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- [00:00]
Max Chaffkin
At CES. Michael McDermott, EVP of Samsung, spoke with.
- [00:04]
Fola Kenneby
Bloomberg Media Studios about what the company.
- [00:06]
Max Chaffkin
Calls its next AI chapter, your companion to AI Living. It's a shift from AI as a feature to AI as a trusted partner in everyday life.
- [00:18]
Sarah Fryer
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, radio news.
- [00:28]
Max Chaffkin
Welcome to everybody's business. I'm Max Chaffkin.
- [00:30]
Stacey Vanek Smith
And I'm Stacey Vanek Smith. This week, Max, once again it has been dominated by news of the massive protests going on in Minneapolis. We've just seen tens of thousands of people taking to the streets even in sub zero temperatures protesting the federal immigration crackdown by the city and also some of the horrific consequences of it, including, of course, last week the killing of Alex Preddy.
- [01:00]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah, we're going to talk about all of that and then go ins the money behind this story with reporter Fola Kenneby from Bloomberg, who's joining us to talk about it.
- [01:10]
Stacey Vanek Smith
And after that, Max, you have a great conversation with reporter Sarah Fryer about IVF and some of the startups cropping up to address what is being called a big population crisis in the world.
- [01:21]
Max Chaffkin
Underrated stories, Stacey. Industry, the show, is it realistic? We're going to get into that and we're going to talk about your favorite topic, which of course is precious metal.
- [01:30]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I do really like precious metals. It's true. So, Max, of course, once again this week we've seen massive protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the country related to ICE and the killing of Alex Preddy by ICE agents. This week, though, there's been a pretty interesting tone shift from the administration after weeks of kind of holding the line. I know you follow politics really closely. I'm very curious what you think of what seems to be an inflection point from the administration, at least from the outside.
- [02:07]
Max Chaffkin
I think it's an inflection point in the administration and also maybe just a political inflection point. You know, watching someone get shot on a city street is upsetting and it's, and it has helped make a thing that was already kind of politically dicey. You know, immigration was Trump's most popular issue going into his presidency. And I think there are a lot of people who are really behind the idea of securing the border and really upset about various aspects of, of kind of the Biden administration's approach to, to refugees. But the idea of sending these large masked groups into major American cities is not necessarily popular. It's also not necessarily popular. The idea of just sort of randomly plucking immigrants off the streets, that's a little bit different than kind of what Trump talked about. And so it does feel like, yes, a shift. I don't know how big a shift it is. Trump has replaced Gregory Bevino, who was kind of heading up this operation. He has been pushed aside. Tom Holman is in and Trump is kind of deploying a new tone. He had, he had been insulting Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Now he is talking about having productive conversations with Tim Waltz. So there's a shift. Now, I don't know how big that shift is really gonna be because this is sort of the thing that Trump ran on. So it's gonna be a little tricky for him to totally walk away from this stuff. And I think that's gonna create lots of tension going into the midterm.
- [03:41]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I mean, from what I recall, the way that he ran on it though was much more about securing the border, which is quite different, I think, than like you say, what we've been seeing in cities and the just increased aggression. Because before, although, you know, under Biden there were ICE would make hundreds of thousands, sometimes of arrests a year. There was a much different tenor, I think, to it. And I know that there was a huge emphasis on people who had committed crimes, not just on people who were undocumented in the country.
- [04:13]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah. And the other thing is we've been talking about the economy, most episodes and affordability and the K shaped economy. And there are all these issues that are kind of looming over this. And so when you get this kind of pseudo military operation and people don't feel like their lives are getting better and we'll get to this with the conversation with Fola. This is, this stuff is really expensive. We, you know, Trump has been reminding everyone, especially at the beginning of his presidency, how limited the budget was and we had to make all these cuts. Meanwhile, they're handing out, you know, massive bonuses to these, to these new ICE agents. And you're seeing this, you're seeing this in the polling. You're also seeing this in kind of CEO reactions. There was a group of Minnesota based companies that, that put out an open letter. It kind of reminded me of the Jerry Jones taking the knee at the Cowboys game during the height of blm. It was a very, I'd say like a, a, a kind of a mealy mouthed. Let, let's try to at least gesture at this. You're also seeing leaked statements from various executives. Tim Cook of Apple, Sam Altman of OpenAI, essentially not necessarily taking the side of the protesters, but, but clearly not taking Trump's side entirely.
