Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 17th, 2025 - Bloomberg Businessweek

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is Bloomberg Business Week Insight from the reporters and
editors that bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Weekend Podcast. This
coming week a new chapter in American politics, as Donald
Trump will be sworn in as the forty seventh President
of the United States, his second term, and one that
the technology community will be watching, whether it's about the
US China tech war and access to advanced technology, to
rules around autonomous driving cars, or oversight in policies on

(00:50):
artificial intelligence.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
Tim, it's a lot, There's a lot in the global
tech world that could be affected. Time will certainly tell
regarding what policies actually come down from the Trump White
House in the meantime. Ourt take this week includes whether
the pullback and autonomous driving by GM is a cautionary
tale about the bigger investment play in AI.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
And speaking of AI, the company who's chatchipt kicked off
the AI craze over two years ago. We are of course,
talking about open Ai co founder and CEO Sam Altman
on the company's first two years, getting fire elon and more.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
Plus US China relations around American technology and really advanced
global technology overall have led to a US China tech
war and race. A company that has found itself at
the center of it all, Huaweih. We get into the
secret history of China's most powerful company, and.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Then later on in our second hour, the founder of
Libby Wines on going all in on non alcoholic options,
also what to spend your bonus on.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
You got a bonus?

Speaker 5 (01:52):
No comment?

Speaker 4 (01:53):
And the CEO of the experiential hospitality company Pursuit on
sky Lagoon and Iceland or riding the gondola in amph Canada.
We'll also talk with one of the daughters of the
late Martin Luther King Junior about his legacy, Donald Trump,
and the state of racial equality.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
All of that to come. We begin with a column
by Bloomberg Business Week's Max Chafkin on the shift in
the mood around self driving cars despite billions of dollars
in investments.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Carol, I took my first ride in a WEIMO. You
were so excited back in November in San Francisco.

Speaker 6 (02:25):
I was blown away.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
You were You just couldn't stop talking about I still.

Speaker 7 (02:27):
Talk about it.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
That's like boring for our audience because I keep talking
about it. Max. Have you been on Have you been
in one?

Speaker 7 (02:32):
I have?

Speaker 8 (02:32):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
What'd you think?

Speaker 7 (02:34):
I think it's very impressive. I think that there are real.

Speaker 9 (02:37):
Questions about just how widely we're going to see these
things be deployed and.

Speaker 7 (02:42):
Whether it's a profitable business anywhere in the near term.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
So a few weeks after I took that ride in
the Weimo, Mary Bara at GM basically shuts down the
cruise division at General Motors.

Speaker 7 (02:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:56):
This was the GM's version of Weimo. It was GM's
robot taxi business. And the thing about this that was
kind of surprising. This happened in December. Uh. There were
lots of warning signs. There had been UH there had
been a very serious accident involving a cruise vehicle in
San Francisco. The company had been tangling with regulators. There
were reasons to think something like this is coming. On

(03:18):
the other hand, we're talking about a major AI effort
at a major American company getting essentially killed just at
the time when everybody in the world, You and and
all the guys in Silicon Valley and everyone else are
talking about how great these these self driving cars aren't
and also how you know, AI chatbots are gonna be

(03:41):
doing customer service and maybe writing news articles and taking
all of our jobs. And so so you got to
ask yourself, like, what is going on here? Is there
is there just a sort of a unique problem at GM,
which is an explanation that you've seen offered, or maybe
there are things here that, despite GM's problems, signal challenges
ahead for all of these companies. And that's kind of
the argument that I make in this business.

Speaker 10 (04:03):
We call them that.

Speaker 9 (04:04):
Yeah, like you could look at this and say, wow,
great news for weimo their main.

Speaker 7 (04:08):
Competitor has just given up.

Speaker 9 (04:11):
On the other hand, I would argue that the challenges
that Cruz faced, which you know there there was, there
was definitely some mismanagement.

Speaker 7 (04:19):
There was a very bad accident, and I think.

