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Wall Street Week
Lloyd Blankfein, Ukraine’s War-Fueled Tech Revolution, Big Tobacco’s Smoke-Free Bet, AI Data Center Gold Rush
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Find an agent@cin fin.com this podcast is brought to you by wise the smarter way to manage your money internationally if you're getting a headache from juggling different currencies and different bank accounts in different countries, there's a better way to receive money in the currency you need without the slow transfer times or hidden fees. Meet Wise, the savvy way to handle your money internationally. Hold balances in up to 40 currencies with the mid market exchange rate on every conversion. Whether you're receiving receiving payments from tenants abroad, earning as a digital nomad, or converting dividends from your international investments, the Wise Multi Currency account is for you. Be smart, Get Wise, download the Wise app today or visit wise.com Terms and Conditions apply. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Westin bringing you stories of capitalism as Ukraine enters the fifth year of its war with Russia. Contributor Christopher Freeland travels to Kiev to report on the unintended consequence of giving its tech industry a leg up. And all those AI data centers are creating a golden age for construction. But do we have the workers to meet the demand? Plus, tobacco tries yet another comeback, this time with smokeless alternatives. The CEO of Philip Morris International makes his case for why he thinks this time is different, but we start with the conflict in Iran. It's a geopolitical story and a personal story for many throughout the Middle east and the world. But it's also a story with potential consequences for investors and economies. Lloyd Blankfein lived through several geopolitical upheavals during his time at Goldman Sachs, including as its chair and CEO. He's written of his experiences in his new book, Streetwise Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs, and we welcome him now to Wall Street Week. Congratulations on your new book just out. It is a book at least largely about risk management. You have been a risk manager. Goldman Sachs has been risk management. We now have new risk in the war in Iran. If you were managing for that risk, how would you manage it? Well, actually the war itself is usually those things tend to come and they tend to go, look, it could fall off the rails. It could close the Strait of Hormuz for a long. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think they have the capacity, the Iranians have the capacity to do that. But a lot of bad things happen. My base case is that it should. It will reflect the markets for a while, but not for, but not forever and maybe not even that long a while. The price of oil will clearly be affected. The oil is part of the supply chain. Knock on effects for other things. But I think we'll revert back to all the anxieties that we had even before the war started. And they were, it was an anxious market and there were some fragility in the market even before that. But I'm not the war, you know, the war is, you know, is very, very important. It just may not be that, that enduring a problem for the markets. So in Streetwise, your book, you don't just emphasize the importance of risk management. You take us sort of behind the scenes of how you manage risk, how Goldman Sachs managed risk. Yeah, the book, look, the book is a lot about, it's a memoir. So I do start in my childhood in public housing in the projects and going through, you know, you know, the culture shock of going from there to, to the Ivy League and you know, getting a bit of a torture from my roommates at the time. And, and those ultimately is my appreciation, my affection for what I think is a fantastic institution, namely Goldman Sachs, which I know has a mystique in the world. Some people might say famous, some might say notorious, but always involved in anything that's happening in the world and especially involved in anything that's going wrong at any time in the world where people tend to focus on it and in the course of that, obviously go through the once every four or five years crisis of the century and so focus on risk and the moderation of risk becomes very important. And in that talk about Goldman Sachs is known to be big risk takers. Of course we were, but also the fact of the matter is we were also very good risk managers, which is a whole different exercise than going out and taking risk for funding Profit. There was also risk management, whereby we tried to insulate ourselves as best as possible for the things that could go, the unexpected things that would go wrong. If you were managing the risk right now, as you say, you want to say, what's the best thing that might come out? What's the worst thing? As you think about what do those things look like? We could have a reform democracy in Iran and being our ally, I guess on an upside. But there's also a downside. Look from a geopolitical point of view, very, very important. From market point of view, it might be less. It might be. It might be less important. Don't forget, we had a bit of a fragile market going into this. So, you know, there was a lot of anxiety about credit, the market, it is always anxious about something, but it was anxious about credit. Having said that, we also don't want to miss opportunities. And my base case, which I'm willing to sacrifice our best case on a dime when things come up, my best case is generally positive. GDP is going well. We're filled with anxiety that it might be getting soft because unemployment ticked up a bit, but at the same time, growth is going well, could go badly. Inflation is going in the right direction, although we got a slightly bad reaction, but it's pretty close to where we want to be. Willing to change my mind in response to other things. And into this market, we know we're going to lower rates. We know a lot of