May 1, 2026 • 37 mins
This week Max and Stacey look at two legal battles reshaping the worlds of tech and public health.
OpenAI, which started off as a nonprofit, is now worth roughly $850 billion as it eyes an IPO and battles Elon Musk. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman breaks down the company’s latest pivot into hardware, and whether this is what consumers actually want or if it's merely a convenient distraction.
On the other coast, the Make America Healthy Again movement goes to the Supreme Court to fight Bayer, maker of herbicide Roundup. Businessweek columnist Deena Shanker was at their latest protest, and is here to explain what the case means for the food industry and a movement that’s at odds with the administration it helped elect.
Plus: Prediction market bots, insider trading and a showdown between the state of New York and federal regulators.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hey, everybody's business listeners. Max Schaffkin here along with Stacey
Bannock Smith and we are taking our show on the road, maybe.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Down down the road, Down the road.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I will be in Lower Manhattan on May fifth, five
point thirty pm for a special live version of this
podcast at New York's Ludlow House. We'd love you to
join us.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
We will be talking about summer travel, because is everything
happening in our world right now going to ruin everyone's vacations.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Obviously not the.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Most important thing happening right now, but pretty important. I
think a lot of us count on a little break
in the summer, and between high gas prices and geopolitical
turmoil and flight cancelations, a lot of those plans are
in jeopardy. But there are some tricks and some tips
that you can use to navigate our brave new world.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And we will be talking about all those.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, and we're gonna have a little help Bloomberg's own
travel czar, Nikki Extein. That is her official title, by
the way, And Stacy, I am so excited about this.
Brian Kelly aka the Points the Points Guy, Points.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Guy, I got so many questions for him. You're not
gonna want.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
To miss this. You gotta listen to this episode hopefully
live before you book your summer travel.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
There are a few seats left. They are saved just
for you.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
You can go to on air Presents dot com, scroll
down until you see an image of the show of
our faces of me and Max. You can tap on
our faces and request an invite. That's on air Presents
dot com and tap the request and invite button.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hope to see you there on the fifth.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Okay, Max to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
This week, we are focusing on two lawsuits, lawsuits that
will potentially shape our future in technology and in health.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah. The first one is open ai, which is facing
a legal battle with Elon Musk, who started the company
with CEO Sam Altman, initially as an nonprofit that would
benefit humanity. I'd say, Stacey, they have both taken it
in another direction. Now they're definitely not a nonprofit fighting
about it in court in Oakland. And meanwhile, while that
(02:12):
is happening, open ai has another plan, another way to
increase its profits.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
If you have this AI technology, you don't want to
be reliant on Apple for connecting with your customers. You
want your own product, your own ecosystem that customers can
go out and buy. And so this is why they're
all trying to build hardware, and this is why Opena
wants to build its own hardware.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Now, the second lawsuit has to do with the Make
America Healthy Again movement. The Supreme Court is hearing a
case right now that will decide whether the company Bear,
which owns the weedkiller roundup, can be shielded from lawsuits
from people who say that roundup made them sick.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
For Democrats, I think it's been a huge miss for
them to not be pushing this harder. I mean it
it is extre like by definition, a kitchen table issue,
because it's not the food on our kitchen. The agricultural
industry is also very powerful and very dispersed around the country.
And so you know, the Democrats, I think, had so
(03:10):
many opportunities to really own the food issue and never
took it.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
This is everybody's business. From BusinessWeek, I'm Max Chafkin.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And I'm Stacey Vannicksmith. Today on the show, what happens to.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
A mission when the lawsuits start and when that mission
starts to get expensive? Stay with us Stacey.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Open ai keeps finding its way onto this show for
all sorts of reasons, which makes sense because it's one
of the most popular AI chatbots. It has evaluation of
eight hundred and fifty billion, plans to go even bigger.
They are trying to go public at some point this year. Meanwhile,
a lot of analysts think there's a bubble now as
(03:57):
we record open ai as beating back reports which it denies,
saying it is missing its internal projections. Regardless, AI has
been a huge story here and you really can't talk
about it without talking about this company.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yes, and there is a strong chance that as you
are listening to us right now, you are listening to
us on a smartphone. And there is also a strong
chance that on that very smartphone you have chat GBT
or some other similar appic Claude, these apps, this technology,
it is just transforming our lives and will soon very
(04:32):
likely be transforming our phones and maybe all of our hardware.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, these AI companies want to make phones, and so
we wanted to kind of do a little early market
research for this. Yes, so we sent our producer Miles J.
Herzenhorn to the streets of New York to ask people.
First of all, how often do they even get a
new phone? How often do they upgrade? And would they
consider upgrading to a phone that has a lot more
AI in it?
Speaker 7 (04:56):
How old is your cell phone? I don't know, I
have no idea.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Probably, uh, since two years old.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I upgrad my phone about like one year to two years.
But now recently it's been like every you know, two
to three years since like technology has been like plotlen
five years and minus two. How often do you try
to create your phone.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Every two years old two years.
Speaker 8 (05:23):
When it's like stop, stop working because of the battery
and all that stuff.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
Yeah, same once it for each five six years something
like that.
Speaker 8 (05:33):
Not often unless something happens to my phone. I really
don't care what extent you're looking forward to having AI
technology in your phone.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So I actually deal with like AI just a little bit.
I don't think that there is like a sort of
a need. I think the whole like SERI thing kind
of like flopted out.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
I don't even use it, the artificial intelligent part, because somehow,
in the back of my mind I think it's creeping
into my privacy. I get a little bit paranoid about it.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
So no, I think it's accelerating too fast. It's making
people lazy and not the thing for themselves, taking away
their ability to learn. I really respect the utmost respect
the person who said she doesn't know when she got
her phone. That is awesome. I feel like the longer
you can go, the better.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I remember when I got my phone, but only because
it was right before the tariffs.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It was right, it was right after a liberation day.
I ran out and got it.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I'm probably I'm probably going to get a new phone
because like I write about technology, and I have to,
but I would love to get to a place where
I just I don't replace it unless I drop it
in the ocean. Do you drop my ambition accidentally? I
don't know. We have a great person to talk about this,
Bloomberg Managing editor of Consumer Technology, Mark German. He is
(06:53):
the person in this newsroom that I talked to when
I want to understand really anything about the kind of
personal hardware that defines our lives. Increasingly. He covers Apple
like the gadget, he covers gadgets in general. Mark, Welcome
to everybody's business.
Speaker 7 (07:10):
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Okay, so we wanted to talk to you because open
Ai right now they're in the news. There is a
very interesting trial going on in Oakland between Elon Musk
and Sam Altman. There have been a swirl of reports
around open AI's valuation and are they hitting their metrics,
is there enough usage? Is there an ai bubble? And
(07:33):
there's also this kind of weird report that came out
earlier this week that open ai is getting closer to
developing some consumer hardware, particularly a smartphone. And leaving aside
the Musk drama the valuation, can you just try to
explain to us why they're doing this and what exactly
(07:54):
we think they're doing.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Yeah, we've known for some time now that open ai
has ambitions in hardware. Johnny Ive, who just taking a
step back here, who ran design for Apple. He left
in twenty nineteen and after that he started up a
design shop with another designer named Mark Newsome, and it's
called Blove from based in San Francisco.
Speaker 7 (08:15):
And they've done some one off things.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
They've worked with the UK government on a font, they
created a lamp that you take sailing. They've done other
fun quirky ti I believe interior ever Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
These are very odd undertakings.
Speaker 5 (08:31):
They're all niche right, Yes, Johnny Ive is known for
all the Apple products we used today. The Apple Watch
was his brainchild, and he had this, you know, arrangement
with Apple where couldn't really get into the consumer electronics game.
I would guess for a three year period and whatnot
a non compete, a non.