Speaker 9 (04:21):
What you know, pretty much everyone would agree was a
poor response to that accident actually led to a criminal
admission of criminal behavior on the part of GM, but
that they also had massive losses and a pretty small fleet.
I mean Cruz spent GM spent ten billion dollars over
about a decade, a little less than a decade, getting

(04:42):
a few hundred cars in a very small number of places.
And if you look at Weaimo, as great as those
rides are, and you know, Weymo's, especially in San Francisco,
have become something of a tourist attraction.

Speaker 7 (04:54):
People go there.

Speaker 9 (04:55):
Oh yeah, and they wanted to you know, they want
to like enjoy the they're in Silicon Valley. That aside,
we're still talking about a very small fleet in a
limited way. And Google Alphabet the parent company of Google,
which also owns Waymo. They don't break out the finances
of Weimo, but if you look at their other Vets division,
which is of which Weimo is like the main the

(05:17):
most famous one, probably the most substantial operation, it has
burned through thirty seven billion dollars over period. So again
we're talking about rides that almost certainly cost a lot
more than they bring in.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
Mine was twenty nine dollars.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well, and you know what's kind of crazy is you
are such a safety net totally and so like I thought,
oh my god, you're going to be freaking out like
you were in the car for half hour.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
Yeah, it's about half hour ride, which I didn't know
you could take a half hour drive in San Francisco
and still be in San Francisco.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
But you were totally comfortable.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Yeah, totally comfortable. I was excited about it, And in fact,
I was visiting a friend who lived outside of the
She lived just north of the city, and she drove
me back into the city, specifically to a place just
after the edge where I could actually get into a
Weimo and she said, we had some friends visiting recently
and their kids really wanted to ride on the trolley.
So we went into the city and we decided instead

(06:08):
of riding on the trolley, we'll all get in a way.
So that you're absolutely right Max about these things.

Speaker 7 (06:13):
It's it's like a cable car.

Speaker 9 (06:15):
And I mean, you're bringing up a couple of issues
that I think should give people pause, especially if you're,
you know, building a financial model like I think it's.

Speaker 7 (06:23):
Important to say that what Weimo has done.

Speaker 9 (06:25):
And honestly, a lot of what Creus did was very
impressive technically impressive. They have managed, as you said, to
take humans mostly out of the loop and drive safely
in a very difficult urban environment. But doing that requires
all sorts of compromises. It creates all sorts of costs.
You know, these these vehicles are very expensive. They have
these huge sensor arrays. You have large staffs of people

(06:49):
making sure they don't do anything bad and then sitting
around responding to customer complaints. You know, when a car
gets stuck in a parking lot or something, there's a
button you have to press on the WEIMO and a
customer service PAS to essentially like troubleshoot your You're supposedly
driverless car.

Speaker 7 (07:04):
So it's like, so there are a bunch of issues
that are are problematic.

Speaker 9 (07:08):
I think if you're seeing this as some investors are,
as a real replacement for like uber or lyft. On
the other hand, as a thing you can do when
you're done riding a cable car, it seems really really fun.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
So what's going on and why Mary Barr and others
may be rethinking it? Expectations too high timing issue, the
infrastructure not there yet, technology not completely there, So like
what is it?

Speaker 7 (07:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (07:32):
Absolutely so I think it's all. It's basically all the
things you mentioned now. Now the most important thing is
that in twenty twenty three, a cruise vehicle got into
an accident, actually hit a pedestrian, ran a pedestrian over.
It wasn't the initial impact was actually not really the
fault of the driverless car. It was the pedestrian was

(07:53):
hit by a human driver, knocked in the path of
the cruise, the cruise breaked, and then what happened next
is what was really trying bubbling. You know, a normal
person hits somebody on the road, they get.

Speaker 7 (08:03):
Out, they make sure they're okay.

Speaker 9 (08:04):
Hopefully in this case, the crews just drove to the
side of the road, dragging this woman twenty feet along
with it. And so you're you're talking about an incident
that doesn't happen in a normal car and doesn't and
you know, you're there there. There have been reports on
this that this led to a huge back and forth
with cruise and federal regulators and California regulators. Fines were paid,

(08:28):
as I said, so so, so there's that, and then
there's the fact that GM had been making these huge
promises about this thing. I mean, what was so stunning
is Mary Barra at this like as recently as twenty
twenty three was saying this is gonna be a fifty
billion dollar a year business, and like.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
Just over a year later, Yeah, they pulled the plug.