- [05:31]
Stacey Vanek Smith
That is, I think an interesting idea that CEOs are now in a situation where they feel like they have to respond or they feel like a statement has to go out, which is pretty different than, say, during Trump's inauguration, where, you know, a lot of the most important CEOs in the country, you know, showed up on force to be there in the room on camera while Trump was getting inaugurated.
- [05:53]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah. And I want to say another thing that's making this pretty awkward is that while this was happening, many of them, including Apple's Tim Cook, were at a screening of the new Melania documentary on Amazon, which is almost like the most extreme of the kind of public support from the Trump administration. Amazon famously paid something like $40 million to acquire the rights to this documentary, much of that going to Melania Trump. They've also spent like $35 million to put billboards everywhere to put this in movie theaters. And I think the expectation is it's not going to be a huge commercial success, that this is just a gigantic amount of money spent. So while this stuff is happening in Minnesota, you have Tim Cook and a bunch of other folks, bunch of Amazon executives, you know, posing with Brett Ratner, the director of the movie, at a special screening of the Melania movie. It, it, it looks, if you wanted to paint this administration as out of touch, I think you would have a very nice canvas there.
- [07:01]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So, Max, as we've been talking about, the protests in Minneapolis have continued to pull in attention from all over the world. It has also drawn a lot of scrutiny of ICE itself. Including money.
- [07:11]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah, I mean, we're looking at a potential government shutdown this weekend as we record on January 29th over this funding. And we have a great person to talk to you about it.
- [07:21]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Yes. We've got reporter Fola Kenaby with Bloomberg City Lab. Fola, welcome.
- [07:25]
Fola Kenneby
Thanks for having me.
- [07:26]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So you've been reporting quite extensively on ice, the cost of ice, the cost of detention. These costs have come up recently. They're pretty staggering, I guess. During the big Beautiful bill, extra funding was allotted to ICE totaling $175 billion from what I've read, which is larger than the annual allocation to any army in the world, except for China and the U.S. what do you see as the significance of this funding?
- [07:54]
Fola Kenneby
So that money actually was for immigration enforcement writ large. Right. And so it flows to agencies like ice, like CBP and other parts of DHS that do immigration enforcement. 170 billion is a lot of money. It's a huge amount of money. For context, between 1986 and 2013, the US government spent like 180 billion on immigration in that whole time, in that whole time on immigration enforcement. And so now the Trump administration has lavished these agencies with this much money over four years. And so it really changes what they are able to do. And I think we're seeing that play out in these cities across the U.S.
- [08:33]
Max Chaffkin
One of the things that I think has been so surprising to me in reading the coverage that Bloomberg has done that you've been a part of is just like the staggering costs of these individual operations. There was a good story that ran at the end of last year basically talking about one person being detained costing, on average, I believe, like, $17,000. And that's partly because they're flying people from different detention centers. There are these. They're having to spin up these kind of temporary prisons. Who is administering this? Who's giving out the contracts to these private air travel companies, these prisons and so on. And is there any kind of oversight over this process or how's it working?
- [09:15]
Fola Kenneby
So I spoke to someone about this the other day and appreciated the way that they frame this. But this, this immigration enforcement project is not just an ideological project, Right. If you want to do it in the way that this administration says it wants to do it, it's a huge logistical task. They say they want to deport a million people a year. And so to do that, famously, Stephen Miller says they need to be arresting 3,000 people a day. And then they would need some estimates, put it at 100,000 detention beds to have the space to then, like, deport this many people. And if you look at what the administration is doing right now, even with all of this, like, shock and awe, in these CITIES across the US they're only arresting about 1300 people a day. And so you could sort of try to imagine what it would take to get to the number that Stephen Miller has requested. And you can see what they've already been doing over the past year.
- [10:06]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Do we know where this money is being spent? I know, like, oversight over ICE was cut down quite significantly, but do we know where the 170 billion is going?
- [10:17]
Fola Kenneby
So one of the things we've been tracking closely is the spending on detention. There's about 45 billion in the big, beautiful bill for detention. And again, for context, historically, like, on an annual basis, ISIS had like, three, three and a half billion a year for detention. When Trump won the election, and when they're taking office, you could see already some of these, like, private prison operators that typically contract with the federal government. They're Jumping for joy. Right. Like they're on their earnings calls.
- [10:42]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah. Some public company stocks went up on the day after the election. It was one of those Trump trades.
