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- [00:01]
Fidelity Representative
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- [00:30]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
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- [01:16]
Fidelity Representative
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- [01:46]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News this is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg businessweek Daily Podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stanweck on Bloomberg Radio.
- [02:16]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Edward Fishman is back with us. He is Senior Fellow and Director of the Maurice R. Green center for Geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's also author of the New York Times bestseller Choke American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare. He's a perfect voice for us. Ed, thank you so much for coming back on here. As I keep saying, and Anna, one of our producers saying, what is this like when we were talking about in our planning call, conflict denuclearization, a war, tough peace talks, hard to know where we really are in this situation. And we have days where the markets look through it and some days they don't. Where are we in your view when it comes to the US War with Iran?
- [02:57]
Edward Fishman
So, look, I think that there's a fundamental irreconcilable difference between the United States and Iran, and that is what is the status of the Strait of Hormuz moving forward? You know, this war, when the United States and Israel started it in February, was clearly aimed at regime change. When it became apparent that that was not going to happen, the United States sort of pared back its intentions to try to get denuclearization. But I think it became apparent that Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz was imposing so much pressure on the global economy and on the US Economy in particular, that it has really become a conflict over that issue. And even the Memorandum of Understanding, the deal that was signed last month, it left some serious ambiguities over the future status of the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that's what's bubbling to the surface right now. The US And Iran really fighting for over what the status of the Strait will be moving forward.
- [03:48]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
Well, Edward, I want to stick on there, stick on the Strait. Could, you know, all the influence that Iran has on that waterway, could it kind of change the power dynamic in the Middle east permanently?
- [03:59]
Edward Fishman
Most certainly. And I think that's what Iran sees and why Iran believes it's so important for it to retain control over the Strait of Hormuz moving forward. Because for Iran, the Strait of Hormuz offers really two major benefits. First of all, it's a deterrent that any time the United States or Israel or any other country threatens Iran militarily, Iran can say, well, guess what? We are closing the world's most important energy choke point, and we can inflict significant harm on you. That's obviously what we've seen over the last few months. But I think there's another benefit for Iran, and that's just in terms of revenue. The Iranian government officials have said that they see the Strait of Hormuz as about a $40 billion annuity just from charging service fees, insurance fees, other fees for ships going through the Strait. That's a huge amount of money for Iran. That would basically double the amount of money that they earn selling oil, which is their, you know, their. Their one major export. So I think it's be very challenging to get Iran to give up that control. But of course, the only way to get Iran to give up that control would require the US to escalate militarily, and that doesn't seem like something President Trump really wants to do.
- [05:06]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Why not go back to where we were, give Iran the straight. I mean, it seemed to work pretty well. And if we can get the denucle nuclearization, which I thought was really the main goal here, and maybe a regime change, but that is obviously tricky. Why not? Doesn't the US say okay, yeah, I
- [05:26]
Edward Fishman
think it's, it's, there's, there's a few reasons, but I think first of all, you know, free and open navigation of waterways is a linchpin of the international system that the United States has really buttressed since the end of World War II. And Donald Trump on multiple occasions has said that there will be no charges in the Strait of Hormuz. Marco Rubio has been even more explicit saying that if Iran were to set up a toll at Hormuz, that that would cause chaos. But the thing that's unusual though, Carol, is if you, those really strong statements made by President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio, they really cut across the grain of what the US agreed to in the MoU, because the MoU, very clearly it says that Iran won't charge tolls, but only for. So it leaves the sort of the future of the strait beyond 60 days not defined. And then also the MoU said that Iran will determine the future status of the strait alongside Oman gave Iran this role.
- [06:21]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Help me understand something. I've been to the Panama Canal, I've watched big boats going through. They charge a lot. So what's the difference? What am I missing?