Speaker 7 (08:46):
So so right, so and and so.

Speaker 9 (08:48):
Part of it, of course is the is the sense
that there maybe there's a breach of faith, right, the
like relationships with the regulators are really important, but also
losing huge amounts of money and having already moving probably
not as quickly as they wanted, and now with this
latest thing having to move potentially even slower. I just
think the economics here are not that great, and and so,

(09:11):
and the accident created a bunch of pressure on the
on the division that wasn't there maybe would have been
able to go go along for a lot longer. WEAMO
was a little different, partly because Google is a much
you know, is a very profitable company and and way
MOO benefits from an essentially unlimited cash uh cash cushion
or or as as it's you know, it's up to

(09:33):
the CFO of alphabet. But but you know, a relatively
generous situation. WEAMO also, unlike Cruz, has moved a little
bit more slowly in terms of like commercial adoption. They
you know, I think I think people in the industry
think that Cruz was operating somewhat more aggressively and in
that sense.

Speaker 7 (09:50):
But but if you talk to experts in the.

Speaker 9 (09:52):
Self driving car world, right, they all expect that there
will be additional incidents like this because it's just a
numbers game, right. As you said, humans create a lot
of car crashes. Even if robots are much much better
than humans, you're still going to see some very messy
situations and that's going to create further uncertainty.

Speaker 4 (10:11):
Enter Elon Musk has entered the chat and he's entered
the White House as well as the New York Times
reports he's going to have some potentially some office space
at the White House where he gets things done. He
has the ear of the President. The Robotaxi that he promises,
he says, has built a better mouse trap for cheaper
than weimo. Can he pull it off?

Speaker 7 (10:31):
Well? I mean the question is, Kenny, what do you
want him to pull off?

Speaker 9 (10:34):
And I think I should say one thing Mary Barratt
said when she folded the robotax thing that they were
going to roll the cruise technology into their existing vehicles,
which is more or less what Elon Musk has done. Right.
I think if you look at Tesla, they have a
great aid ass that stands for like an assistant a
driver assistant system, a system where it can take control

(10:54):
of the car, but you're there, You've got your hands
ready to grab the wheel at any times.

Speaker 7 (10:58):
It's very much not a robot taxi.

Speaker 9 (11:00):
And Elon Musks bet is that they can somehow by
some combination of extreme you know, hardcore Elon Musk style
technical prowess and you know, putting pressure on or maybe
just asking the Trump White House to change the regulator environment,
they'll be able to get to you know, full robotaxis
really quickly, you know, as quickly as this year. And

(11:23):
I think when you look at where Waymo and Cruse
are and how long they've spent and how many miles
they've done in terms of driving without a steering wheel,
you got to ask yourself, is Elon Musk being realistic?
I mean, no amount of no relationship with President Trump,
can you know, magically make a technology that isn't ready
for primetime ready for primetime?

Speaker 4 (11:44):
That was Max Chafkin, columnist for Bloomberg business Week and
the co host of the Elon Inc. Podcast, also the
author of the contrariant Peter Teel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit
of power.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
You know, it's kind of interesting, right in terms of
really the shift that we have seen in terms of
self driving cars, right. I mean it's staggering the amount
of money GM. But you think about something like Alphabet right,
Google that they have spent on self driving cars. It's
a lot of money. And yet you are feeling a
dialing down. And maybe it's just I don't know, our
infrastructure not quite there. Tim, I don't know. You took
a ride and we're blown away.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Yeah, I thought it was amazing. But Max brought up
some good points that this is a really contained environment
in a small section of a city.