Speaker 7 (08:50):
Compete type of thing.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
And he worked with Apple posts departure as well. They
did some one off work together on a contractual basis,
but that all ended around twenty twenty two. And the
guy who helped make the consumer tech we use every day,
he's going to have the etch to get back into
the game. So around then he started working on a
startup called io at the time, and the idea was
(09:13):
to create AI hardware and AI devices. And early on
in that process he got introduced to Sam Altman and
saw what he was doing with chat, GPT and open
ai and his thinking at the time, Johnny I's thinking
was AI is going to enable entirely new wave of
consumer hardware and consumer technology. You know, he had this
(09:34):
idea where people have become too addicted to screens and
their phones and headsets and whatnot, and he felt that
AI could help him recreate these devices in a way
that would counter this addiction, counter people being glued to
their displays and their phones and iPads at all times.
And so they partnered together and Sam Altman was part
(09:55):
of this Io to a certain extent, and Johnny I
have brought in a bunch of the best that you
you saw at Apple working on products there. From an
ip standpoint, you can likely argue with it, but from
a talent perspective, it's hard to argue that they're getting
the best of the best there. But now Io is
part of open Ai and they are working on what
they say is a family of AI devices. My understanding
(10:17):
is that they're looking and working on basically everything you
can imagine. But the one thing you really need if
you want to be a successful consumer electronics company is
something you can put in your pocket, right, And we
think of a phone today as this smartphone, this slab
of glass with this display, but really a phone could
be anything with cellular connectivity that allows you to make
phone calls. And so the ultimate goal has been from
(10:39):
the beginning for open ai to create an iPhone killer,
an aiphone from the ground up, and that's what I
expect them to do before the end of the decade,
but certainly that's not going to be their first device.
Anticipate their first device being more of an accessory, something
in the smart speaker, earbuds, smart glasses, realm and then
eventually I think that'll all make way towards the open aiphone.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Why would they want to get into the hardware business.
The hardware business is so tough. I feel like a
lot of great companies tried and failed to make a phone.
Anthropic is going in a much different, more sort of
software driven direction from what I understand. Why is AI
going in this direction.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
It's the same reason that you've seen Amazon in the
past look at making a phone. It's the same reason
why Google makes a phone. It's the same reason as
companies make aphone, Facebook try to make a phone. And
it's the reason right now why Meta is all in
on building its own array of AI hardware devices. You know,
they hired Alan I, the head of User interface at Apple,
at the end of last year and now he's driving
(11:39):
the work along with their CTO Andrew Bosworth, on making
an array of AI devices.
Speaker 7 (11:44):
Why.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Because Apple owns the consumer technology landscape, because they are
the hardware player.
Speaker 7 (11:49):
They are the.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Platform, and if you have this AI technology, you don't
want to be reliant on Apple for connecting with your customers.
You want your own product, your own ecosystem the customers
can go out and buy and so this is why
they're all trying to build hardware, and this is why
Opena wants to build its own hardware. They don't want
to rely on Apple being the distribution point for chech
ebt and their technology. They want to be their own distributor.
(12:13):
They don't want to abide by Apples app store rules.
They don't want to abide by Apples software development kits.
They don't want to abide by what Apple allows and
doesn't allow to run on their products. They want to
issue their own products to consumers and have their technology
on top of it and their own app store on
top of it. They don't want to be within Apple's
walled garden. They want to create their own garden.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
We should talk about what's happening in Apple, but before
we get there, Mark, does it create any kind of
cause for concern in your mind? Stacy mentioned this. Anthropic
has had a lot of success marketing to businesses. We've
seen reports that open Ai, according to The Wall Street Journal,
which open Ai denied, was missing its revenue projections. This
(12:51):
is a very competitive space. Do you have any sense
that this is a company that is scrambling to find
a way to continue growing, that there is maybe even
like a hint of desperation in this ambition, just because
so many companies have done this, have tried to do this,
and they have failed pretty miserably. We could probably debate
(13:13):
on the Google one, because Android is very successful, but
there isn't like a big track record of tech companies
attempting to compete with Apple and Samsung here and winning.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Yeah, but open Ai and Sam Altman have this secret
sauce that is AI for all intents and purposes. They
were the pioneer here. They do probably have still even
though Claude is up there and Gemini is up there.
Some of the best underlying AI technology, some of the
best AI researchers, and that's a huge differentiator from what
you have at Apple. And so if anyone is going
(13:45):
to reinvent the hardware game, it's going to be open Ai.
But I don't think that this is a serious issue
for Apple. And if open ai ends up doing anything
successful I think Apple's just going to copy them really quickly.
So I'm not too worried for Apple there. The one
concern I do have for Apple is in terms of
brain drain and talent drain. Anything that Apple's doing Open
(14:09):
Ai has hired from to a very large degree, and
so that's the scary part for Apple if they're losing
too many people to be able to keep up the
pace of their own hardward development.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Mark. We've seen a couple of efforts to create these
like AI devices. There was a company called Humane. You
test the product, I think you might have called it
like one of the worst products. I can't remember the
exact wording. I don't know.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
It is the worst product I've ever used.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
It was it was it was like a little pin
that you wore on your chest, and the idea was
like instead of looking at a screen, you would just
talk to a chatbot. And it had all sorts of problems.
The big problem, Mark, correct me if I'm fung is
it got really hot because of all the computing that
was happening, and the heat would both be uncomfortable, but
(14:52):
also the battery would die relicly.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
There were all these pugs set fire to your shirt.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Okay, Well, the biggest issue is that you know, voice
interact already is not a perfect science. Perfect science is
point and click with your computer or touch screen on
your iPad or phone or whatever. Right, but interactivity over
voice sometimes it doesn't understand you. It's difficult to go
back and forth. But theirs was just so slow. It
(15:17):
just didn't work properly. That the bar was already so high,
and they just did a horrible job implementation wise. The
other thing they tried to do was replace the display
with a laser system that you put your hand in
front of it and it points a laser, and so
it's a laser projection screen on your own band, and
it just did not work well. Cool concept, but didn't
work well.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Mark, you mentioned that you thought open Air, or I
think from what I remember, you mentioned that open Ai
by the in ten years would have an iPhone killer.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Do you think that is true?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Do you think Apple, for all of its muscle and
market dominance right now, could be taken out by open Ai.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
I don't think they're going to be taken up I
open Ai.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think iPhone killers happening.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
I well, sure it could be an iPhone killer, but
it's not going to be an iPhone replacement, if that
makes sense. It might be better than the iPhone from
a technical perspective, but I think Apple's brand and marketing
is so strong that they're not going to go away,
and they're going to evolve very quickly. At some point,
these AI models are going to become commoditized. Eventually, Apple's
going to make acquisitions here, and so I think they'll
(16:25):
be able to get up the snuff in this AI
game in fairly short order. But like you mentioned, the
priority right now is becoming the AI middleman to play
nicely with everyone else's AI.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Mark before we wrap. I think a lot of people
who are maybe not following this conversation as closely as
we are, certainly not as closely as you are. I
have this kind of question over like why do you
have to keep replacing your iPhone? You know, there was
the battery Gate controversy that had to do with basically
class action lawsuit saying Apple was deliberately slowing down its batteries.
(16:57):
I think there's a feeling among a lot of users
that like, why these iPhones they kind of look the same,
Like why am I being made to upgrade I'm curious,
like what your personal upgrade philosophy is, Like, how often
do you get a new phone? Maybe you answer that,
but then answer it if you weren't Mark German, who's
got to be trying out the latest and greatest.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Me personally, I've upgraded every year to the new iPhone.
You probably don't need to get a new iPhone if
you are not deep in the technology. See the thing
with me is I write about Apple. I write about tech,
but that's not just my job. I live and breathe
Apple and tech and devices as my personal passion and
life's work and a hobby. And you know the thing
(17:39):
that I'm most interested in life. I love basketball too.
I love sports too. You know, some people are just
obsessed with that or cars. But for me, this is
not a job. It's my whole life. I am unique
in that from that standpoint. Someone who does not live
and breathe this stuff, you're probably good every three years,
maybe four.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Mark German, thank you for being here. Check out his
newsletter Power On. If you're not already a subscriber, you
should be. We really appreciate the time.