fiscal stimulus is coming from the government. Hyperscalers are spending. The top ones are sending by themselves $650 billion. That's another kind of stimulus coming into the market. And so into a market that's not doing so, an economy that's not doing so badly, we're adding stimulus. My base case is that things are going well now, before I get the poison letters and everything, of course it's going well for a lot of people and not going well for others. An economic system has to do two important things. It has to generate wealth, which our system is doing very, very well now. And it also has to allocate wealth, distribute it according to the values of society, and it's doing less well in that regard. So the current market is inflating, bringing up asset prices. And if you are lucky enough to have assets, you're getting richer. And if you're unlucky enough and you don't have assets, you're not getting richer. And the gap between the rich and the not rich is widening out. And so I have to acknowledge that. And we're Seeing the evidence of that in terms of the polarization of the country, which is unfortunate but kind of predictable from the way things are going in the country and the political sector is going to have to deal with that. It looks like the economy overall is doing pretty well as you say, as a whole. The macro economy is doing very, very well in creating the wealth. But you have said we are probably late cycle and that raises some questions about discipline. Do you manage risk differently when you think you're late in the cycle? Well, it's funny concept of late in the cycle. I'm not sure how long the cycle has to go, but I could tell you every day we get closer to the end end of it that goes. That's a joke. Goes without saying that we get every day we get closer to the end of it. But just think about this. We haven't had a reckoning in a long time. What do I mean? You know, what's a reckoning? We haven't had some disaster that forced people to sell things that they didn't want to sell. You know, accumulate cash capital, find out and have to discover what the value of the inventories that they're accumulating in their, in their balance sheet. We haven't had that in a while. And the longer it, you know, really not since the global financial crisis. That was a long time. In 2008 was a long time ago. Usually we had these things every four or five years. I could tick through them, but we had them and we haven't had it for a long time. And you know, because we haven't. The sheer fact that we haven't had it for a long time means there's undoubtedly a lack of discipline. Interest rates were very low for a long time, so investments were made. You know, anytime the commodity is free, you're not husbanding it and you're not disciplined about it. And you know that there must be things out there that nobody's been forced to sell, nobody's been forced to price discover. And at some point the longer the reckoning takes, the worse it's going to be. Again, my base case is winded our back. But eventually it will come to an end and people will have to take stock of what the assets that they've been accumulating and had their notion of what the value was. Those things are going to have to pour into the market probably at the least convenient time. One of the things you observed over the course of your career and you talk about in the book is the rise and at least retrenchment of globalization. You talk about the fact Thomas Freeman wrote the World is Flat book, which looks a little antiquated right now. You thought age. Well, yeah, exactly. And you thought China, everybody thought China was going to surpass the United States, come up in time. United States not working out. So what does that mean? Sort of a multipolar world loss from this is that you can't take anything for granted. I mean, you shouldn't take anything for granted. Strange things happen. And by the way, when sentiment shifts, it affects your memory. You forgot what you used to think. But when I was starting out, you know, I went to Wall street in the, in the kind of mid-80s, early to mid-80s, and the idea of going to China or Russia this middle of the Cold War was crazy. Then of course, it opened up. And the idea that we'd ever be hostile to them, that they wouldn't be joining the Western oriented capitalistic market over time, that was crazy. Now it's not crazy. I've seen these things shift and with each shift you kind of forget what you used to think. Because again, when sentiment shifts, it sort of erases and reprograms your memory. You think you always thought this, it will yet change again. But it's, you know, it's very hard. People invested so much in their connections in Russia and in China. And you know something? They're not. That's not. That turns out not to have been a, you know, very profitable enterprise. But I believe that will come back again. What does that mean for investors in terms of the risk that they take? Is a globalized world riskier or less risky than a multipolar world? Look, we found out that the world wasn't as integrated and global as we thought. We had a lot of data points. I'll give you a data point. The world was integrating. Central banks were cooperating. We used to talk about coordinated intervention and coordinated rate decisions in the global financial crisis. All of a sudden when governments had to fund their banking industry in some way or had to deal with it, all of a sudden it stopped being so global. It really mattered where an institution had its assets because the country in which those assets were located. And we're talking about assets that exist as electrons in some case, but where was it going? And people kept on and it wasn't so global anymore. And it was a little bit of beggar thy neighbor. Covid was another example. We're a big global market. But guess what? It really mattered who had the vaccines first and where they were manufactured. And people took care of their own populations. And then if anything was left over, they went to their friends. And so the world turns out not to have been as integrated, as global as we thought. And so now we're just kind of acknowledging in that and of course the rise of America first and other kind of nodes in the international organization. We're into that period where it turns out supply chains matter, who has the rare earths matter, and you sort of for a matter of national security, better make sure you're not relying on other countries and other parts of the world for things that are existential to your well being. Up next, Ukraine fights for its survival against Russia and in the process puts its tech sector on the map. Krista Freeland reports from Kyiv. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises, so let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business IBM this podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the Wise account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond. Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio the WISE travel card gives you the mid market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig. Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24. 7 access to live support, your international transactions with WISE are quick, transparent and safe. Plus, WISE runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people already trust WISE to manage their money internationally. Be Smart, Get Wise Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com Terms and Conditions apply. Adobe Acrobat Studio, your new foundation. Use PDF spaces to generate a presentation. Grab your docs, your permits, your moves. AI levels up, your pitch, gets it in a groove. Choose a template with your timeless cool. Come on now, let's flex those two Draft, design, deliver, make it sing. AI builds the deck so you can build that thing. Do that, do that, do that with Acrobat, learn more@adobe.com do that with Acrobat. This is a story about necessity being the mother of invention. The war in Ukraine has passed the four year mark with Russia doing enormous damage to the country and its people. Our special contributor Krish Freeland serves as an unpaid economic advisor to President Zelensky. And when she traveled to Kyiv, we expected to hear about all the losses. But we didn't expect to learn that there are also some ways the country may have benefited. So Krista, you're working with President Zelensky to rebuild the Ukrainian economy after this war is over. As we look at Ukraine right now, it looks like just pure devastation. But as you work on that project, do you see some bright spots, particularly in the tech sector? I do, David, and I want to start by being careful not to overstate my role. So I'm an unpaid volunteer advisor. I don't have any executive authority and I want to be clear about that. Having said that, I really believe in Ukraine. I think that Ukraine's fight is actually the fight of the whole democratic world. And having been there a lot in recent months, I think there are tremendous economic opportunities. These are going to be important for Ukraine because after the war Ukraine doesn't have to just rebuild. Ukraine has to transform itself and I think there are going to be some great investments opportunities. So obviously Europe has been supportive of Ukraine and Europe needs its own defense buildup. Besides Ukraine's defense build up, to what extent is there integration happening between Ukraine and the rest of Europe in tech? There is a lot. And what I have seen, and I think this is something that has just happened over the past six to 12 months, is a real transformation in how Europe is looking at Ukraine. I would say at the beginning of the war, Europe, Europeans saw Ukraine as kind of the righteous victim, as virtuous, as wronged, kind of a charity case and important to support. For those moral reasons, I would say that today Europe is increasingly seeing Ukraine as an important ally and a powerful ally. What does Ukraine need, the tech sector specifically to become all it can be as you rebuild the economy. Economy, as you advise President Zelensky, what do they need? Is it capital? Mainly money is the most important thing. I think that we're going to see a lot of smart investors going in. That has already started and it started slowly. 2025, the Ukrainian government estimates was only just over $100 million of investment in the defense tech sector. But there are now some company, Ukrainian defense companies emerging with multiple billion dollar valuations. We've seen the use of technology for Defensive purposes, military purposes. We also hear about dual use going beyond the defense, the military. What are the possible applications as you look at it, for Ukraine tech in actually civilian use? You know, in a way, David, that's almost where this all started. Even before the war, the Ukrainian government had this idea that one of the ways that they had to kickstart economy, one of the ways that they had to complete this as yet unfinished transformation from effectively a Soviet economy to a modern Western market economy, was through digitalization. And the government has been working on that really, really intensively. We think about Estonia as a super digital government. We think about India as having done really, really well there. I think the Ukrainians are starting to nip at the heels of those countries. They have this application called gia, which regular Ukrainians can use to do pretty much everything they need to do with the government. And the Ukrainians are now working on powering GIA using AI agents. Krishna, you very recently visited Kyiv again, and I know you met with a woman who actually is on the forefront of that digitalization for the government. Tell us about her and what you learned. Yeah, I had a wonderful conversation with a extremely young woman called Neli Binova, and she is one of the young Ukrainians who I just find so inspiring. She works in the Department of Digital Transformation, and she is one