- [06:32]
Edward Fishman
Yeah, so the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, they are both, you know, man made canals that require, you know, engineering, you know, officials to operate them. And so they have long charged fees. And for both the Egyptian government and the Panamanian government, they make billions of dollars a year operating those canals. I think probably the best analogy here for the Iranians would be either the Bosphorus, you know, which is a straight naturally occurring strait. Maybe the slight there is that Turkey controls both sides of the Bosphorus, whereas Iran is only one side of the Strait of Moose or the Strait of Malacca. And in the case of, of the Bosphorus, there's an international treaty, the Treaty of Montreux, that does give Turkey the ability to regulate that waterway. They do make money off of it. So according to international law, the Strait of Hormuz is a naturally occurring strait. Iran should not be charging tolls there. But if they are providing value added services, you know, environmental cleanup, etc. They do have some claim to potentially charge fees. I think the challenge is what Iran is doing right now is not, not that at all.
- [07:37]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Right.
- [07:37]
Edward Fishman
What they're saying is that if you try to sail through Omani waters, yeah, we are going to strike you with a drone or a missile. I mean that is effectively, you know, a gangster style move that is really challenging for the United States to tolerate.
- [07:49]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Hey Edward, 20 seconds. So conflict denuclearization, war, like what's the word? Real quickly, how do we call this at this point?
- [07:58]
Edward Fishman
I think this is a war. I mean it's a low simmering war that, that doesn't have a clean ending and may not. I think it may be the type of thing where you have fighting that bubbles up and down over the over several years where, you know, countries like Saudi Arabia, cutter UAE cut their own side deals with Iran.
- [08:13]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Man kept keeping us busy, that's for sure. And not over yet. Edward Fishman Always appreciate your perspective. Senior Fellow Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg center for Geoeconomics over at the Council on Foreign Relations. Also check out his book bestseller at the New York Times Checkpoints. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg businessweek Daily Coming up after this
- [08:36]
Fidelity Representative
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- [09:06]
Public.com Sponsor Announcer
Support for this show comes from public.com if you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge on public you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English like if the Vix hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 or if my cash balance goes above $20,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve of the workflow and your agent handles the risk, monitoring the market, watching for your conditions and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com market and and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com market paid for by Public
- [10:02]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC. SEC registered advisor complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures
- [10:16]
Wasabi Sponsor Announcer
innovation is what gets your business to market and Wasabi is designed to give every business a shot at competition. How break free from skyrocketing storage costs and unpredictable egress fees from old and top heavy legacy providers. You know the big guys Wasabi is the world's hottest cloud storage company and the go to provider for professional and collegiate sports teams and leagues around the world. And here's why. Innovation from Wasabi's AI enabled intelligent media storage Wasabi Air to the industry's only cloud storage service with triple protection against cybercriminals, data deletion and ransomware. The world's top companies trust Wasabi. Remember, Wasabi is up to 80% less than market competition and doesn't charge a cent for businesses to access their own data. Wasabi another championship story. Check them out for free@wasabi.com Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage proud partner of iHeart Podcast Network.
- [11:17]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
- [11:30]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
We're also watching oil too. On top of that. So we want to bring in Aaron Mulville. He's a global alternative strategist. JPM Morgan Asset Management. Aaron, so I have to like turn after just our conversation that we had, I'm looking at Brent crude, it's at $75 a barrel, WTI crude $71 a barrel. They're down about two and a half percent. I mean, what does that tell you after the conversation that we just had?
- [11:53]
Aaron Mulvihil
Yeah, I mean we just had a great geography lesson there from, from Edward. If I take us to another part of the world that's actually quite interesting in terms of the impact on oil is Russia right now you've got the Iran, the Iran conflict, but also the Russia, Ukraine conflict is one of the factors that's impacting the price. So we've seen, you know, we get questions, why is that? Why is oil not even higher than it is right now? And one of the factors is Russia has got a plentiful supply of crude oil, but it's not able to refine all that crude oil right now because Ukraine has made such an impact on the refining capacity of Russia that now there's a million and a half extra barrels in play on global markets out there that Russia is actually exporting.
- [12:32]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
But it's not being refined which is why we're not necessarily seeing it reflected at the pump.
- [12:36]
Aaron Mulvihil
Correct, Exactly. And we might see diesel prices continue to remain higher even as oil prices come down.