Speaker 7 (18:04):
Thank you both so much.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
All right, Max, I have a question for you Okay,
when was the last time you thought about what is
on your salad?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Stacy every single day? Every day I did. Is it
like more of a vinaigrette? Is it a sort of
a ranch a caesar? Yes?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
I always wonder what you're thinking about when you're sitting
at your desk, And now I know. Actually a lot
of people do not spend as much time thinking about
what's on their salad as one must. But there is
a growing group of Americans who are thinking about it
a lot. And this week a big group of them,
hundreds of them, showed up outside of the Supreme Court.
They are part of the MAHA movement. This is make
(18:49):
America Healthy Again.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yes, gotcha.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
And this rally is organized around a Supreme Court decision
involving Bear, which is the company that makes the weak
killer round up.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
They don't want pesticides on their salad.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
It is the pesticides on the sality.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Actually round up as an herbicide, I believe, but I'm
not a scientist.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
Pesticide is a term that applies to all the sides,
so herbicides are included in the term.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Oh thank you, and joining us now is business Suite
side expert Dina Shanker. She's also a commist here, our colleague.
She was at the rally. She wrote about it in
her column Extra Salt, Dina, welcome back to everybody's business.
Speaker 9 (19:27):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
All right, So, Dina, why were these protesters outside the
Supreme Court talk to us about this case?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Great?
Speaker 6 (19:35):
So we all know Monsanto the company that makes or
that made glyfa sate also known as Roundup. They got
acquired by Bayer some years back, and since then, Beyer
has been hit by lawsuit after lawsuit by plaintiffs claiming
that glyfasate caused their cancer.
Speaker 9 (19:54):
They have had to pay out.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
They ate vegetables that had been treated with this.
Speaker 6 (19:58):
A lot of farmers and people that work with the
pesticide got sick from working with it. But although I
can't say for sure whether there's also there's so many
of these cases, I could.
Speaker 9 (20:09):
Not tell you whether there's consumers in there too.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
So far, already Beyer has paid out over ten billion dollars,
including legal costs, but as well as payouts because juries have.
Speaker 9 (20:20):
Found in favor of the plaintiffs.
Speaker 6 (20:21):
So Beyer, right now in front of the Supreme Court
is trying to get a liability shield, specifically about their
failure to warn over the cause of cancer and relationships
with clife essafe.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
So they're getting in trouble for not saying using this
product could harm you.
Speaker 9 (20:39):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
They're trying to say, we don't have to put it
on the label because the EPA said we don't have
to put it on the label.
Speaker 9 (20:44):
If the EPA says we don't have to put.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
It on the label, we don't have to tell anybody
about it, it's fine. There's a lot of opposition to
them getting this liability shield. There's also I believe around
sixty thousand claims still outstanding against Beyer. May or may
not be impacted by the decision of the court. Beyer
has tried in other ways to get this kind of
(21:06):
liability shield. They're currently trying with the Farm Bill to
get it written into that. But this was about the
Supreme Court decision. Now that day at the Supreme Court,
who was arguing in favor of Beyer, but Trump administration lawyers,
which did not sit well with the Make America Healthy
Again contingent. RFK Junior was actually one of the lawyers
(21:29):
on the trial that found Monsanto was liable.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So he went after montandle Yes a.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
Long time ago, and so he's been anti glyfasate.
Speaker 9 (21:37):
For a very long time.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
So his followers, the Maha voters, they are fully on
board with glivasate causes cancer and people should be warned
about it. We should reduce our use, we should get
rid of it. You know, you talk to people, they
have different plans for sort of what to do about it.
But the Trump administration has come out very pro glyfasate.
They have not only submitted an amicus brief in the
Supreme Court case and argued on its behalf. Trump also
(22:00):
put out an executive order basically saying that glivasate production
is a matter of national security, so that we can
have Yeah, we should say.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The argument that they're making is that this is a
really important technology for farming and that it's safe, and
that if this were not used, it would be very
damaging to American agriculture, that we wouldn't make as much
food as we make. And I think it has been
an incredibly effective herbicide. In addition to creating a swirl
(22:29):
of concern around around danger, harmful harm for agriculture workers
first and foremost, but also consumers, and that's I think
where the Maha movement comes in, right, these are people
who don't want to eat this.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
Well, it's also a lot of regenerative agriculture advocates, and
there's a lot of talk about, yes, we can't just
flip a switch, right, we can't just get rid of
glivasate tomorrow. That would be very detrimental to food security
in this country. But we can phase it out. There
are other ways to farm. A lot of weeds are
now completely are growing resistant to round up anyway, so
(23:01):
it's not as effective as it used to be. So
there's a lot of people that expected this administration to
be more supportive of that position that glyfasate can be
scaled down and maybe we could align with European standards
on pesticides. But instead we've seen that this administration is
very much aligned with the agricultural industry, which very much
(23:24):
wants these pesticides to stay and use at current levels.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Okay, so we talked about the Supreme Court. There's this
thing going on in the Supreme Court. Trump administration and
Big Agriculture Bear which owns mont Santo, having an argument.
And then there's the Maha movement and you kind of
hinted at this, or we mentioned at the top, but
these Maha protesters are in front of the Supreme Court
(23:48):
or in Washington making their voices heard, which is super
interesting because first of all, they had been pro Trump,
they had helped Donald Trump get elected. It's yet another
instance of a sort of part of Trump's coalition seeming
to turn against him.
Speaker 6 (24:02):
Yes, definitely, And I should say the turnout was you
were there, Yeah, I was there. It was Monday morning
in front of the Supreme Court. I was expecting a
bigger turnout, but it was a bipartisan lineup of speakers.
Democrats were also speaking as well as like MAHA leaders
and elected Republicans, but the crowd was mostly Maha people,
So people that voted for Trump, for Kennedy. Everyone was
(24:26):
upset with Trump. Everyone also was, I want to say,
like making excuses for Kennedy for the fact that this
was happening on his watch. He's done everything he can.
This is not his You're spoken up about this he did.
When the executive order came out, he originally kind of
backed it, saying it is a matter of national security,
but then he backtracked on it.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
He round up around, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
Exactly, and like he's clearly he's clearly not happy with it,
but he's it's like, I mean, he's in a tough
spot because Trump is his boss and this is quite
antithetical to everything he has ever stood for.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
So, Dina, you brought us a recording?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
So uh and what are we about to hear?
Speaker 6 (25:06):
Vonnie Harry, also known as food Babe online, she has
been an action influencer.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
She is I would say she long.
Speaker 9 (25:14):
Predates the influencer era.
Speaker 6 (25:16):
She's a food activist who riles up all kinds of
feelings in different kinds of people.
Speaker 9 (25:21):
She's been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 6 (25:23):
And she used to be a Democrat and then she
switched to Republican for MAHAK once Kennedy picked that up.
I think that was when Maha really started gaining broad support.
Was because people can see those colors, they can see
it in the food that they're being served.
Speaker 9 (25:39):
And then when she spoke at the.
Speaker 6 (25:42):
At the rally, she was really making it clear that
she is extremely not on team Trump anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Right now, inside that building, Monsanto Bear will be arguing
for the right to poison us and not be held
account of Let me say that again, they want to
give us cancer and get away with it.
Speaker 9 (26:06):
We are here to make sure that does not happen,
and we are not going to leave here quietly.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Wow. The thing that I find so interesting about this,
and you're reporting on this, Dina, is that this movement
has been around for a very long time. There have
been people, especially like on the left, yelling about Monsanto
for I feel like as long as I've been alive,
and none of it has had I think, much political resonance.
(26:34):
There's obviously, like organic foods have grown a lot, but like,
we hadn't seen it breakthrough politically until twenty twenty four.
And I'm curious why you think that happened.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
So that's such a great question because that is something
that I have asked a lot of people, including elected Democrats,
because food issues were democratic issues, they just never really
talked about them as the issue.
Speaker 9 (27:00):
And that's I mean.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
Remember, not only did Michelle Obama make school nutrition rules,
but she planted an organic garden on the White House lawn.