of the people whose job it is to provide as many government services as possible to Ukrainians online. And increasingly, she says they've moved from digitalization to agentization, which is to say bringing AI into the provision of services. When did Ukraine start to really embrace digitization and why? Yeah, I think that it all started back in 2019 when the ministry of Digital Transformation was created. And over this time, we built plenty of projects. We created the whole ecosystem with DEA not just being a digital platform, but de DIA City for businesses, DIA usvita for people to learn digital skills. The Brave one platform, which is now related to raising funds for the defense sector is also everything that is under the ministry. So we just realized that we need to change that. But actually now our mission has evolved and now we are moving from the digital state to an agentic state. And for us, it's not a distant vision. It's already a reality. It's already happening. And we have some proofs that can highlight that that's what's happening right now. Okay, explain what you've just said. What does it mean to move from a digital state to an agentic state? An agentic state is the state where government delivers services proactively, like anticipating citizens needs Basically, instead of going and asking for plenty of documents, even via diagnostic, like I need that, and that the agent can react to your needs before you even have to ask. What effect has the full scale Russian invasion had on Ukraine's digital transformation? I think that it had a tremendous effect on how things sped up. On the one hand, Ukraine was already moving quite fast. So we launched Diya and it was before the full scale invasion. We had this opportunity and we had a political will to move fast. But when the full scale invasion started, we understood that for us, it's not just a question of leadership, of technological leadership, it's a question of national survival in a way. So in my opinion, this full scale invasion just made things clearer that we need to move even faster. And this phrase that I like to say, and that we understood that we should take risks, we should start taking more risks. And of course, risks mean taking responsibility. So we started taking more responsibility for the new things that we are creating and for US technologies and innovations in general. We believe that this is the thing that can help us win the piece and secure our economic growth and breakthrough. Tell me a little bit about GIA dia. Okay. DIA is our Flagman project. It's our super app. Basically, it's a digital platform both on the portal and on the app where we have our services. So currently Diya has more than 200 services available via portal. So citizens can just log in, they should proceed via the identification process and they can find some information about their needs, something that is related to what usually governments provides to citizens. So basically everything that you can think of which is related through public services. But I wanted to add that if in the DIA portal, we have like 6 million of users, so million of Ukrainians are using diabase every day. On the app we have more than 23 million of users because people like using their phones, they can just access. We have more than 33 digital documents there. I have my passport there, my international passport, my tax number. If I were to have a car, I would have my car there. If I were to have children again, I would have my children registered there. I even have the certificate of higher education there as well. And Diya actually was the first portal that created the opportunity to get married online. So Ukraine launched their online marriage and it makes things way easier for people now that are separated because of the war, whereas somebody is on the front line or somebody from the family had to move abroad. So now it is possible for people to be together just via a few clicks in Diya without any requirements. To be present and to be on site. And if I were to be Ukrainian and if I had my documents on Ghia, are they as good as a hard copy? Oh, yes, they are definitely as good as hard copies. So in Ukraine, we almost never carry like physical documents on us. In many countries right now, when it comes to technology, particularly when it comes to AI, people are getting worried. They're getting worried that AI will take all the jobs. They're getting worried that maybe AI will control us all. Do you have those worries? Do Ukrainians have those worries? I think they do. I think everybody has these worries. And if you look at the market now, there are more and more AI specialists who are replacing or stepping in. More jobs can be replaced in without even human intervention. This is another revolution and we just have to get used to that. And by getting used to that, I do not mean to be passive or indifferent. I mean to start actively getting more knowledge about how to work with this thing. Of course, we cannot be confident 100% that everybody will accept that and everybody will come, will be comfortable with that. But it's been there all the time. When the Internet appeared, people also were not sure how to use that and what to do about it. But of course, when it comes to risks, we should be very careful here. Extremely careful. And more than that, we developed a unique framework which does not allow users like citizens data to be transferred to the cloud models. So personal data of our citizens always remains within the DIA perimeter, within our perimeter, so it is secure. This hybrid approach allows us to keep the most sensitive data in Ukraine by some parts of the data outside of Ukraine. Because again, it's a two way question. It's not secure to have everything in Ukraine, but at the same time we cannot allow like just big tech companies have all of our data. Coming up. Tobacco has had a notorious history and been through more than nine lives. Now it's making the case for satisfying your tobacco habit, but this time without smoke. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond. Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio. The wise travel card gives you the mid market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig. Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24. 7 access to live support, your international transactions with WISE are quick, transparent and safe. Plus WISE runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people already trust WISE to manage their money internationally. Be smart, get Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com Terms and conditions apply. Adobe Acrobat Studio your team's home base. Collaborate within a shared PDF space. You've got your docs, your plans, your specs and then invite the crew to build what's next. Talk up the teamwork. They think that this design could be a contender. When somebody wonders what's the next steps, AI helps you finish the rest. Bolts are tight now. Your plans refined? Run a smoother business when you're on the line. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at Adobe.com. acrobat this is a story about the many faces of a single vice. For more than a century, tobacco has been one the of the most regulated industries in the global economy. And with every new regulation, it's come back in a different form. Now tobacco firms are adapting again, sidelining cigarettes in favor of smoke free products. They call it harm reduction and are finding some business success. But critics say the long term health effects are still unknown. Our colleague Michael McKee takes us to Switzerland. At a state of the art facility in Neuchatel, Switzerland, the world's biggest tobacco company is building a new future. I think cigarettes should end up in a museum. Cigarettes are out and smoke free products are in now consumed by more than 100 million people around the world. By 2030, we should have 2/3 of the revenues coming from this product. The products have also enjoyed a bit of a cultural moment. Where there's smoke, there's just me vaping. You guys Zins. What? Zinn? No, everyone Zins. Zinn is not a sin. That's the advertising campaign really. But the tobacco industry has been here before when cigarettes were cool until they weren't. It's Camel time. Camel time it's flavor time for you. So the early days of cigarettes, it was hard to watch a movie without seeing someone holding a cigarette and smoking, smoking it. Bond, James Bond. It was just very commonplace. Shall we just have a cigarette on it? Yes. The level of awareness was just not there. It was culturally acceptable. Ken Shea is a Bloomberg analyst who's been covering the tobacco industry for more than 25 years. Back in the 1960s, roughly half of all US adults smoked. Today it's down about 11%. There is a definite significant health hazard associated with cigarette smoking. The evidence was emerging that smoking was harmful to people's health. Lauren Ciplicki is a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University who studies corporate influence on health and policymaking in the late 1900s and early 21st century. What we saw was really an emergence of public awareness of how much the tobacco industry had lied to the public. Even in front of Congress, testifying that nicotine is not an addictive substance. That has really generated a lot of mistrust. Philip Morris International, or pmi, is the largest publicly traded tobacco company in the world, making some of the most well known cigarettes on the market. I think we at the stage that we are building the product and the functional benefits. Jacek Olczyk began his career with PMI in 1993, working his way up to become CEO in 2021. Olczyk's vision is delivering a smoke free future for the company. The tobacco companies for years fought the idea that cigarette smoke was bad for you. When did you figure out that this was going to be a losing proposition business wise? And how did you make that transition into the non combustible space? When I joined Philip Morris, I think the positions were very clear. Okay, the cigarettes are not a great idea for your health. Cigarettes are addictive. The big question is what you're going to do about this. We almost eliminated entire investments behind the combustible cigarettes and we redirected all of these resources behind the product. We now understand why cigarettes have such a negative impact on a human health, on a smoker's health. The whole thing is about the smoke which is a result of combustion. And then you release all the hundreds and hundreds of quite deadly or very deadly toxicants. But if you remove the combustion, if you eliminate the smoke, then essentially you have a product which can allow smokers to contribute, continue using the product, but with a much, much, much lower exposure to all the harmful toxic ants, etc. In recent years the tobacco industry has focused on creating more nicotine products. So things that aren't necessarily combustible cigarettes, but can be things like vapes or. Now we're seeing nicotine pouches. These products still contain nicotine, which is one of the most important addictive substances that can be commercially purchased in the United States and around the world. Some even say that it's as addictive as heroin or cocaine. The health effects of nicotine addiction can lead to mood dysregulation, increased levels of anxiety, maybe even influenza like feelings. If you are addicted to nicotine and you stop using it, you're trying to quit, you're going to experience that terrible withdrawal symptoms. Despite warnings from public health experts, smoke free products have skyrocketed, driven by more and more users looking for an alternative to cigarettes. That's changing the bottom line for tobacco producers like Philip Morris, a company which has a market cap of nearly $300 billion larger than Goldman Sachs, McDonald's and Disney. So about 40% of Philip Morris International's revenues are what they call smoke free. That includes