does the Services Business evolve . Meg services will be an important part of our next. Every company is trying to take their data center on a transformation journey from an older, brittle, high cost environments, to the new environment that is so essential for their competitive their ability to win in the market. Services, people need help on that journey. Why we will not do i. T. Outsourcing or app maintenance, we will revive and transform. We think it is an important part of the business area the other part of our business is the echo system of partners. Here i discover in las vegas we have the biggest presence of partners that we have had in many many years. A lot of folks are anxious to do business with us because they do not view us as having an asset that is competitive to what they do. We are still focused on technology but have a whole bunch of players interested in doing business with us now, and that is great. Emily there is onlys great fascination around what your future holds. How long do you plan to continue running things that hpe . Meg i love what i am doing, i have to say. Now being head of a smaller, nimbler, faster moving Company Makes this a lot of fun. I love what i am doing and we still have a lot to do. Another phase in our journey to make hpe everything it can be. I am here until my work is done. Emily what more work to feel you have to do . Meg we now have to take this make hpe everything it can be. Very focused Company Called hewlettpackard enterprise and make sure we have a cost structure that allows us to compete in the marketplace. We still have a little too much overhead because we had an overhead that oversaw 110 billion company. We have to take more cost out of that. We have to redesign some of our systems, our processes, to be more appropriate for a smaller, more noble company. We have more cost takeout to do and a lot of innovation coming to market. I want that to land well, like our server, which is getting rave reviews at this show. It is the most secure server in the world, and everyone knows security is one of the big issues facing every i. T. Department. Emily you urged President Trump not to pull out of the paris climate accord, along with other business leaders. Hours later, he pulled out. How does that impact your relationship with the president . Meg as you know, i was on the other side. Emily you urged President Trump as a lifelong republican, i endorsed hillary clinton. I said to our employees, i wrote a note which said, President Trump has won, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt, so we are. But when we think there is something not in our best interest or the countrys best interest, i will speak out. I said, i thought we ought to stay in the paris climate accord. The next generation of industries around clean energy is important for the United States of america. It does not impact our relationship. People can disagree and we disagree on this issue. Emily tim cook also told me he thought the president decided wrong on paris but planes to keep an open dialogue because he thinks it is important for america, the company. What is your strategy and what are the number one things on your priority list when it comes to discussions with the white house . Meg we are in favor of tax reform. We think the ability to repatriate money overseas is important. A lower Corporate Tax rate would spur growth in the United States. On the other hand, we are not for the border adjustment tax. That is very difficult for companies that deport a lot of their products and it is not in our best interest. By extension, in the best interests of the United States. To make it clear where we stand on issues, very respectful, civil discussion. That is what this country was built on, civil discourse and the ability to disagree without being angry. Emily meg whitman, ceo of hewlettpackard enterprise live from the discover conference in las vegas. Think you for joining us. Much more of our conversation with meg whitman later this hour. Coming up, President Trump says he will nominate a new fbi director on the eve of former fbi director comeys critical hearing. This is bloomberg. Emily we have breaking news, and emailed statement from the president s personal attorney, responding to james comeys opening statement, preceding the remarks he will make tomorrow before the senate. He said trump feels vindicated given that in comeys opening statement, he confirmed that the president was not personally under investigation by the fbi. Again, the president s personal attorney saying trump feels vindicated. We will follow former fbi director james comeys critical testimony all day tomorrow on Bloomberg Television. On the eve of the highly anticipated congressional hearing of former fbi director james comey, his Opening Statements have been released. He says President Trump asked him in february to put an end to an investigation into former National Security adviser michael flynn. Comey also states the president told him i need loyalty, when they find alone in the white dined alone in the white house, with regards to the investigation into russia. President trump will nominate Christopher Wray to run the agency. As investigations into russia continue and is wray the right man for the job . What do we know about Christopher Wray . He is a solid prosecutor. Many people in washington said he is the best guy on the list, we are happy about this. He has a history of bringing cases. He was at the Justice Department after 9 11, was involved in terrorism and other coverage at the time. He went on to oversee a task force. Many other matters. He is an experienced