And the pesticide industry, the agricultural chemical industry, how whatever
euphemism we'd like to use for them, they wrote her
a letter and then a public letter writing campaign urging
her to use their crop protection tools as they refer
(27:22):
to them, and the Obamas didn't even respond to it.
And so there's a question of, like, the Democrats have
always had this position, why didn't they push it harder.
I think it's been a huge miss for them to
not be pushing this harder.
Speaker 9 (27:37):
I mean it it is like, by.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Definition, a kitchen table issue, because it's not the food
on our kitchen table, and they just haven't. They just
have been pushing it here and there. The agricultural industry
is also very powerful and very dispersed around the country.
Every single state in this country has some kind of
agricultural product.
Speaker 9 (27:58):
And so you know, the Democrats, I.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
Think had so many opportunities to really own the food
issue and never took it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
During Trump's campaign in twenty twenty four, he did this
thing where he he was down it was brat summer.
Did I say that right? I can't. And Kamala was
on the rise. There's all this energy among Democrats and
Trump I think frantically started embracing all sorts of weird causes.
And I don't mean weird, but things that were fringe.
So he embraced crypto, he started talking about We're gonna
(28:31):
uncover if aliens are real. I mean he literally said
that during the campaign files Epstein files right in retrospect.
Big mistake, big political mistake for him and Maha. He
did all of these things, and he embraced the kind
of the sort of corners of the America First Movement
or whatever that are very against foreign wars. He did
all these things, He made all these promises, and in
all sorts of ways. It just may be very hard
(28:54):
to be simultaneously like a pro business, pro growth Republican
and somebody who is gonna satisfy the concerns of people
who really are upset about the power big agriculture.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
Yeah, I think that's totally right. I also think that
they're gonna want to point to what they would consider
their major achievements, and the big one being back to
the food dies, that they got a bunch of companies
to voluntarily commit to removing food dies. But I would say, okay,
you need to do some rulemaking to actually ban those
food dies, to not just ensure that those companies will
(29:28):
drop them, but also that every company that makes food
can't use them. But even if they did that glyf
estate is so much more foundational to our food system
and to what a lot of people in Maha want,
which is that food should be from their perspective, safe
(29:50):
for everyone, or at least safe for them, because a
lot of this comes down to can you.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
Afford to buy the organic.
Speaker 6 (29:56):
Food because a lot of people I spoke with their
only eat or food, and glyf estate is used so.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Widely you can't really avoid it.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
So what happens now with this case, we wait.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
But for now I know they're trying to push through
some kind of liability shield through the farm Bill. I'm
not sure what the latest is on that. That was
like very much in motion while I was in DC
earlier this week, and I think Bayer has like a
big They have a lot of different, multifaceted strategy to
try to get themselves some kind of federal liability shield.
(30:32):
They actually have pushed it through in certain states, but
now they want it at a national level.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I just want to say, before we let Dana go,
if you're worried about Maha, the Maha part of Trump's
coalition collapsing, the alien coalition. He's thinking about it, because
one week ago he said at a Conservative event. Quote.
We found many very interesting documents, I must say, and
the first releases, these are first releases about aliens, will
(30:56):
begin very soon, so you can go out and see
if that phenomena is correct. So the alien voters are
going to be thrown a bone quote very soon.
Speaker 6 (31:05):
But that's just I just need to say, that's just silly,
because you all know that nothing is going to be definitive.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I think there are people who are just like, hold on,
and I understand it because if aliens are real, that's
a big deal.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I mean, that is a real.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
Of course aliens are.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
I love this.
Speaker 9 (31:23):
What do we think We're the only people, the only
living creatures.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
In the I think we found the first single issue
alien voter here, Dina Shanker, thank you for being here. There.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
She's definitely not the first voter.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
There are a lot of single issue alien voters.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
You can't vote on it because there's never going to
be anything to figure Trump.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Is your guys, Stacy. We've been here before. We will
be here again. It is time for our favorite news
segment this week in prediction markets. Okay, so the reason
(32:07):
I think we're talking about this is because Bloomberg published
an analysis a few days ago about bets on polymarket.
That's one of the two big prediction market sites along
with Calshi and super interesting. The top line is basically
most people on these prediction markets are losing money. And
(32:27):
then the other thing is that people who are making
money are largely high frequency traders, people using bots, essentially
professionals who are getting in and out of bets really
quickly disproportionately. That's where most of the profits are.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
It's interesting because that is a little bit similar to
the actual like the stock markets in a second place,
where bots have really have a huge edge because they
can do things so quickly and move so quickly.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, and I think people know this, maybe in intuitively.
But the thing is the way these companies promote these tools,
they don't really mention the fact that the successful users
are professionals. You're essentially competing with Ken Griffin and other
high frequency trader types, not literally Citadel, but people who
(33:18):
are using similar tactics to the ones that are used
in the stock market. It's the same reason why most
sort of investment professionals tell you not to day trade,
even if you are right, and this came up in
the research too, even if your intuition is right. Like
you bet on a thing that is going to happen
and actually happens, you're going to get a worse price
than one of these bots. All right, Two other stories. First,
(33:41):
one that I wanted to just mention very quickly is
that this question over whether these prediction markets are even legal,
a lot of states are pursuing litigation. We saw another
lawsuit recently, New York's Attorney generals suing Coinbase and Gemini
for what, according to the State of New York, are
running illegal gambling operations. The companies say no, no, no,
(34:01):
totally legal because we are regulated by the CFTC, which
regulates commodities. The CFTC is suing the State of New York.
This is going to continue. The thing about this that
I found funny is just like the.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Coinbase is crypto right, prediction market?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
No, No, it is prediction markets. Both of these companies
have expanded to prediction markets because they're just into whatever
the kids on.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Poly market about whether bitcoin's going up.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No, Coinbase just has a prediction market, and.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
So what do you get on whether or not it's
going to snow?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, they have done their own prediction market as has
this other crypto thing Gemini. It's basically like this is
the hot category, so they're getting into it. And that
I found that thought was the most surprising thing at all.
Like I didn't even know coinbase had a prediction market neither,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Clearly didn't know.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Okay, last one people probably saw this, but a US
Special Forces sergeant who was involved in the raid in
which the United States captured Nicolas Maduro, the former leader
of Venezuela, was arrested for betting thirty three thousand dollars
on the outcome of the raid. We had a insider
(35:08):
raid trading. Well.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
I remember when this came out someone had placed a
big bet and nobody knew who. But the timing was
really suspicious, that because there was an ongoing bet I
think on polymarket or something about when this might happen,
the invasion of Venezuela, and I think also the capture
of Nicholas Moduo, and I remember people speculating about who
(35:33):
might have had this insider information.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Apparently now we know, at least in.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Part all right, I want you to try to guess
how President Trump reacted to the news of this story.
When he was asked at the White House by a reporter.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
President Trump is a practical man and a new prediction market.
I wonder if he asked to split the profits he said.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
And this is according to a CNBC story that wrote
about this quote. I don't know about it, but he
was betting that they would get him. Was he betting
that they would get him or they wouldn't get him.
He's told that he was betting on the raid, and
he seemed Trump seemed to be pleased with that. He said,
that's like Pete Rose betting on his own team. Pete
Rose being the baseball player who was banned for Baseball
for betting. Many people feel unfairly. I mean, there's a
(36:16):
big conversation in baseball. Trump clearly following that because he said,
Pete Rose, they kept him out of the Hall of
Fame because he bet on his own team. Now, if
he beat against this team, that would be no good.
But he bet on his own team. And then he said,
I'll look into it. So I think Trump is like
a little bit okay with this because at least he
was betting on the raid.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
I mean, they do say you're always supposed to bet
on yourself, and now.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
You can do that on prediction markets.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
The whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino,
which I think is true and genuinely was surprised.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
But runs casino? Does he mean that?