- [12:41]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
You know, I'm so glad you brought it together because I don't think we can talk about one war without thinking about the other because, you know, between the alliances and relationships and so on and so forth forth. And then the impact on the global economy. Do you look though, through the US war with Iran at this point? Because there are days where the market certainly does and then there are days that the market does not.
- [12:59]
Aaron Mulvihil
I think we have to. There's other dynamics at play that are just that much more important long term than any conflict can be. And AI is just the most transformational of all of the, the impacts right now. So I think that a lot of investors are looking through over the last couple of months, you certainly had a negative impact from, from the war and the geopolitical issues. But there's so much positivity and enthusiasm around AI right now in public fundamentally backed in private markets backed by fundamentals, a lot of cash flow generation, certainly some of it is, is more future looking certainly in the venture space. A lot of enthusiasm right now around not just the foundational models, but how are companies and applications going to use these models and, and apply them to actually generate real cash flow for, for businesses, for consumers? So. And we're starting to see this kind of convergence of the public and the private markets now with more IPOs coming, coming to the markets recently and a lot of IPOs in the hopper, as we see.
- [13:57]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
And there's a lot of enthusiasm around the trade too. But is there, I don't want to say a less expensive alternative, but what else is there aside from, you know, the, the AI trade?
- [14:07]
Aaron Mulvihil
That's a question, Lisa. We're getting a lot from clients right now where there's, they're excited about AI, that they want to be unexposed AI. But what else is out there? It's a little bit different. And so we're pointing them towards, at least in the private markets, areas like real estate that have positive dynamics, but they're not AI linked dynamics. There's part of it is AI you're seeing in San Francisco, New York, property prices going up because AI companies want their folks in the office and they're renting out office space. But that applies also more broadly to the, to the, to the markets. We're seeing the real estate market now recover from a bottom. And if you look around, everything looks expensive, but real estate Actually, today looks pretty cheap on a historical basis.
- [14:45]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
One of the things I wanted to ask you about, and something we're going to kind of dig thematically over the next couple of hours, is that you look at the Magic 7 and it is definitely lagging in a big way. If I look at the index overall, let me just pull up the Bloomberg Mag 7 index. You're looking at it up about 1% year to date. If I look at The S&P 500, it's up 10%. The equal weight is up about 12% here. The Max 7 Nvidia Alphabet, Amazon, they've gone nowhere. They are trailing 300 stocks in the S&P 500. Something like a Dollar Tree or a Hubble Inc. Are outperforming. Is that significant in your view?
- [15:26]
Aaron Mulvihil
It's a very important trend that we've been looking at this for a couple of years now. If you go back to 2023, every one of the Mag 7 beat the S&P 500 the next year. I think three of the Mag 7 last year, very mixed bag. And this year to date, again, a very mixed bag with some of them beating some not. So we're seeing this trend broaden where it's not just the Mag 7 now, but the semiconductor companies, the memory companies, all these companies that are in the chain as well as in the private market space companies that are supplying the power, the infrastructure, they're being the beneficiaries right now of the AI trade. And it's sort of a cash flow conversion. We're seeing the Max 7 spend massive amounts of cash. And the beneficiaries of this right now are those that are kind of the supply chain components of AI.
- [16:13]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
So can I just follow. Just real quick is. So do you think that's significant, it's going to continue, or do you think it's an opportunity in terms of that they're underperforming?
- [16:24]
Aaron Mulvihil
It's a fantastic opportunity for stock pickers. And so we think this is a good opportunity just for active management in general. So if you're sort of a passive investor, you're along for the ride. If you're an active investor, you can put the research in and understand which of the Mag 7 are likely to outperform which of their beneficiaries and customers are likely to outperform where we're at a historical high right now in terms of stock dispersion. So there's enormous opportunities for stock pickers.
- [16:49]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
Well, you mentioned opportunities. Do you see any signs of volatility under the hood too?
- [16:53]
Aaron Mulvihil
Certainly massive amounts of volatility. So it will not go with without volatility. There's mechanisms to avoid some of the volatility and that's where we would point towards something that's less correlated to AI, either in the public space or then in the private space. Real estate, as I mentioned, infrastructure is another play.