the oral nicotine products like Zyn and also iqos, the heated tobacco product. Iqos and Zyn are two of Philip Morris most successful smoke free products that are very different from one another. Zyn is a tobacco free nicotine pouch that you insert between your lip and gum. It comes in a variety of flavors and nicotine strengths. Iqos is a heat not burn device that takes out the combustion part of traditional smoke. The way we design iqos is essentially the replica of cigarette. It didn't have to look like a cigarette, but it actually helps smokers together. And the big surprise, positive surprise at that time was the adoption rate because very early we learned that from hundred people trying IQOS buying IQOS device, 70% 70 will stay with IQOS and will completely stop smoking. IQOS was kind of a pioneer in that it was a product that was sleek. It wasn't embarrassing to bring out as a facsimile for a cigarette. It checked up all the boxes in terms of the ritual of smoking. But I think the early days it was hard to convince a smoker that why would they want to fumble around with a device. But Philip Morris was smart in going to some of the markets where new electronic gadgets were more acceptable. Like Japan, Japan, South Korea, Italy. For whatever reason these markets adopted these products early on. More than 42% of revenue are coming from this product. IQOS today by revenue is larger than Marlboro, which is the best performing product at this point. Which one has been taken up most quickly? I mean, iqos is still the best performing in terms of a conversion, obviously there was a lot of excitement about the nicotine pouches because the growth rate month on month, quarter on quarter, year on year, is much higher than iqos. But we're comparing to incomparable bite size. Pouches are very promising. I think they offer very good harm reduction potential. Zyn is a product that was originally made by Swedish Match and had done really well in their local markets in Sweden. And Philip Morris International thought it was a great idea to acquire them in 2022 and take it to the US. It has attained pre market tobacco approval and is by far the biggest winner in the roughly 20 billion dollar oral tobacco market. Consumers have really embraced Zyn as a product that is less harmful than cigarettes, but also it's more discreet. It comes in different flavors. They had coffee flavor, they had mint flavor. It's a product that it's not messy, you don't have to go out and smoke it. Unlike a tobacco smokeless product, you don't have to spit. It was small, I could use it and no one would know I had it in. It's a product that a white collar consumer can use discreetly at his desk. It was a far superior product than any other nicotine pouch and it made me feel great. And all that for a price that was pretty inexpensive. Global Zyn shipments are predicted to more than Double from just 421 million in 2023 to an estimated 1 billion in 2026, while nicotine pouch sales grew by more than 35% in both the US and Europe last year. We're here at PMI's Aurora facility. We broke ground in December of 2024. This increase in demand led PMI to build a new production facility in Aurora, Colorado. As you can see, we have a state of the art facility where we're producing Zinn nicotine pouches for distribution in the United States. And this is what the pouch looks like. It's really quite simple. It's a plant based pouch and inside there we have pharmaceutical grade nicotine that is derived, it's extracted from tobacco leaf. We have fillers, we have stabilizers and we have food grade ingredients. So everything in here is basically either a food grade ingredient or pharmaceutical grade nicotine. It's placed between the upper lip and gum, kept there for about 30 minutes and it's going to deliver nicotine over that time. The critics would argue that these products hook either existing users or even new users to nicotine. The marketing for nicotine pouches often uses potentially natural things like these are tobacco free which might make people believe that they're free of harm, but that actually downplays all of the risks that are associated with nicotine addiction. The nicotine had me. That's how addictions work. That's how nicotine works. And I was addicted. I was probably in my height of using Zyn, going through tin a day. Remember on our first date that you told me had a Zin addiction? I did. I forgot about that. Will Lamas was a frequent user of Zyn pouches, a habit he claims caused a number of health issues. So a few years into using Zyn, I started having some health problems. I remember it started with a pain in my stomach and then for about six months my stomach was constantly irritated. And one day I was on Reddit and I found a subreddit called Quitting Zen. And I was reading some of the posts and they were by Zinn users trying to quit or on their journey to quit. And they're talking about how their stomach used to hurt, their blood pressure used to be high, their heart rate was always racing, and a few weeks after they quit, almost all those side effects were going away. From then on, I told myself, I'm going to quit. Zyn for me was the healthier version of nicotine. And it's true. If you are addicted to nicotine, addicted to cigarettes or dip, Zyn is a healthier version. But at the same time it's the lesser of two evils. That doesn't mean it is healthy. In response to health concerns, PMI says that no nicotine product is risk free. And for those worried about their health, the best choice is to stop consuming nicotine altogether. The research on the long term health outcomes related to nicotine pouches isn't there yet. These products are relatively new on the marketplace and so that research is necessary and needs to be supported to really understand the long term health outcomes. But nicotine itself is an addictive substance. So we know that there's inherent harm with using any nicotine product. It can cause a life lifelong struggle with addiction that can lead to potentially devastating mental and physical health outcomes through the withdrawal symptoms. And that addiction cycle can be really devastating. I needed Zyn to feel normal and at that point I realized this has really got a grip on me and I do have a problem. Despite the potential risks, smoke free products continue to gain traction across domestic and international markets. Markets. The nicotine profit pool continues to grow because it's just an innate craving that consumers have to satisfy. Consumers now have more choices to choose cigarette as a harmful product, to things that are less harmful. And that's the bet. The nicotine craving will remain even if cigarettes fall into the ash heap of history. Can you imagine a day when Philip Boris does not sell cigarettes? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Up next, the new world of AI meets the old world of carpenters and plumbers. How data centers are making America great for construction workers. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a Global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions. Resolving 94% of common questions, not noise Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off. Deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM this podcast is brought to you by wise, the app for international people using money around the globe when it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond. Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio. The wise travel card gives you the mid market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill. 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Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, Americans have relied on construction workers to build the foundations of the economy. For over 100 years, it was the factories we needed for old fashioned manufacturing. But today it's high tech data centers that are driving the need for skilled workers. To build our future. I may be a little biased here, but if you're an individual that wants to build great things, there's no better time to be in the construction industry. Everybody wants a construction worker who needs a construction worker. Right now, the income that they're offering is almost doubled. Just the demand itself for skilled tradesmen and electricians in particular, it's definitely risen. The explosion of AI investment has led to a boom in the need for data centers. And that means the country needs more construction workers and it needs them now. The scale of the projects and the demand coming with projects at that mega scale continues to increase. Mark Whitson began his career as a carpenter 25 years ago. Today he is president at DPR Construction, one of the largest data center builders in the United States. If you read in certain places, they'll tell you 100 gigawatts is what, what the collective demand between now and 2030 will be. I think that's woefully understated from what we're seeing from our partners and owners, is that, you know, that could be what they're looking for in 2026 and 2027. I think it'll be a multiple of that. The construction duration, you know, also varies from 11 to 12 to 24, 36 months, depending on the size. But as you can imagine, with the demand that's out there right now for these AI factories, everybody wants them faster and they want them less costly. And so it's a challenge and an opportunity for the industry. Right now, the opportunity for a company like DPR is growing to meet that ever increasing demand. The challenge is making sure you have the people you need to keep up. Neela Richardson is a Bloomberg contributor and analyzes employment data at adp. Neeli, is there a surge construction related employment? Well, there has been over the last five years we've seen at ADP those numbers go up by 20%. That's two and a half times more than the all employees, all industries. But it slowed recently, and that is due to demographics. It's not just employer demand driving construction hiring. It's the natural pacing a father time on that industry. A lot of construction workers are retiring. Labor shortages are nothing new to the construction industry. But Whitson says the expertise needed to build data centers means that this time might be different. One of the things that makes the data centers more unique is really around the pace and scale, especially today, where some of the components within the data center may not be as unique. But when you amplify that by the scale of These projects and the reduced pace of these projects, it becomes different and becomes the need for additional skill set that's more specialized than some of the other types of commercial construction. Data center construction requires more specialized skilled workers, the kind that typically come with experience over years. Which means there's a problem when retirement time comes around. Well, let's take H Vac because that's where we're seeing huge demographic hit. And it's not because young people are coming in to the industry and becoming H Vac engineers. I wish that was the case. Older workers are leaving, and so is their expertise and their sophistication. So when you go back to a Data center where 1 or 2 degrees makes a big difference in how much you're emitting into the atmosphere, into the environment, that level of sophistication expertise is retiring. At this moment, as in any other market, when the supply for skilled workers falls behind demand, the result shows up in prices. It does. And wage growth has been higher. Not only wage growth, but bonuses. We clocked bonuses for construction workers at adp and they're twice the amount of regular employees outside of the industry. Now. Bonuses were a big deal during the great resignation, trying to get people in, but they've kind of gone by the wayside for most industries, but not construction. They're still a valuable tool in getting people to drawing workers in and drawing them away from their employer. All this creates an attractive