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Unfortunately because he's literally in the casino business.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
This show is produced by Jasmine JT. Green, Stacy Wong,
and Miles J. Hersheil worn Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer,
Sam Rogch Hendl's engineering, Dave Pricell factchecks special thanks to
Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling. If you have
a minute, please rate and review the show. It will
mean a lot to us. And if you have a
story that should be our business, email us at Everybody's
(37:21):
at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with ans at Bloomberg
dot net. Thank you for listening and we'll see you
next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hey, everybody's business listeners. Max Schaffkin here along with Stacey
Bannock Smith and we are taking our show on the road, maybe.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Down down the road, Down the road.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I will be in Lower Manhattan on May fifth, five
point thirty pm for a special live version of this
podcast at New York's Ludlow House. We'd love you to
join us.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
We will be talking about summer travel, because is everything
happening in our world right now going to ruin everyone's vacations.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Obviously not the.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Most important thing happening right now, but pretty important. I
think a lot of us count on a little break
in the summer, and between high gas prices and geopolitical
turmoil and flight cancelations, a lot of those plans are
in jeopardy. But there are some tricks and some tips
that you can use to navigate our brave new world.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And we will be talking about all those.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, and we're gonna have a little help Bloomberg's own
travel czar, Nikki Extein. That is her official title, by
the way, And Stacy, I am so excited about this.
Brian Kelly aka the Points the Points Guy, Points.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Guy, I got so many questions for him. You're not
gonna want.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
To miss this. You gotta listen to this episode hopefully
live before you book your summer travel.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
There are a few seats left. They are saved just
for you.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
You can go to on air Presents dot com, scroll
down until you see an image of the show of
our faces of me and Max. You can tap on
our faces and request an invite. That's on air Presents
dot com and tap the request and invite button.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hope to see you there on the fifth.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Okay, Max to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
This week, we are focusing on two lawsuits, lawsuits that
will potentially shape our future in technology and in health.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah. The first one is open ai, which is facing
a legal battle with Elon Musk, who started the company
with CEO Sam Altman, initially as an nonprofit that would
benefit humanity. I'd say, Stacey, they have both taken it
in another direction. Now they're definitely not a nonprofit fighting
about it in court in Oakland. And meanwhile, while that
(02:12):
is happening, open ai has another plan, another way to
increase its profits.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
If you have this AI technology, you don't want to
be reliant on Apple for connecting with your customers. You
want your own product, your own ecosystem that customers can
go out and buy. And so this is why they're
all trying to build hardware, and this is why Opena
wants to build its own hardware.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Now, the second lawsuit has to do with the Make
America Healthy Again movement. The Supreme Court is hearing a
case right now that will decide whether the company Bear,
which owns the weedkiller roundup, can be shielded from lawsuits
from people who say that roundup made them sick.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
For Democrats, I think it's been a huge miss for
them to not be pushing this harder. I mean it
it is extre like by definition, a kitchen table issue,
because it's not the food on our kitchen. The agricultural
industry is also very powerful and very dispersed around the country.
And so you know, the Democrats, I think, had so
(03:10):
many opportunities to really own the food issue and never
took it.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
This is everybody's business. From BusinessWeek, I'm Max Chafkin.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And I'm Stacey Vannicksmith. Today on the show, what happens to.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
A mission when the lawsuits start and when that mission
starts to get expensive? Stay with us Stacey.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Open ai keeps finding its way onto this show for
all sorts of reasons, which makes sense because it's one
of the most popular AI chatbots. It has evaluation of
eight hundred and fifty billion, plans to go even bigger.
They are trying to go public at some point this year. Meanwhile,
a lot of analysts think there's a bubble now as
(03:57):
we record open ai as beating back reports which it denies,
saying it is missing its internal projections. Regardless, AI has
been a huge story here and you really can't talk
about it without talking about this company.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yes, and there is a strong chance that as you
are listening to us right now, you are listening to
us on a smartphone. And there is also a strong
chance that on that very smartphone you have chat GBT
or some other similar appic Claude, these apps, this technology,
it is just transforming our lives and will soon very
(04:32):
likely be transforming our phones and maybe all of our hardware.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, these AI companies want to make phones, and so
we wanted to kind of do a little early market
research for this. Yes, so we sent our producer Miles J.
Herzenhorn to the streets of New York to ask people.
First of all, how often do they even get a
new phone? How often do they upgrade? And would they
consider upgrading to a phone that has a lot more
AI in it?
Speaker 7 (04:56):
How old is your cell phone? I don't know, I
have no idea.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Probably, uh, since two years old.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I upgrad my phone about like one year to two years.
But now recently it's been like every you know, two
to three years since like technology has been like plotlen
five years and minus two. How often do you try
to create your phone.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Every two years old two years.
Speaker 8 (05:23):
When it's like stop, stop working because of the battery
and all that stuff.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
Yeah, same once it for each five six years something
like that.
Speaker 8 (05:33):
Not often unless something happens to my phone. I really
don't care what extent you're looking forward to having AI
technology in your phone.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So I actually deal with like AI just a little bit.
I don't think that there is like a sort of
a need. I think the whole like SERI thing kind
of like flopted out.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
I don't even use it, the artificial intelligent part, because somehow,
in the back of my mind I think it's creeping
into my privacy. I get a little bit paranoid about it.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
So no, I think it's accelerating too fast. It's making
people lazy and not the thing for themselves, taking away
their ability to learn. I really respect the utmost respect
the person who said she doesn't know when she got
her phone. That is awesome. I feel like the longer
you can go, the better.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I remember when I got my phone, but only because
it was right before the tariffs.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It was right, it was right after a liberation day.
I ran out and got it.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I'm probably I'm probably going to get a new phone
because like I write about technology, and I have to,
but I would love to get to a place where
I just I don't replace it unless I drop it
in the ocean. Do you drop my ambition accidentally? I
don't know. We have a great person to talk about this,
Bloomberg Managing editor of Consumer Technology, Mark German. He is
(06:53):
the person in this newsroom that I talked to when
I want to understand really anything about the kind of
personal hardware that defines our lives. Increasingly. He covers Apple
like the gadget, he covers gadgets in general. Mark, Welcome
to everybody's business.
Speaker 7 (07:10):
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Okay, so we wanted to talk to you because open
Ai right now they're in the news. There is a
very interesting trial going on in Oakland between Elon Musk
and Sam Altman. There have been a swirl of reports
around open AI's valuation and are they hitting their metrics,
is there enough usage? Is there an ai bubble? And
(07:33):
there's also this kind of weird report that came out
earlier this week that open ai is getting closer to
developing some consumer hardware, particularly a smartphone. And leaving aside
the Musk drama the valuation, can you just try to
explain to us why they're doing this and what exactly
(07:54):
we think they're doing.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Yeah, we've known for some time now that open ai
has ambitions in hardware. Johnny Ive, who just taking a
step back here, who ran design for Apple. He left
in twenty nineteen and after that he started up a
design shop with another designer named Mark Newsome, and it's
called Blove from based in San Francisco.
Speaker 7 (08:15):
And they've done some one off things.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
They've worked with the UK government on a font, they
created a lamp that you take sailing. They've done other
fun quirky ti I believe interior ever Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
These are very odd undertakings.
Speaker 5 (08:31):
They're all niche right, Yes, Johnny Ive is known for
all the Apple products we used today. The Apple Watch
was his brainchild, and he had this, you know, arrangement
with Apple where couldn't really get into the consumer electronics game.
I would guess for a three year period and whatnot
a non compete, a non.
Speaker 7 (08:50):
Compete type of thing.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
And he worked with Apple posts departure as well. They
did some one off work together on a contractual basis,
but that all ended around twenty twenty two. And the
guy who helped make the consumer tech we use every day,
he's going to have the etch to get back into
the game. So around then he started working on a
startup called io at the time, and the idea was
(09:13):
to create AI hardware and AI devices. And early on
in that process he got introduced to Sam Altman and
saw what he was doing with chat, GPT and open
ai and his thinking at the time, Johnny I's thinking
was AI is going to enable entirely new wave of
consumer hardware and consumer technology. You know, he had this
(09:34):
idea where people have become too addicted to screens and
their phones and headsets and whatnot, and he felt that
AI could help him recreate these devices in a way
that would counter this addiction, counter people being glued to
their displays and their phones and iPads at all times.