- [17:10]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Why is the Vix below 16? I don't know. Maybe not everybody loves that where you've
- [17:16]
Aaron Mulvihil
got but you know stock volatility is low but interest stock volatility is higher because you have now this sort of dispersion of companies that are likely to outperform if you look at software not doing so great, although we're starting to see a recovery in some software companies. So again, stock pickers are having a field day right now and trying to identify which are going to be the winners and the losers. A lot of volatility but also a lot of opportunity to outperform for active investors.
- [17:42]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Are you guys super busy when it comes to the IPO season? I was talking to one of our deals guys and he says I am nonstop. But he also said not everything is actually great. That is being trying to get through either regulatory or just come to market because they're thinking about what happens in the midterms. Just got about 30 seconds.
- [17:59]
Aaron Mulvihil
It's been a historically high IPO season. Q1 was higher than I think any year since 2021. But a lot of companies will probably not IPO. And so it's important also for investors to be exposed to venture and private markets.
- [18:11]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Good stuff. Thank you so much. Tying it all up for us. Aaron Mulvihil, he is global Alternative Strategist over at JP Morgan Asset Management, joining us in studio. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.
- [18:28]
Public.com Sponsor Announcer
Support for the show comes from public.com if you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge on public. You can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English like if the Vix hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 or if my cash balance goes above $20,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve the workflow and your agent handles the risk, monitoring the market, watching for your conditions and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com market market paid for by
- [19:24]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC. SEC registered advisor complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures
- [19:38]
Wasabi Sponsor Announcer
innovation is what gets your business to market and Wasabi is designed to give every business a shot at competition. How Break free from skyrocketing storage costs and unpredictable egress fees from old and top heavy legacy providers. You know the big guys Wasabi is the world's hottest cloud storage company and the go to provider for professional and collegiate sports teams and leagues around the world. And here's why. Innovation From Wasabi's AI enabled intelligent media storage Wasabi Air to the industry's only cloud storage service with triple protection against cybercriminals, data deletion and ransomware. The world's top companies trust Wasabi. Remember, Wasabi is up to 80% less than market competition and doesn't charge a cent for businesses to access their own data. Wasabi Another championship story. Check them out for free@wasabi.com Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage proud partner of iheart podcast network
- [20:39]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
hey everyone, it's Kal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay the Audible and iheart audiobook club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's Audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
- [21:03]
Ray Porter
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.
- [21:35]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Listen to Irsay the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:44]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App or Watch us live on YouTube.
- [21:57]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Hey, we want to stay with tech and get to a couple of stories by our own Kurt Wagner. He is catching up, or caught up, I should should say, with Mark Zuckerberg earlier for a lengthy interview and a few reveals. He is, of course, Bloomberg News senior technology reporter Kurt Wagner. He's out there in Denver. Hey, Kurt, a second story just dropped of yours on the Bloomberg. Talk to us about your conversation with Zuck and like how it came to be, the timing of it all and what he wanted to talk about and what you wanted to talk about.
- [22:29]
Fidelity Representative
Yeah, yeah, those aren't always the same. I think in this case it ended up working out. But, you know, the news that he wanted to talk about was this new model that was announced a few hours ago, Muse Spark 1.1. The model is, I think there's two things that unique about it. One is sort of it's improved with agentic capabilities and coding capabilities. For Meta, that's a big deal. They've sort of always lagged behind the OpenAI anthropic Googles of the world. In this case, Mark Zuckerberg was very excited to tell me that they've actually surpassed Google's Gemini and most of the benchmarks that they were measuring against. And so this sort of felt like a leap for them in terms of model quality. So I think that's one. The second big thing, of course, from a business standpoint, is that they're going to sell the model to developers via an API. So Meta will host the model on its own data centers or infrastructure. But if you're building on top of it, if you're using it as a business, you would pay Meta a fee to access it, which is a business that we've seen from anthropic and OpenAI and others. So Meta is kind of catching up on that front. And, you know, he was, he was excited to talk about that, and that took up a good portion of our conversation. But as you mentioned, we had another story just drop, which I'm happy to talk about, related to their cloud aspirations, which was something I was eager to about.