prosecutor. Emily what do you expect his approach to be on issues like cybersecurity . The Russian Investigation . Winnie first up, he is not going to be overseeing the Russian Investigation. That is now run by a special counsel by robert mueller, former fbi director. Who he worked with had justice. They know each other, they are not strangers. His double be to oversee the be to overseel the fbi. We do not know a lot about what his intent will be we look back at his 2003 testimony to congress on the patriot act and fighting terrorism. He was very supportive of the patriot act. New, enhanced surveillance techniques and tools to put the fbi on a more even playing field. He cited the patriot act to get information from Internet Service providers to go we do not know how they will feel about hacking cases or hacking iphones. Derbecame a big deal une comey. It will get into the limelight at some point. Emily winnie okelley, thank you so much for joining us. Do not miss our special coverage tomorrow of former fbi director james comey, testifying before the Senate Intelligence committee, on Bloomberg Television and radio. Check out the sevenpage opening statement, it is quite a read. Ahead of the u. K. General election, online electronic voting. Just how big is the risk of a highprofile attack . This is bloomberg. Emily as british citizens had to the polls to vote in the general election, the debate on how people vote, back in focus. A new poll in the u. K. Reported 42 of adults who are not planning to vote in the june 8 general election will be more likely to cast their ballot if they could do it online. Lets get the Caroline Hyde in london, with more. Caroline i am joined by a great guest, out there helping count as many as election votes. Lets speak to mike summit. This is already a company that helps with electronic voting. Where are you already helping with this . Mike we are working on five continents around the world. We have counted 3. 7 billion electronic votes. The government of belgium, customers in estonia. We have done three nationwide elections in the philippines. We have just done a big project in armenia. Literally, anywhere across the globe, any democracy. Caroline and the u. K. Isnt operating online . Why . Mike we have to ask the u. K. Government. I think it is a shame. If you look at the recent technology successes within government, it has been the success of the online Voter Registration pool. Just last week, when the registration deadline closed, 622,000 people were registered to vote online. In one respect, we are doing something to enhance and make the registration process. It is a criminal shame we are not closing the loop and making voting easier. The reality is, in the u k, election participation is dropping through the floor. We can make voting more accessible by allowing online voting. Caroline talk about the challenges, concerns. There are concerns when it comes to fraud, privacy, cyberattacks. How are your technologies ensuring that will not be a concern . Mike it is important to stress that a lot of the things you read in the paper about potential state manipulations of elections and foreign intervention actually have not touched upon voting citizens. The reason for that is that Voting Technology is particularly hard to hack. We deal in very specific additional security features, featuring and to end encryption end to end encryption. They are quite concerned about the privacy and security of these platforms and tools. We strongly protect those votes so they cannot be hacked. Caroline nevertheless, we saw in france a pulling back from online voting, particularly because they were worried about cyber attacks. Why did they do that if you have such a strong encryption . Mike it is important to stress, that is not a system we deployed. I think it was a kneejerk reaction to this general climate of concern around cybersecurity. It gave them a chance to look at the system solution and make sure it was watertight. If you follow that story through to its conclusion, one of the challenges is the suppression of that online voting, there were thousands of voters who were disenfranchised from being involved in the election process. Without doubt, i think we will see that reinstated. Caroline if the u. K. Government came knocking, a could be at the end of this week, what would you say, there would not be an issue, such as the dnc hacking . Mike one of the advantages of technology in elections, you can introduce verifiability. It allows you to show that everything you say about the Security Solutions is operating correctly. It supports one of the key, fundamental principles of democracy, which is transparency. We have tools in the system that allow us to check right away through the casting process through the storage process, to prove it has not been manipulated. That is one of the advantages of online Electronic Systems over paper systems. Caroline mike summit, it has been wonderful having you. We will see how this election goes. He is already helping other countries get online when it comes to Voter Registration. Emily caroline in london, thanks so much. Coming up, more from our conversation with meg whitman on the health of her company, hpe. If you want to check us out on the radio, you can listen to us on sirius xm. This is bloomberg. Paul james comey will Tell CongressPresident Trump asked to see his way clear to letting this go. In a testimony for his appearance before the Senate Intelligence committee, comey will say he never agreed to it to end the inquiry. Trump says he will be taking action very soon to stop foreign steel being dumped on the u. S. Mark