And so they partnered together and Sam Altman was part
(09:55):
of this Io to a certain extent, and Johnny I
have brought in a bunch of the best that you
you saw at Apple working on products there. From an
ip standpoint, you can likely argue with it, but from
a talent perspective, it's hard to argue that they're getting
the best of the best there. But now Io is
part of open Ai and they are working on what
they say is a family of AI devices. My understanding
(10:17):
is that they're looking and working on basically everything you
can imagine. But the one thing you really need if
you want to be a successful consumer electronics company is
something you can put in your pocket, right, And we
think of a phone today as this smartphone, this slab
of glass with this display, but really a phone could
be anything with cellular connectivity that allows you to make
phone calls. And so the ultimate goal has been from
(10:39):
the beginning for open ai to create an iPhone killer,
an aiphone from the ground up, and that's what I
expect them to do before the end of the decade,
but certainly that's not going to be their first device.
Anticipate their first device being more of an accessory, something
in the smart speaker, earbuds, smart glasses, realm and then
eventually I think that'll all make way towards the open aiphone.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Why would they want to get into the hardware business.
The hardware business is so tough. I feel like a
lot of great companies tried and failed to make a phone.
Anthropic is going in a much different, more sort of
software driven direction from what I understand. Why is AI
going in this direction.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
It's the same reason that you've seen Amazon in the
past look at making a phone. It's the same reason
why Google makes a phone. It's the same reason as
companies make aphone, Facebook try to make a phone. And
it's the reason right now why Meta is all in
on building its own array of AI hardware devices. You know,
they hired Alan I, the head of User interface at Apple,
at the end of last year and now he's driving
(11:39):
the work along with their CTO Andrew Bosworth, on making
an array of AI devices.
Speaker 7 (11:44):
Why.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Because Apple owns the consumer technology landscape, because they are
the hardware player.
Speaker 7 (11:49):
They are the.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Platform, and if you have this AI technology, you don't
want to be reliant on Apple for connecting with your customers.
You want your own product, your own ecosystem the customers
can go out and buy and so this is why
they're all trying to build hardware, and this is why
Opena wants to build its own hardware. They don't want
to rely on Apple being the distribution point for chech
ebt and their technology. They want to be their own distributor.
(12:13):
They don't want to abide by Apples app store rules.
They don't want to abide by Apples software development kits.
They don't want to abide by what Apple allows and
doesn't allow to run on their products. They want to
issue their own products to consumers and have their technology
on top of it and their own app store on
top of it. They don't want to be within Apple's
walled garden. They want to create their own garden.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
We should talk about what's happening in Apple, but before
we get there, Mark, does it create any kind of
cause for concern in your mind? Stacy mentioned this. Anthropic
has had a lot of success marketing to businesses. We've
seen reports that open Ai, according to The Wall Street Journal,
which open Ai denied, was missing its revenue projections. This
(12:51):
is a very competitive space. Do you have any sense
that this is a company that is scrambling to find
a way to continue growing, that there is maybe even
like a hint of desperation in this ambition, just because
so many companies have done this, have tried to do this,
and they have failed pretty miserably. We could probably debate
(13:13):
on the Google one, because Android is very successful, but
there isn't like a big track record of tech companies
attempting to compete with Apple and Samsung here and winning.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Yeah, but open Ai and Sam Altman have this secret
sauce that is AI for all intents and purposes. They
were the pioneer here. They do probably have still even
though Claude is up there and Gemini is up there.
Some of the best underlying AI technology, some of the
best AI researchers, and that's a huge differentiator from what
you have at Apple. And so if anyone is going
(13:45):
to reinvent the hardware game, it's going to be open Ai.
But I don't think that this is a serious issue
for Apple. And if open ai ends up doing anything
successful I think Apple's just going to copy them really quickly.
So I'm not too worried for Apple there. The one
concern I do have for Apple is in terms of
brain drain and talent drain. Anything that Apple's doing Open
(14:09):
Ai has hired from to a very large degree, and
so that's the scary part for Apple if they're losing
too many people to be able to keep up the
pace of their own hardward development.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Mark. We've seen a couple of efforts to create these
like AI devices. There was a company called Humane. You
test the product, I think you might have called it
like one of the worst products. I can't remember the
exact wording. I don't know.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
It is the worst product I've ever used.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
It was it was it was like a little pin
that you wore on your chest, and the idea was
like instead of looking at a screen, you would just
talk to a chatbot. And it had all sorts of problems.
The big problem, Mark, correct me if I'm fung is
it got really hot because of all the computing that
was happening, and the heat would both be uncomfortable, but
(14:52):
also the battery would die relicly.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
There were all these pugs set fire to your shirt.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Okay, Well, the biggest issue is that you know, voice
interact already is not a perfect science. Perfect science is
point and click with your computer or touch screen on
your iPad or phone or whatever. Right, but interactivity over
voice sometimes it doesn't understand you. It's difficult to go
back and forth. But theirs was just so slow. It
(15:17):
just didn't work properly. That the bar was already so high,
and they just did a horrible job implementation wise. The
other thing they tried to do was replace the display
with a laser system that you put your hand in
front of it and it points a laser, and so
it's a laser projection screen on your own band, and
it just did not work well. Cool concept, but didn't
work well.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Mark, you mentioned that you thought open Air, or I
think from what I remember, you mentioned that open Ai
by the in ten years would have an iPhone killer.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Do you think that is true?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Do you think Apple, for all of its muscle and
market dominance right now, could be taken out by open Ai.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
I don't think they're going to be taken up I
open Ai.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think iPhone killers happening.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
I well, sure it could be an iPhone killer, but
it's not going to be an iPhone replacement, if that
makes sense. It might be better than the iPhone from
a technical perspective, but I think Apple's brand and marketing
is so strong that they're not going to go away,
and they're going to evolve very quickly. At some point,
these AI models are going to become commoditized. Eventually, Apple's
going to make acquisitions here, and so I think they'll
(16:25):
be able to get up the snuff in this AI
game in fairly short order. But like you mentioned, the
priority right now is becoming the AI middleman to play
nicely with everyone else's AI.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Mark before we wrap. I think a lot of people
who are maybe not following this conversation as closely as
we are, certainly not as closely as you are. I
have this kind of question over like why do you
have to keep replacing your iPhone? You know, there was
the battery Gate controversy that had to do with basically
class action lawsuit saying Apple was deliberately slowing down its batteries.
(16:57):
I think there's a feeling among a lot of users
that like, why these iPhones they kind of look the same,
Like why am I being made to upgrade I'm curious,
like what your personal upgrade philosophy is, Like, how often
do you get a new phone? Maybe you answer that,
but then answer it if you weren't Mark German, who's
got to be trying out the latest and greatest.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Me personally, I've upgraded every year to the new iPhone.
You probably don't need to get a new iPhone if
you are not deep in the technology. See the thing
with me is I write about Apple. I write about tech,
but that's not just my job. I live and breathe
Apple and tech and devices as my personal passion and
life's work and a hobby. And you know the thing
(17:39):
that I'm most interested in life. I love basketball too.
I love sports too. You know, some people are just
obsessed with that or cars. But for me, this is
not a job. It's my whole life. I am unique
in that from that standpoint. Someone who does not live
and breathe this stuff, you're probably good every three years,
maybe four.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Mark German, thank you for being here. Check out his
newsletter Power On. If you're not already a subscriber, you
should be. We really appreciate the time.
Speaker 7 (18:04):
Thank you both so much.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
All right, Max, I have a question for you Okay,
when was the last time you thought about what is
on your salad?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Stacy every single day? Every day I did. Is it
like more of a vinaigrette? Is it a sort of
a ranch a caesar? Yes?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
I always wonder what you're thinking about when you're sitting
at your desk, And now I know. Actually a lot
of people do not spend as much time thinking about
what's on their salad as one must. But there is
a growing group of Americans who are thinking about it
a lot. And this week a big group of them,
hundreds of them, showed up outside of the Supreme Court.