- [23:48]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Well, go there, go there because I find it interesting because they really, you know, weren't like all the other hyperscalers. Right. I mean, and now it sounds like they're leaning in big. Is this because they want to be like Amazon and have data centers for others, or is this them planning for the future when they need data centers?
- [24:06]
Fidelity Representative
I think it's both. And you know, to be clear, he stopped short of confirming our report last week that they were developing these businesses, but he spent a lot of time explaining why those businesses might make sense for them. And so there's kind of two parts to this. The first is, you know, like a core weave or a Nebbys or something. They might just say, hey, we have excess or extra computing capacity. Let's rent it to someone else who needs it and make a nice premium on that. They're one of the companies that can do that because they have all of this infrastructure in place and they're building a lot more. So that's one potential. The other is sort of doing what they're doing with Muse Spark right now, which is host models on their infrastructure and then sell access to them. Something like AWS has a product called Bedrock. It's very similar. In that case, Meta would go out and actually have, you know, licensing agreements with Anthropic and OpenAI and others to kind of host their models, but then distribute them on their behalf and use their infrastructure that way. Both of those things. I floated to Mark Zuckerberg, both of those. He spent a great deal of time explaining why that would make total sense for the company. But again, not saying we're announcing anything today, just that it's, you know, these are the types of things we are thinking about. And so I think, again, if you're an investor in Meta, you have to be somewhat encouraged by the fact that three or four months ago, we were sitting here going, hey, what's the business around this huge AI investment? And now today, we have several different things that they've announced in the last couple of months where they're trying to make money from their AI investments, which, again, are very hefty and very steep.
- [25:35]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
And they've been making money. They need to make money because they've been spending money. Right. So let's talk a little bit about Zuckerberg's big spend. Okay. So he's been aggressive with it. He's trying to keep up with OpenAI or Alphabet or all them. Is he feeling the pressure? Can you talk about his big spend?
- [25:51]
Fidelity Representative
Yeah, they're spending aggressively. It's. They had record capex projected for 2026. I'm going off the top of my head here, but I want to say it was in the, like, $140 billion range.
- [26:00]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
They.
- [26:01]
Fidelity Representative
He's committed to spending $600 billion on AI infrastructure projects across the US over the next couple years. You know, they're building a data center that our colleague Riley Griffin went to visit down in Louisiana that is expected to be upwards of $200 billion for that single data center. So he is throwing money around very aggressively to build the infrastructure here. The question was always, well, what do you get from that? Right? And up until very recently, the answer was, well, our ads are going or our recommendations and feed are going to be better. And that wasn't super satisfying to a lot of people. Now we're hearing them say things that we're hearing those other AI companies talk about, hey, we're going to maybe rent capacity. Hey, we're going to charge an API for our models, we're going to charge a consumer subscription for our chatbot. Like those are the types of products that they've started to tease over the last couple months, which makes, I think, stomaching a $200 billion data center at least a little bit easier. If you're a Meta investor, does it get investors excited?
- [26:59]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
And I'm just looking at meta shares down 7% year to date, down 22% since August of 2025. Why are investors not so impressed, Kurt?
- [27:11]
Fidelity Representative
Well, because all of this is sort of ideas at this point. It hasn't necessarily shown up in on the balance sheet at earnings. Right. It's like the story that we wrote last week about them considering these various cloud businesses I talked about that sent the stock up 9%. I think it was 120 billion of market cap moved in a single day. That's people excited about the prospect of them making money from this. But that's a big difference from, you know, showing up at a quarterly earnings and saying, here's the money that we made.
- [27:40]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Well, there are ideas like making glasses and then there are ideas like the Metaverse, like which one is this? Or we don't know yet.