potential opportunity for young people eager to meet the moment inside an electrician class at Germana Community College in Virginia. The banker's right here. Students from all walks of life are studying to be job ready. So I work up north and there's a number of job vacancies that they're seeking. Not just installers, not just H Vac, but electricians in particular, because it impacts safety, impacts energy, you name it. So there's just a ton of jobs around that field. So I think just long term, I'm trying to hedge my bets. I see job postings all the time. I'm a member of a union and we get all kinds of postings. Just in my area in Manassas, there's, I think, three different data centers that have sprung up just in the past couple years that I've been there. So they're constantly hiring. They make sure everybody else knows. Tina Lance is the dean of workforce development at Germana. Our role in the community is several reasons. One of the things that we do is work with our employers to make sure that we are meeting their workforce pipeline needs. It's been really easy for students to be hired with skilled trades in the region. Absolutely. The demand far exceeds the number of laborers that we have available in our market. There are currently seven data centers actively being built near Germana, with many more in the works. The credentials that are most in demand for data centers are electrical, H vac, plumbing, as well as data center operators. So those are the ones that right now we're spending quite a bit of time making sure we're doing our very best to increase the pipeline. Enrollment has absolutely been increasing over the last few years for skilled trades. You have many students that are now looking at skilled trades or credentials as a way to get a skill, get a job right out of high school, school. There are different things that draw people to further their education in a particular area. Many times it's passion, what they're interested in. Sometimes what you'll see is people do it because of the money. Welding right now is in high demand and so many of those students will graduate with their certification immediately get hired. And we've had several of our students that within the first year or two, they're in a six figure annual salary. So that's pretty significant when you think about somebody 20, 21 years old with really no debt from a student educational standpoint with a six figure salary. Beyond bringing more workers to the construction site, by offering higher pay and more training, companies are also bringing work to the workers. No. Is this all good now? Yeah. Michael Davis is a superintendent at DPR's Prefabrication Assembly Facility. That looks pretty good. Otherwise known as the prefab lab in Raleigh, North Carolina. Labor shortages are something we're seeing in the industry. One way we're working to fix that issue is we're prefabricating a lot of products off site and then on, on site. We're using anyone who's a new hire to skilled labor to be able to assemble the products we're shipping out and are able to keep up and if not beat schedules. So we're doing any very complex walls, soffits, radiuses, or complex geometry and turning those into various kits or even panels and shipping them to jobs where we can use apprentices straight out of our apprenticeship or people off the street just, you know, starting construction for the first time all the way to skilled labor to be able to assemble them within a day or two of training and we're doing finished product with that. Technology is the rage across all of American business right now, including with data centers. To what extent can you rely upon technology to replace some of the workers that you lack. That's a great question, David. And I don't know that I'd frame it in the way of replacing workers that we have. It's actually allowing the workforce to do more and to maybe do things that are more productive, more effective, more impactful. And so the technology is allowing us to help mitigate a reduction or a lack of availability in workforce. I think you started as a carpenter originally. I did. How has the image and role the construction worker changed over your career? I would say that it's starting to transform. I think that the reputation in the construction industry has not always been the greatest. And I think that it's an unfair stigma that that is put on the industry. And I think that we've got to continue to help change the narrative really to reality, which is much better than it was 25 years ago when I started. But we've also got to do more to improve the construction industry so that it's more attractive to more people. I remember my industrial arts class was my favorite class for a very long time. And if someone had had said to me, hey Neela, you don't have to be an economist, you can be a carpenter, we might be having a very different conversation right now. But no one said that to me. I didn't understand that to be a field especially for women. But I think that is changing the skills demand for the economy makes it so. But it's really about getting young people excited about these blue collar jobs as well as other places in the economy. It's a really exciting field to produce again and to make things, make things that feed the next technological boom in the United States. AI promises us a wealth of new tricks. But to get there, we need the old dog of traditional construction and the skilled labor it requires. Putting the question to people like the younger Neilas and marks of this world, whether to become an economist or a carpenter. That does it for us. Here at Wall Street Week, I'm David Westin. See you next week for more stories of capitalism. If you follow markets, you know the value of long term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But in life, even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day, a fire, a loss, a disruption that demands immediate attention. 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