- [10:47]
Fola Kenneby
Yeah, yeah. They're like, this is great for business. And almost immediately, the administration begins expanding its capacity through these traditional channels. One of the things they quickly realize is that like, they probably need more space than is available in all these jails and prisons across the US they decide to start looking into like tent facilities. So there are these like sort of disaster relief companies that typically do like man camps for like oil companies, FEMA.
- [11:13]
Max Chaffkin
And things like that.
- [11:14]
Fola Kenneby
FEMA for hurricane relief. We had the snowstorm over the past week. So for things like that. So these are the companies, they've, in many cases they've never done detention. But these are companies that are being tapped to open up these facilities like the one in El Paso, Texas at Fort Bliss and the one in the Florida Everglades.
- [11:30]
Stacey Vanek Smith
There's also a big push to build big new detention centers, including I believe one that's cost more than a billion dollars and is, I believe the biggest detention center would be, will be in the country and beyond.
- [11:43]
Fola Kenneby
One of the first, the first large scale tent facility for immigration detention was in El Paso, Texas. This costs one point like $2 billion to make. It's supposed to have a capacity of 5,000 people. Right now there's like around 3,000 people there and it is the largest detention, immigration detention facility in the U.S. the administration has since pivoted again and they've put out a plan to use like e commerce style warehouses to detain people. And it still like sort of remains unclear how they're going to convert these warehouses, which are like essentially massive blank warehouses, into detention centers. But that seems to be the next sort of iteration of this plan.
- [12:21]
Max Chaffkin
What are the other types of companies that are profiting in this kind of spending frenzy? You talked about the prison companies. What else is happening? Where else is money being spent?
- [12:31]
Fola Kenneby
So we're seeing, on the detention side of things, we're seeing like these security companies. They're like food service providers. They're these 10 companies. And then you have, on the enforcement side of things, you have some of these, like some of these technology companies that do like surveillance tech that are making money, weapons here and the like. Yeah, weapon suppliers, folks that make like the OC sprays that you see in some of these actions.
- [12:55]
Max Chaffkin
This is like pepper spray.
- [12:56]
Fola Kenneby
Pepper spray. We've even seen contracts coming through for like winter coats as they're in like the Twin Cities where it's been quite cold. And so it runs the gamut.
- [13:05]
Stacey Vanek Smith
There's a lot of scrutiny right now on ice and on some of the costs of ice. Do you see this as being an inflection point? Do you think there will be more questions asked into funding? Or do you think this money is allocated and it's just gonna. It's just gonna keep going to detention centers and to ice?
- [13:20]
Fola Kenneby
It's a tough question, and I think it remains to be. It remains to be seen. I think congressional Democrats are now seemingly asking more questions about using this funding as leverage. But even on the precipice of a shutdown or with a shutdown, these agencies still have the $170 billion that was allocated to them last year. And so even if they block the appropriation, that doesn't block the other large pool of money. And so it's not clear how they would navigate that. And I want to notice that with that pool of money from the big beautiful bill, I've talked to sources about this, and there's not a lot of restrictions on how that money is supposed to be spent in the way that there are. Like, when Congress appropriates money. Right? Like when Congress appropriates money, they do it very specifically, like, and. And the language is in the big beautiful bill. It just says, like, 45 billion for detention. It doesn't really explain how.
- [14:11]
Stacey Vanek Smith
That's, like, not a normal thing.
- [14:12]
Fola Kenneby
That's not normal. Like, the language is very vague, and it allows a lot of flexibility to whoever is deciding how this money will be set full.
- [14:19]
Max Chaffkin
You brought up that to get to the numbers that Stephen Miller has talked about, that Trump has talked about, they would have to go way further than they're going now as much. What they're doing now is creating all sorts of strains in terms of strains on civic life in Minneapolis, political strains for the Trump administration. A lot of this stuff is not looking super popular and also just strains in terms of detention capacity. So what's the plan like? How do they propose to even increase from where they are today?
- [14:51]
Fola Kenneby
They've touted self deportation. They converted the CBP1 app, which was used under the Biden administration to give people appointments to come to the border, to try to bring order to the process at the border. They've converted into the CBP home app, which is supposed to facilitate people's, I guess, repatriation, their departure from the country. The administration has said 1.6 million people left last year. I'm not sure what their timetable is on that, but they said 1.6 million people have departed. That number has been disputed. ProPublica had some reporting about the home app and that. I think they reported that 25,000 people had taken advantage of that and another 30 something thousand people had gone home under voluntary departure, which is a lot. And when you consider like recent history, it's a lot of people, but it's not anywhere near the numbers that they're proposing.