- [27:47]
Fidelity Representative
I think this is much more glasses than Metaverse, because one of the things Mark Zuckerberg and I talked about in our conversation was the, the AI's ability to do one agent stuff, agentic stuff. So, you know, personal assistant, but also multimodal. He talked about that a lot. This ability not just to read text or to analyze a photo or a picture, but to be able to analyze video, to be able to analyze even sound. Right. Like if you are wearing glasses and you have AI built into the glasses, that's supposed to be your, your assistant. You need those glasses to be able to see where are you, what's happening around you, what are people talking about. And so they're building this AI specifically for those use cases, which to me feels a little bit different than this. Sort of the Metaverse felt very VR to me, I know it's not exclusively VR, but that sort of was like you put on the headset, you kind of transport to another world and you're in the metaverse. The AI stuff they're doing feels a little bit more real life in the sense that, hey, you're going to wear these glasses out and about and you're going to have an assistant talking in your ear the whole time that can, you know, help you do things or see things that you might not otherwise see.
- [28:53]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
Yeah. And we've been talking about this AI lab, too. So is that part of it? I mean, they're spending billions on AI talent to be part of it. How is that progressing?
- [29:01]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
And just got about 30 seconds here, Kurt.
- [29:04]
Fidelity Representative
Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg says better than he thought. That started a year ago, essentially from scratch. He's very happy with where they're at. All the stuff that we're talking about is pretty much coming out of that lab. So obviously the business framework is somewhere else, but the technology is from that lab. And so he was praising the lab in our conversation, for sure.
- [29:20]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Yes or no. Was he happy?
- [29:22]
Fidelity Representative
He seems happy.
- [29:25]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
I always like to know how people are like their mood. Hey, Kurt Wagner, thank you so much. Bloomberg News senior technology reporter joining us. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg businessweek Daily coming up after this.
- [29:41]
Public.com Sponsor Announcer
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- [31:53]
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hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
- [32:16]
Ray Porter
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo is this indulgence? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.
- [32:48]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Listen to Irsay the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:57]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
- [33:11]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Let's get more on the troubles among the Democrats. Bloomberg News A senior National Political Correspondence respondent Nancy Cook. She is in the Bloomberg News D.C. bureau. Hey Nancy, good to have you here with Lisa and myself. Let's start with Graham Platner and how that illustrates some of the infighting going on among Democrats.
- [33:31]
Nancy Cook
Well, what's basically happened is that, you know, Graham Platner was not the pick of sort of the moderate centrist Wing or minority leader Chuck Schumer. He was really the pick of, you know, a group of consultants who went looking for a new type of candidate and didn't really vet him at all. And then he managed to start campaigning, and he excited a lot of people in Maine with his message about economic populism. And really, Janet Mills, who's the governor there, dropped out before there was even a primary. And so it speaks to his candidacy, really speaks to just people's desire for fresh faces, Democrats trying to find new types of candidates to represent them. And now there is, of course, a race on to see who's going to replace him over the next few weeks. But it's really just distracting from, you know, the top Senate race in the country. In Maine, we have Susan Collins, who's an incumbent, who's going to be very well funded. And it's just tricky right now because Democrats should really have the wind at their back in the midterms.
- [34:32]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
So, Nancy, where do Democrats go from here? And also, does Platner have a say in any of this?
- [34:39]
Nancy Cook
Planner isn't going to have a say in it. The Maine Democrats have taken over the process and they're going to have a convention, we think the last weekend of July. There's going to be 600 delegates. There are several candidates who have already thrown their. Their names out there. I think that we'll see even more to come. And so it's just a matter in the next few weeks of the party in Maine identifying who is going to be the Democratic nominee. And it will be really interesting to see what Maine voters think about this. Who is going to actually get to decide this? Will there be a debate and what do different, you know, D.C. groups and donors, how are they trying to play in this?
- [35:16]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
Well, on the same thing, I mean, what lesson do you think Democrats learn from this? I mean, why did they wait so long? I mean, we saw kind of the writing on the wall with Platner. Why did they wait so long?