They are part of the MAHA movement. This is make
(18:49):
America Healthy Again.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yes, gotcha.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
And this rally is organized around a Supreme Court decision
involving Bear, which is the company that makes the weak
killer round up.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
They don't want pesticides on their salad.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
It is the pesticides on the sality.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Actually round up as an herbicide, I believe, but I'm
not a scientist.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
Pesticide is a term that applies to all the sides,
so herbicides are included in the term.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Oh thank you, and joining us now is business Suite
side expert Dina Shanker. She's also a commist here, our colleague.
She was at the rally. She wrote about it in
her column Extra Salt, Dina, welcome back to everybody's business.
Speaker 9 (19:27):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
All right, So, Dina, why were these protesters outside the
Supreme Court talk to us about this case?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Great?
Speaker 6 (19:35):
So we all know Monsanto the company that makes or
that made glyfa sate also known as Roundup. They got
acquired by Bayer some years back, and since then, Beyer
has been hit by lawsuit after lawsuit by plaintiffs claiming
that glyfasate caused their cancer.
Speaker 9 (19:54):
They have had to pay out.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
They ate vegetables that had been treated with this.
Speaker 6 (19:58):
A lot of farmers and people that work with the
pesticide got sick from working with it. But although I
can't say for sure whether there's also there's so many
of these cases, I could.
Speaker 9 (20:09):
Not tell you whether there's consumers in there too.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
So far, already Beyer has paid out over ten billion dollars,
including legal costs, but as well as payouts because juries have.
Speaker 9 (20:20):
Found in favor of the plaintiffs.
Speaker 6 (20:21):
So Beyer, right now in front of the Supreme Court
is trying to get a liability shield, specifically about their
failure to warn over the cause of cancer and relationships
with clife essafe.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
So they're getting in trouble for not saying using this
product could harm you.
Speaker 9 (20:39):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
They're trying to say, we don't have to put it
on the label because the EPA said we don't have
to put it on the label.
Speaker 9 (20:44):
If the EPA says we don't have to put.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
It on the label, we don't have to tell anybody
about it, it's fine. There's a lot of opposition to
them getting this liability shield. There's also I believe around
sixty thousand claims still outstanding against Beyer. May or may
not be impacted by the decision of the court. Beyer
has tried in other ways to get this kind of
(21:06):
liability shield. They're currently trying with the Farm Bill to
get it written into that. But this was about the
Supreme Court decision. Now that day at the Supreme Court,
who was arguing in favor of Beyer, but Trump administration lawyers,
which did not sit well with the Make America Healthy
Again contingent. RFK Junior was actually one of the lawyers
(21:29):
on the trial that found Monsanto was liable.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So he went after montandle Yes a.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
Long time ago, and so he's been anti glyfasate.
Speaker 9 (21:37):
For a very long time.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
So his followers, the Maha voters, they are fully on
board with glivasate causes cancer and people should be warned
about it. We should reduce our use, we should get
rid of it. You know, you talk to people, they
have different plans for sort of what to do about it.
But the Trump administration has come out very pro glyfasate.
They have not only submitted an amicus brief in the
Supreme Court case and argued on its behalf. Trump also
(22:00):
put out an executive order basically saying that glivasate production
is a matter of national security, so that we can
have Yeah, we should say.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The argument that they're making is that this is a
really important technology for farming and that it's safe, and
that if this were not used, it would be very
damaging to American agriculture, that we wouldn't make as much
food as we make. And I think it has been
an incredibly effective herbicide. In addition to creating a swirl
(22:29):
of concern around around danger, harmful harm for agriculture workers
first and foremost, but also consumers, and that's I think
where the Maha movement comes in, right, these are people
who don't want to eat this.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
Well, it's also a lot of regenerative agriculture advocates, and
there's a lot of talk about, yes, we can't just
flip a switch, right, we can't just get rid of
glivasate tomorrow. That would be very detrimental to food security
in this country. But we can phase it out. There
are other ways to farm. A lot of weeds are
now completely are growing resistant to round up anyway, so
(23:01):
it's not as effective as it used to be. So
there's a lot of people that expected this administration to
be more supportive of that position that glyfasate can be
scaled down and maybe we could align with European standards
on pesticides. But instead we've seen that this administration is
very much aligned with the agricultural industry, which very much
(23:24):
wants these pesticides to stay and use at current levels.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Okay, so we talked about the Supreme Court. There's this
thing going on in the Supreme Court. Trump administration and
Big Agriculture Bear which owns mont Santo, having an argument.
And then there's the Maha movement and you kind of
hinted at this, or we mentioned at the top, but
these Maha protesters are in front of the Supreme Court
(23:48):
or in Washington making their voices heard, which is super
interesting because first of all, they had been pro Trump,
they had helped Donald Trump get elected. It's yet another
instance of a sort of part of Trump's coalition seeming
to turn against him.
Speaker 6 (24:02):
Yes, definitely, And I should say the turnout was you
were there, Yeah, I was there. It was Monday morning
in front of the Supreme Court. I was expecting a
bigger turnout, but it was a bipartisan lineup of speakers.
Democrats were also speaking as well as like MAHA leaders
and elected Republicans, but the crowd was mostly Maha people,
So people that voted for Trump, for Kennedy. Everyone was
(24:26):
upset with Trump. Everyone also was, I want to say,
like making excuses for Kennedy for the fact that this
was happening on his watch. He's done everything he can.
This is not his You're spoken up about this he did.
When the executive order came out, he originally kind of
backed it, saying it is a matter of national security,
but then he backtracked on it.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
He round up around, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
Exactly, and like he's clearly he's clearly not happy with it,
but he's it's like, I mean, he's in a tough
spot because Trump is his boss and this is quite
antithetical to everything he has ever stood for.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
So, Dina, you brought us a recording?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
So uh and what are we about to hear?
Speaker 6 (25:06):
Vonnie Harry, also known as food Babe online, she has
been an action influencer.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
She is I would say she long.
Speaker 9 (25:14):
Predates the influencer era.
Speaker 6 (25:16):
She's a food activist who riles up all kinds of
feelings in different kinds of people.
Speaker 9 (25:21):
She's been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 6 (25:23):
And she used to be a Democrat and then she
switched to Republican for MAHAK once Kennedy picked that up.
I think that was when Maha really started gaining broad support.
Was because people can see those colors, they can see
it in the food that they're being served.
Speaker 9 (25:39):
And then when she spoke at the.
Speaker 6 (25:42):
At the rally, she was really making it clear that
she is extremely not on team Trump anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Right now, inside that building, Monsanto Bear will be arguing
for the right to poison us and not be held
account of Let me say that again, they want to
give us cancer and get away with it.
Speaker 9 (26:06):
We are here to make sure that does not happen,
and we are not going to leave here quietly.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Wow. The thing that I find so interesting about this,
and you're reporting on this, Dina, is that this movement
has been around for a very long time. There have
been people, especially like on the left, yelling about Monsanto
for I feel like as long as I've been alive,
and none of it has had I think, much political resonance.
(26:34):
There's obviously, like organic foods have grown a lot, but like,
we hadn't seen it breakthrough politically until twenty twenty four.
And I'm curious why you think that happened.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
So that's such a great question because that is something
that I have asked a lot of people, including elected Democrats,
because food issues were democratic issues, they just never really
talked about them as the issue.
Speaker 9 (27:00):
And that's I mean.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
Remember, not only did Michelle Obama make school nutrition rules,
but she planted an organic garden on the White House lawn.
And the pesticide industry, the agricultural chemical industry, how whatever
euphemism we'd like to use for them, they wrote her
a letter and then a public letter writing campaign urging
her to use their crop protection tools as they refer
(27:22):
to them, and the Obamas didn't even respond to it.
And so there's a question of, like, the Democrats have
always had this position, why didn't they push it harder.