- [15:39]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're touting these, quote, self deportation, like bonus or stipends or whatever, between I think as much as $3,000 or about $3,000. And you actually see these signs, like in the airport. I don't know if you've seen them, but there are signs being saying, you know, CPB will pay you some amount to leave the United States. And this looks preferable by comparison, which seems like a pretty rough way to induce people. I mean, I think it's more about the unpleasantness than the bonus.
- [16:13]
Fola Kenneby
I mean, I think that this is just another sign of how much money these agencies have at their disposal. Right. Again, it's not clear to me that these programs are being used by folks en masse. There's been reporting in other outlets about how folks who even do try to use these programs or don't receive the money are not eligible for the money. It's not clear like in some cases who is eligible, who is not eligible. The money is being sent to people who are not like leaving or to other people. And so it's not clear to me what some of these programs are for, how they are working, and whether or not they're successful.
- [16:50]
Stacey Vanek Smith
It's been a little bit since the big beautiful bill was passed and since this money came into immigration enforcement in the U.S. how have you, and you've been watching it for a while now. How have you seen immigration enforcement and detention evolve? I guess since then, how have you seen it evolve with this sort of influx of resources?
- [17:08]
Fola Kenneby
I think, you know, these scenes playing on the street are again, indicative of how this administration wants to approach this. And I guess in some respects they show what needs to happen in order to achieve what they want to achieve. Traditionally, CBP has operated near the border and their operations, typically, as they've been described to me, they do include like roving patrols. But it's different when you're roving in the desert and you're seeing one or two people and they're sort of given leeway to profile in that way. These agents have been brought into like, urban centers. And if you're applying those tactics in an urban center. Obviously there are like citizens, there are folks who are legally here and there are folks who maybe wouldn't react kindly to being stopped or to being approached in that way. But I guess to bring it back, I think that in order to achieve these numbers, they need to be stopping a lot of people. They need to be finding people in their homes, they need to be finding people in the workplaces, and they need to be, they need to be incredibly aggressive to achieve these goals.
- [18:11]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Fola, thank you so much for joining us. We did want to ask you to stick around and come back at the end of the show. We do our underrated stories and so we'd love to have you come back.
- [18:21]
Fola Kenneby
Sure, I'll come back.
- [18:29]
Max Chaffkin
How do you shift AI from being a flashy feature to a trusted partner.
- [18:32]
Fola Kenneby
In consumers everyday lives on the ground at CES Bloomberg Media Studios?
- [18:36]
Max Chaffkin
Asked Michael McDermott, EVP of Samsung. Our 2026 vision is built around an AI companion. It understands you and responds intuitively. This intelligence works quite quietly in the background across TVs, home appliances and mobile devices. By putting AI at the center of everything we do, we're simply improving everyday life for everyone everywhere.
- [18:59]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So, Max, before we get to our underrated stories, you had a really fascinating conversation with reporter Sarah Fryer about another issue that's been talked about a lot lately, which is population.
- [19:11]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah, the Census Bureau was out earlier this week with a population estimate showing a decline in the US population partly because of immigration, but also because of lowering birth rates. And we've talked about this issue of birth rates on the podcast before.
- [19:27]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a conversation.
- [19:30]
Max Chaffkin
People are having fewer babies.
- [19:33]
Stacey Vanek Smith
They are.
- [19:33]
Max Chaffkin
And you know, anytime there is a problem, there are gonna be a bunch of Silicon Valley startups offering a sort of technology answer. And Sarah Fryer, who is a reporter here at Bloomberg, as well as an editor who runs our big tech coverage, she also showed up all the time on Elon Inc. Podcast in the old days. She did a deep dive on this company called Conceivable and on the issue of sort of tech enabled ivf, in vitro fertilization, and tech in all of these areas of medicine where it really hasn't made much of an appearance yet.
- [20:06]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Yeah, it's a great conversation. And Max, here it is.
- [20:09]
Max Chaffkin
Sarah Fryer, welcome to everybody's business.
- [20:11]
Sarah Fryer
Thanks for having me.
- [20:13]
Max Chaffkin
Okay, so how did you get interested in this? I mean, you're covering all of the ways that like various venture capitalists and very smart people in the tech industry are trying to apply AI to Everything like why this problem?