- [35:27]
Nancy Cook
Well, I think they waited so long. And he really enjoyed the support of some key progressives, like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna, because the Democratic Party is really desperate to win back working class voters, particularly men. And I think that, you know, he agreed with a lot of progressive policy positions on taxing people or how they view economic policy. And so I think that these more establishment politicians or people here in Washington were willing to overlook some very obvious red flags on his resume and potential problems and a lack of vetting Maine because he espoused the same policy positions they had. And because, as I said, Democrats are so desperate to win back white working class men. And, you know, they felt like, here's a guy who's an oysterman, he's a veteran, he can help us reach new types of voters.
- [36:16]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
So can you talk us through kind of the bigger picture? Like, what's the bigger impact if Democrats lose Maine? What can happen?
- [36:24]
Nancy Cook
Well, the bigger picture is just that they, they run the risk of not taking control of the Senate in November. You know, Republicans or Democrats, excuse me, basically need to flip four Senate seats to take back control of the Senate. And Maine was viewed as one of the best possible chances that they had. And so by having this race sort of descend into chaos and infighting and, and people not really being sure what's going to happen, really, with just four months to go, it makes the larger prospect of Democrats taking back the Senate much trickier. And, you know, we have another key primary in Michigan coming up in August. That's also going to be a moment when voters will have to decide between the more progressive wing of the party and also a more moderate candidate. So there's just a lot of infighting now within the Democratic Party over the future of the party and what it should look like. And that is clouding out things that they could be doing, like talking about their own agenda or critiquing Trump, who is underwater in the polls or his handling of the economy.
- [37:24]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
Oh, gosh, Nancy. And, you know, here I keep thinking, all right, so President Trump first came to the White House in 2016, lost in 2020. Joe Biden was back. Here we are now. You know, Trump won again. President Trump won in 2024. I mean, Democrats have had a lot of time to figure out strategies. And I find it interesting that you're saying, like, the clock is running. Maybe they need to be a journalist or maybe they don't, because sometimes we wait till our final deadline to get it done. But come on, like, who is the head of the party who's really helped helping them say, guys, this is an opportunity for change. Let's listen to America. Let's figure out something different. Like, I don't understand why. It just feels like the clock's ticking and they're under pressure and they don't really have a great strategy.
- [38:04]
Nancy Cook
Yeah, that's true. Those are all great points. They don't have a clear leader right now. There's not a clear ideology. They're fighting among themselves. I talked to, you know, one Democratic operative yesterday in D.C. who said, look, you know, primaries are supposed to, to be the party sort of hashing out their differences. It's, it's useful for people in the party to disagree. But what is happening is that the infighting is really threatening their ability to take back the House and the Senate. And that's just a larger issue for them about how they're going to actually wrestle power back from the Republicans and whether or not they'll be able to.
- [38:37]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
So the last 30 seconds that we do have here, Nancy, what does the path to created this united front look like? What does a Kumbaya moment look like for the Democrats?
- [38:48]
Nancy Cook
Well, I think that what they have to do when they get through, when they identify whoever the candidate is in Maine and they pick someone in Michigan, you know, the party just really has to get behind those people and, you know, the infighting has to stop and the donors have to start giving money. And Democratic voters also have to turn out.
- [39:06]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
And you, Jonah, said giving money, Is that going to be, that's going to be an issue as well, isn't it?
- [39:12]
Nancy Cook
That's a huge issue. Republicans have about three times as much money as Democrats heading into the midterms. So, you know, Democrats have a historical advantage. Typically, the party in power loses congressional seats in the midterms, but Republicans have a ton of money in their war chest.
- [39:26]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
I was going to say 2016, 2020, 2024.
- [39:29]
Nancy Cook
Here we are.
- [39:30]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Host
All right, Nancy Cook, thanks so much. Great story. Bloomberg News senior national political correspondent Nancy Cook. She's out there in our deal.
- [39:37]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
This is the Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get. Your podcasts listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live Every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal.
- [40:08]
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- [40:50]
Public.com or Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Hey, everyone, it's Kalpen. I'm inviting you to join the Best Sounding Book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:19]
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
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Nancy Cook
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Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
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Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
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Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
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Nancy Cook
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Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Announcer
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Nancy Cook
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Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Co-Host
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Nancy Cook
treat, cure or prevent any disease.