I think it's been a huge miss for them to
not be pushing this harder.
Speaker 9 (27:37):
I mean it it is like, by.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Definition, a kitchen table issue, because it's not the food
on our kitchen table, and they just haven't. They just
have been pushing it here and there. The agricultural industry
is also very powerful and very dispersed around the country.
Every single state in this country has some kind of
agricultural product.
Speaker 9 (27:58):
And so you know, the Democrats, I.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
Think had so many opportunities to really own the food
issue and never took it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
During Trump's campaign in twenty twenty four, he did this
thing where he he was down it was brat summer.
Did I say that right? I can't. And Kamala was
on the rise. There's all this energy among Democrats and
Trump I think frantically started embracing all sorts of weird causes.
And I don't mean weird, but things that were fringe.
So he embraced crypto, he started talking about We're gonna
(28:31):
uncover if aliens are real. I mean he literally said
that during the campaign files Epstein files right in retrospect.
Big mistake, big political mistake for him and Maha. He
did all of these things, and he embraced the kind
of the sort of corners of the America First Movement
or whatever that are very against foreign wars. He did
all these things, He made all these promises, and in
all sorts of ways. It just may be very hard
(28:54):
to be simultaneously like a pro business, pro growth Republican
and somebody who is gonna satisfy the concerns of people
who really are upset about the power big agriculture.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
Yeah, I think that's totally right. I also think that
they're gonna want to point to what they would consider
their major achievements, and the big one being back to
the food dies, that they got a bunch of companies
to voluntarily commit to removing food dies. But I would say, okay,
you need to do some rulemaking to actually ban those
food dies, to not just ensure that those companies will
(29:28):
drop them, but also that every company that makes food
can't use them. But even if they did that glyf
estate is so much more foundational to our food system
and to what a lot of people in Maha want,
which is that food should be from their perspective, safe
(29:50):
for everyone, or at least safe for them, because a
lot of this comes down to can you.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
Afford to buy the organic.
Speaker 6 (29:56):
Food because a lot of people I spoke with their
only eat or food, and glyf estate is used so.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Widely you can't really avoid it.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
So what happens now with this case, we wait.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
But for now I know they're trying to push through
some kind of liability shield through the farm Bill. I'm
not sure what the latest is on that. That was
like very much in motion while I was in DC
earlier this week, and I think Bayer has like a
big They have a lot of different, multifaceted strategy to
try to get themselves some kind of federal liability shield.
(30:32):
They actually have pushed it through in certain states, but
now they want it at a national level.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I just want to say, before we let Dana go,
if you're worried about Maha, the Maha part of Trump's
coalition collapsing, the alien coalition. He's thinking about it, because
one week ago he said at a Conservative event. Quote.
We found many very interesting documents, I must say, and
the first releases, these are first releases about aliens, will
(30:56):
begin very soon, so you can go out and see
if that phenomena is correct. So the alien voters are
going to be thrown a bone quote very soon.
Speaker 6 (31:05):
But that's just I just need to say, that's just silly,
because you all know that nothing is going to be definitive.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I think there are people who are just like, hold on,
and I understand it because if aliens are real, that's
a big deal.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I mean, that is a real.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
Of course aliens are.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
I love this.
Speaker 9 (31:23):
What do we think We're the only people, the only
living creatures.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
In the I think we found the first single issue
alien voter here, Dina Shanker, thank you for being here. There.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
She's definitely not the first voter.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
There are a lot of single issue alien voters.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
You can't vote on it because there's never going to
be anything to figure Trump.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Is your guys, Stacy. We've been here before. We will
be here again. It is time for our favorite news
segment this week in prediction markets. Okay, so the reason
(32:07):
I think we're talking about this is because Bloomberg published
an analysis a few days ago about bets on polymarket.
That's one of the two big prediction market sites along
with Calshi and super interesting. The top line is basically
most people on these prediction markets are losing money. And
(32:27):
then the other thing is that people who are making
money are largely high frequency traders, people using bots, essentially
professionals who are getting in and out of bets really
quickly disproportionately. That's where most of the profits are.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
It's interesting because that is a little bit similar to
the actual like the stock markets in a second place,
where bots have really have a huge edge because they
can do things so quickly and move so quickly.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, and I think people know this, maybe in intuitively.
But the thing is the way these companies promote these tools,
they don't really mention the fact that the successful users
are professionals. You're essentially competing with Ken Griffin and other
high frequency trader types, not literally Citadel, but people who
(33:18):
are using similar tactics to the ones that are used
in the stock market. It's the same reason why most
sort of investment professionals tell you not to day trade,
even if you are right, and this came up in
the research too, even if your intuition is right. Like
you bet on a thing that is going to happen
and actually happens, you're going to get a worse price
than one of these bots. All right, Two other stories. First,
(33:41):
one that I wanted to just mention very quickly is
that this question over whether these prediction markets are even legal,
a lot of states are pursuing litigation. We saw another
lawsuit recently, New York's Attorney generals suing Coinbase and Gemini
for what, according to the State of New York, are
running illegal gambling operations. The companies say no, no, no,
(34:01):
totally legal because we are regulated by the CFTC, which
regulates commodities. The CFTC is suing the State of New York.
This is going to continue. The thing about this that
I found funny is just like the.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Coinbase is crypto right, prediction market?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
No, No, it is prediction markets. Both of these companies
have expanded to prediction markets because they're just into whatever
the kids on.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Poly market about whether bitcoin's going up.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No, Coinbase just has a prediction market, and.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
So what do you get on whether or not it's
going to snow?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, they have done their own prediction market as has
this other crypto thing Gemini. It's basically like this is
the hot category, so they're getting into it. And that
I found that thought was the most surprising thing at all.
Like I didn't even know coinbase had a prediction market neither,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Clearly didn't know.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Okay, last one people probably saw this, but a US
Special Forces sergeant who was involved in the raid in
which the United States captured Nicolas Maduro, the former leader
of Venezuela, was arrested for betting thirty three thousand dollars
on the outcome of the raid. We had a insider
(35:08):
raid trading. Well.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
I remember when this came out someone had placed a
big bet and nobody knew who. But the timing was
really suspicious, that because there was an ongoing bet I
think on polymarket or something about when this might happen,
the invasion of Venezuela, and I think also the capture
of Nicholas Moduo, and I remember people speculating about who
(35:33):
might have had this insider information.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Apparently now we know, at least in.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Part all right, I want you to try to guess
how President Trump reacted to the news of this story.
When he was asked at the White House by a reporter.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
President Trump is a practical man and a new prediction market.
I wonder if he asked to split the profits he said.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
And this is according to a CNBC story that wrote
about this quote. I don't know about it, but he
was betting that they would get him. Was he betting
that they would get him or they wouldn't get him.
He's told that he was betting on the raid, and
he seemed Trump seemed to be pleased with that. He said,
that's like Pete Rose betting on his own team. Pete
Rose being the baseball player who was banned for Baseball
for betting. Many people feel unfairly. I mean, there's a
(36:16):
big conversation in baseball. Trump clearly following that because he said,
Pete Rose, they kept him out of the Hall of
Fame because he bet on his own team. Now, if
he beat against this team, that would be no good.
But he bet on his own team. And then he said,
I'll look into it. So I think Trump is like
a little bit okay with this because at least he
was betting on the raid.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
I mean, they do say you're always supposed to bet
on yourself, and now.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
You can do that on prediction markets.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
The whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino,
which I think is true and genuinely was surprised.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
But runs casino? Does he mean that?
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Unfortunately because he's literally in the casino business.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
This show is produced by Jasmine JT. Green, Stacy Wong,
and Miles J. Hersheil worn Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer,
Sam Rogch Hendl's engineering, Dave Pricell factchecks special thanks to
Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling. If you have
a minute, please rate and review the show. It will
mean a lot to us. And if you have a
story that should be our business, email us at Everybody's
(37:21):
at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with ans at Bloomberg
dot net. Thank you for listening and we'll see you
next week.
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