- [20:30]
Sarah Fryer
So yeah, you're right. I spent my days thinking about big tech and it's just investment after investment in data centers and talent and the next greatest model. All of that with this promise of this future that is going to look really different in that we are all going to benefit from in some big life changing way. So I met with this company and I just kind of was curious and what really stuck out to me is, is they were talking about applying some of the lessons from big tech, like chip manufacturing lessons from self driving car technology, using that and applying it to the smallest possible surgery that we do, like single cell surgery, putting a sperm into an egg to create a human. And then I met this venture capitalist who was invested in, on the board of this company who was going to have a child using this robotic IVF lab, the first automated lab to create humans.
- [21:35]
Max Chaffkin
You got to talk about what exactly they're doing because, and people should read the article. You can see the pictures of, I mean it does kind of look like science fiction, but it's really fascinating like how this machine works.
- [21:47]
Sarah Fryer
Yeah. So what it does, it just uses the same precise robotic arms that are used in manufacturing at SpaceX, at Meta to create tiny components for machines. And it's using those to move the pipettes and petri dishes that are needed in this procedure. And it's picking out the eggs that are, that are mature enough to use. It's picking out the sperm?
- [22:13]
Max Chaffkin
Yeah, I mean you gotta, you have to get the sperm, you gotta centrifuge the semen, then you have to stun the sperm so they stop moving. Then they have to like, am I getting this wrong? Then they have to pick up a single sperm cell, which sounds hard, and then stick that single sperm cell into another single cell. You describe it as like, you know, surgery on the cellular level. It's an incredibly precise thing. And when you think about the fact that this is done by humans in labs every day with at least some success, I mean it's amazing this works at might work with robots.
- [22:47]
Sarah Fryer
This is an industry that has only really existed for about 40 or 50 years and it's still very manual. The tech that has happened to change, you know, blood testing and genetic sequencing, all of that has not really crossed into fertility in a major way. This very repetitive process that embryologists do, finding the sperm, finding the egg, joining them together, plunging the embryo into liquid nitrogen to freeze it, all of those steps can be done in an automated way. And they've proven it like babies have been born 19 babies at this point, including the baby from the venture capitalists who ended up on the board.
- [23:32]
Max Chaffkin
I mean, one of my big complaints covering this world a lot is I feel like we tend to, and especially Silicon Valley technologists tend to kind of like underrate under appreciate human labor. Which is part of the reason I was like, it's amazing that this worked. Like these surgeons, they're not surgeons, but the, what is the field that they, that the people who do the sperm and the egg in the lab, what is that called?
- [23:53]
Sarah Fryer
The reproductive endocrinologists. They are doctors. Yeah. And then the embryologists are the one, the lab workers. On the one hand, it is at least more measurable. You can see what's happening at every step of the process. You know exactly how far into the egg the needle went to deposit the sperm. You know exactly what speed the embryo was plunged into its cooling solution. All of that can be measured in a way that we haven't done before. And then using that data, we can figure out what's working, what's not working. There's a lot of variables to, to track and check. That said, this is biological material. Right. There are other processes that we experience in our everyday lives that are repetitive that we wouldn't necessarily give to a robot to do. Like sometimes the cell wall of the egg is a little thicker. Sometimes the egg sticks to the inside of the pipette when you're trying to move it. So there is some improvisation. For the most part, it's very repetitive. But they say they won't bring this to market unless it's. It's much better than the best human embryologists. And also they plan to go to market this year. So they seem confident in the data. The early data from the company is that they achieve a 51% overall blastocyst rate, which is, which means like the blastocysts that can be implanted into a body and then potentially grow into a baby.
- [25:28]
Max Chaffkin
And 51%. And that is from their early data. Right. They're still doing a clinical trial. This is not like peer reviewed data.
- [25:35]
Sarah Fryer
That's data from the prototype round.
- [25:37]
Max Chaffkin
And like the human embryologist in their clinic gets about, according to them, gets about a 50% rate as well. So it's sort of like matching the human performance.
- [25:47]
Sarah Fryer
But these are also, the founders of this company are really good at storytelling and sales and, and I think whenever you come across something like this, you need to have good storytellers in order to connect with people. And that's something that was so interesting to me too about this story is. It really was like a humans and robots story. Like, what do the robots need from the humans in order to succeed? What can't the robots do that the humans can? And it really became like an adventure for me as a reporter, like a life and death situation for a couple of the people involved in the piece. I'm not gonna totally give it away, but it's really striking. Like, when we bring automation into a process as critical as creating new human life, how much emotion is still tied into that life cycle?
- [26:44]
Max Chaffkin
Can you talk about the. You spent a lot of time with Camilla Herman, who's one of the patients. Can you talk about her decision and the decision that she and her partner made to do this?
- [26:55]
Sarah Fryer
So Camilla Herman is the wife of Ikaho, who is a venture capitalist at Acme, who was invested in this company. And Ika saw the progress from conceivable and thought, if this aligns with my family's timeline to have a baby, I'd love to try it. And her wife said, hold on, what are we doing here? Are we building a family or are we, like, doing diligence on one of your companies? But you got on board, and I think that that could have gone either way.
- [27:26]
Max Chaffkin
There's a commitment to the narrative here that is that, you know, you gotta appreciate. Right. You really believe in the promise of these AI systems enough to not only to sign up for one, but to sign up for a clinical trial where the. You know, I don't think we know how this is gonna go. Really.
- [27:43]
Sarah Fryer
They have a healthy baby now.
- [27:45]
Max Chaffkin
How would this make things cheaper? Is there even any way this would actually make things cheaper? Or is this just like Silicon Valley, figuring out a way to kind of turn an industry, an offline industry, into an online one? And how might this make it cheaper?
- [27:59]
Sarah Fryer
Well, what could make it cheaper is just the nature of the labor to create the embryos. Instead of having embryologists in a lab who can make maybe 300 per day, you could have an embryologist and a couple technicians in a warehouse of these robotic labs and just each lab able to churn out thousands a day. And it could work 24 hours a day. Robots, in theory, don't get tired.
- [28:34]
Max Chaffkin
Got it.
- [28:35]
Sarah Fryer
So that's a whole ordeal as well. The drugs you have to take, the expense of those drugs. And this is kind of the final step of actually making an embryo, assuming you've collected enough healthy eggs and sperm to do so.
- [28:50]
Max Chaffkin
Do you buy that there's, like, a policy argument here in favor of this? Like, there are people on our, during our end of the year special, Robert Smith spoke about declining birth rates worldwide. What do you think about this as a kind of like policy response to some of the economic challenges?
- [29:06]
Sarah Fryer
It's so interesting because there are a lot of ways to increase the paying working people in a society, including immigration. And the same government that wants to reduce immigration is really interested in increasing the birth rate. I think it can be a way to address. But of course there's a time scale, right? Babies who are born today are going to be part of the tax base maybe 20 years from now. So it takes a while.
- [29:39]
Max Chaffkin
But there are some difficult ethical questions raised by the idea of robots operating at mass scale deciding which embryos to implant. Like are we worried about that?
- [29:54]
Sarah Fryer
Actually did talk to a bunch of ethicists for the story and it's really interesting because if it's more effective in terms of ivf, there is a, there's an ethical argument to do it because then you have a higher chance of succeeding for that couple that this is their only chance. That said, when we give over something so basic to the human race as the propagation of the species and we don't know exactly how it works, that is what scares people. If you have a situation where the robot, with the help of AI starts iterating, getting better at doing what it does to the point that they're using so many variables that humans don't quite understand or haven't quite measured, they may focus on the wrong variables or they may make a decision that isn't quite right. And then an error might be repeated across many, many cycles as opposed to just one. Like if a human embryologist drops a petri dish that affects one patient and maybe happens rarely. If a robotic system makes an error that is probably just part of the procedure that could get repeated because it's software.
- [31:15]
Max Chaffkin
Can't wait.
- [31:16]
Sarah Fryer
I think we'll see.
- [31:16]
Max Chaffkin
Baby number four, here I come. Sarah, thank you so much for the time. Really appreciate you being here.
- [31:21]
Sarah Fryer
Thank you.
- [31:27]
Fola Kenneby
Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value and fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky and let's.
- [31:38]
Max Chaffkin
Be real, lots of firms throw a.
- [31:39]
Fola Kenneby
Couple flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard. At Vanguard. Institutional quality isn't a tagline, it's a commitment to your clients. We're talking top grade products across the board of over 80 bond funds actively managed by a 200 person global squad of sector specialists, analysts and Traders.
- [31:58]
Max Chaffkin
These folks live and breathe fixed income.
- [32:01]
Fola Kenneby
So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio. That's vanguard.com audio. All investing is subject to risk.
- [32:12]
Max Chaffkin
Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor Stacey it's that time for underrated stories. Fola's back with us right now. Hey, Fola.
- [32:20]
Fola Kenneby
Hey.
- [32:21]
Max Chaffkin
All right, so which is.
- [32:22]
Stacey Vanek Smith
He does not know what he's in for, by the way, but Fola is.
- [32:26]
Max Chaffkin
Familiar, I believe, with my underrated story, which is Stacey.
- [32:30]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Industry, the TV show.
- [32:32]
Max Chaffkin
The TV show. It's a great show. Industry. It is back on. I wanted to bring it up because it's very much in our wheelhouse, both our wheelhouse of everybody's business and Bloomberg, where we work. It is a show about finance in London. There's a lot of drugs, a lot.
- [32:48]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Of hijinks, but it takes place inside of like an investment firm. Like the main characters are all involved in trading and selling, trading products and all that stuff.
- [32:59]
Max Chaffkin
I have never been the biggest fan of the show. I find it kind of dark and have had trouble getting into it before. You've been watching the latest season, what's your thoughts so far?
- [33:09]
Fola Kenneby
I'm a big fan of the show. It is really dark, but I feel like it's kind of like a fast moving show and I like that energy.
- [33:18]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I also like it because I feel like it's things we read about all the time, especially at Bloomberg and we focus on markets and things like that. So it's a lot of issues that come up all the time. Like one of the early trades early on in the show, the main character suggests is shorting America, which I thought was really fun. I feel like I do learn some things, although I not a thousand percent sure it's accurate. I do really enjoy this show.
- [33:44]
Max Chaffkin
So on the question of realism, Charlie Gorven, our reporter, he was in London last week, Stacey, and we thought it'd be fun to send Charlie out onto the streets to sort of ask, meet some young bankers and get their review of industry.
- [33:56]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So curious.
- [33:57]
Max Chaffkin
And here's what they said.
- [33:59]
Fola Kenneby
Tony, are you a fan of industry?
- [34:02]
Max Chaffkin
Yes, I am.
- [34:02]
Fola Kenneby
And whether or not the industry's day to day is the same as real life, it does a good job of.
- [34:09]
Sarah Fryer
Showing the pressures and the stresses of.
- [34:12]
Max Chaffkin
Being a young professional in London. What they're representing is what the city.
- [34:18]
Sarah Fryer
I guess used to be before any of our time, what is attracting to it.
- [34:23]
Fola Kenneby
It's just real. Well, it's not real, but it's a.
- [34:26]
Sarah Fryer
Realistic interpretation of what banking is.
- [34:28]
Fola Kenneby
I think there's a lot of shows.
- [34:29]
Max Chaffkin
That have talked about finance and making money fast. For me, personally, I'm a bit of a nerd about how do they actually do it? It's a big industry with a lot of different business types, and prop trading, I think, didn't have as much representation, especially in TV shows. So I think that was cool.
- [34:44]
Fola Kenneby
As someone who worked in an adjacent.
- [34:46]
Max Chaffkin
Industry, I think it was fascinating showing you have the potential to make a.
- [34:50]
Fola Kenneby
Lot of money in a short amount of time without having to deal with managing labor and how the effect that it had on people.
- [34:57]
Max Chaffkin
So you're saying that you think the.
- [34:58]
Fola Kenneby
Show'S realistic from at least as far as you can? Yeah. You're. It's like people are.
- [35:01]
Max Chaffkin
They're.
- [35:02]
Fola Kenneby
They're searching for alpha, and it's stressful.
- [35:03]
Max Chaffkin
But you're, like, always one. One step away or from, like, a.
- [35:08]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Fortune searching for alpha.
- [35:10]
Max Chaffkin
Amazing representation of prop trading in media. We have come a long way. We've done it, guys.
- [35:18]
Fola Kenneby
They feel seen.
- [35:19]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I have to say, like, I'm so interested to hear these bankers say that they feel like it's realistic because one of the things that is very noticeable about the show that I notice when I watch it is I get really stressed out because it is just the pressure and the money, and, I mean, it's hard to watch. Like, I have to take breaks because I get so anxious.
- [35:41]
Max Chaffkin
I'm just saying I think the pit's better.
- [35:43]
Fola Kenneby
But is that also a stressful show?
- [35:46]
Max Chaffkin
It's also very. It's like the opposite, though.
- [35:48]
Sarah Fryer
It's more gross, though.
- [35:50]
Max Chaffkin
It's more gross.
- [35:50]
Stacey Vanek Smith
There's a lot of gross out.
- [35:51]
Fola Kenneby
All right, what does it say that all these stressful shows are so popular anymore?
- [35:56]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I think we're displacing our anxiety, don't you? This is why, like, during scary times, people like monster movies. It's just, you've got to do something with all those feelings, and it's better to watch someone on TV losing a fake $150,000 than watch the news.
- [36:10]
Fola Kenneby
Well, now this season, they're losing 150 million, right? Like, the stakes are way bigger.
- [36:13]
Max Chaffkin
Stacey, what was your underrated story?
- [36:15]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Okay, this is super nerdy. So everyone settle in to talk about the price of silver.
- [36:22]
Sarah Fryer
Now, I know.
- [36:23]
Max Chaffkin
Well, you don't know this, but Stacy's, like, always trying to get us to talk about the price of various precious metals.
- [36:29]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I just. It's only gold. Gold has been on huge tear, and it's because People see it as a safe place to put money when the world's foundations are shaking. Gold is a centuries old safe place to put your money. Safe.
- [36:43]
Max Chaffkin
Why silver?
- [36:44]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Silver has never had the same status. Nobody really invests in silver. It's kind of like a poor man's gold, but like really, really like it's not a safe haven the same way gold is.
- [36:56]
Max Chaffkin
Is this like when bitcoin goes up, all these other stupid currencies also go up? Yes.
- [37:00]
Stacey Vanek Smith
It would be a meme coin. It would be a meme coin. Yes.
- [37:02]
Max Chaffkin
Got it.
- [37:02]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Gold's like bitcoin. Silver would be not even a dogecoin. We're talking like a, I don't know, like a fart coin or something. Like maybe not quite a fart coin.
- [37:11]
Max Chaffkin
Maybe I think it's more like ethereum or something.
- [37:14]
Stacey Vanek Smith
No, it's definitely not ethereum. I would say dogecoin. Maybe dogecoin.
- [37:17]
Max Chaffkin
Okay.
- [37:19]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Anyway, now silver is on this crazy tear. It's over $120 an ounce and it's going up quite significantly. And the reason that I think that this is a really underrated story is I think the US has been. US treasury bonds have been the safe place to put the world's money for decades and decades. It was just the safe, boring, solid investment. And now that I think the US is maybe looking like a little less safe of an investment, a little more erratic. I mean U.S. treasury bonds are the largest market in the world. Governments, investment houses, everybody puts their money there. I think there's a lot of money with nowhere to go. I think that's why gold is going up. I think that's why silver's going up. Silver also its industrial uses are on the rise. But I think this is a sign that everybody is like starting to get.
- [38:13]
Max Chaffkin
Really nervous as we're having this conversation. I'm just getting so nervous about what the end of the kind of like number go up era of investing is going to look like when all of these silver and all of these kind of meme stock adjacent things start to go down in price and you have all these retail investors who have taken their money out of much safer assets and put them into weird derivatives and silver and bets on poly Market. And I, I'm, I'm getting anxious just thinking about it.
- [38:43]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I don't know.
- [38:44]
Sarah Fryer
Full.
- [38:44]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Are you like an investor? Do you? No, not so much.
- [38:48]
Fola Kenneby
Not, not, not at all like Polymarket or anything?
- [38:51]
Sarah Fryer
No.
- [38:52]
Max Chaffkin
Bloomberg reporter. He's not allowed to be.
- [38:54]
Fola Kenneby
But yeah, even if I was, I wouldn't be gambling. I really, like, I think the pervasiveness of gambling, like, really. And I'm not a puritan, but, like, he's kind of gross. I'm a big sports guy and I just feel like betting has just, like, crept into. It raises questions about, like, every action in the game. And then, like, people are like, well, like this guy, like, he was taking a knee in the game and he took an extra step because he's trying to watch the betters and it ruins it. It ruins it.
- [39:24]
Stacey Vanek Smith
The show is produced by Stacey Wong and Jasmine J.T.
- [39:27]
Max Chaffkin
Green.
- [39:27]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Magnus Henriksen is our supervisor. Producer Sam Rogich handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. A special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin, Charlie Gorven and Maria Ling. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It really means a lot to us. And very importantly, if you have a story that should be our business, please send us an email. We will make it our business too. That is everybody'sloomberg.net that's everybody's with an sloomberg.net and thank you for listening. We will see you next week.