Speaker 6 (12:23):
Right.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
It only works in San Francisco in you know, in
that area. Yes, there are way mos in other parts
of the country, but can you imagine a vehicle like
that here in New York City. Max also bringing up
the point that Uber is really efficient. It's like cheap
to get somebody up on your smartphone, ring Lyft as well,
and it's quick and you know they give you a

(12:45):
ride somewhere like that system works pretty well right now.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
And I will agree that all these this technology makes
driving much more safer, all right? Coming up, Sam Altman
on Chat GPT's first two years, Elon and artificial intelligence
under Donald.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Trump, Bloomberg BusinessWeek sat down with the open aa co
founder for a wide ranging interview. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
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or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's more than two years since things were kind of
quiet over at open a high wage back in November
of twenty twenty two. Is a startup so small and
sleepy that the owners didn't bother tracking their web traffic,
so reminds us and writes Josh Tyrangle, who caught up
with the open AI co founder and CEO Sam Altman
to talk about his infamous four day firing, how he
runs the company, thoughts on another co founder, e Elon Musk,

(13:47):
of course, and the impact of a Trump presidency on
AI and more. It's all in the conversation. We welcome
Bloomberg BusinessWeek freelance contributor Josh Tieringele. He is, of course,
former editor of Bloomberg Business week and he joins us
from New York City. Hey, Gosh, great to have you
here with us. I have to say, this has to
be one of the most sought after individuals to talk to.
When he does an interview, we all kind of sit

(14:08):
up and listen. How did this come together and why
did he want to talk now?

Speaker 11 (14:12):
You know, I've spoken to him a bunch of times
over the last couple of years, and he reached out
basically saying, look, it's been two years since GPT launched,
it's been about a year since the board firing. I
think he was eager to kind of put a bunch
of this stuff behind him. It's probably tired of being
asked questions about it, so he invited me to come
out and really talk through it all and do it

(14:33):
at some considerable length. You know, we spent two and
a half hours together just really rehashing it and did
a past present future.

Speaker 6 (14:41):
So it was really his initiative.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
You talked about, and I think one of the most
interesting takeaways for me Josh was the drama that occurred
when he was briefly outed as CEO. We're going to
get to that in just a few minutes before we
get there though, is the origin story of the company.
Not everyone knows how it was started, who started it,
who was involve what was top of mind when you
sat down within to talk.

Speaker 11 (15:03):
You know, I think he was in a reflective mood.
Anniversaries are pretty arbitrary. Some people observe them and get
sentimental around them, some people don't. I think that he
was feeling very much like, you know, this is a
different company today than it was two years ago. You know,
when we talked about the sort of founding myth, you know,
companies that are successful get you know, it sort of hardens,
and there's this belief that there was this kind of

(15:25):
founding dinner at Open AI where all the founders came
together declared their intent and that was the beginning. And
in fact, what he wanted to correct the record on
is it really started because he was a deep AI nerd,
you know, a decade and a half ago when it
was not particularly cool. As he was monitoring progress, he
really pursued Elijah Sutzkyer, who was you know, he's co

(15:49):
founder and who was a researcher who was really pretty
deep into you know, pursuing artificial intelligence. Sam Relaid pursued him,
and he just wanted to say that the first thing
for him was this dinner the two of them had,
and that dinner produced a lot of the sort of
philosophical research driven take that's still very much at the

(16:10):
core of Open AI.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Josh did they have at that time, and as you know,
if there were kind of multiple dinners these guys had
and starting to think about the concept I guess of
the company or what they wanted to do. But did
they have any idea a kind of what they were
dealing with? As you note in the story that Sam
Altman said, even thinking about doing this was like cancelbal
cancel the ball, So you know, it was kind of

(16:32):
not something anybody was considering doing. But did they have
any concept that two years later like this is might
kind of been where we would be.

Speaker 11 (16:42):
It's a sort of eight year overnight success, right. I
think that they felt like they could scale artificial intelligence.
They didn't quite know, you know, what that journey would
look like, but they were pretty confident that they were
going to be able to make AI happen and make AI.

Speaker 6 (16:55):
Happen for ordinary consumers.

Speaker 11 (16:57):
Obviously there's tons of twists and turns, but yeah, they
did have a pretty strong sense this is what they're
going to be able to do, and they actually saw
their the size of the company, which was quite small,
as a distinct advantage in those days.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
Yeah, one of those twists and turns I promised you'd
get to it was his revouster from the company explain
how it went down differently than what's been reported. What's
the inside story there.

Speaker 11 (17:21):
The key component is just that there's been complete opacity
around exactly what happened. You know, there was this sort
of four day hostage taking where nobody quite knew what
the future of the company was going to be. We
knew that the basic details, which are that he had
been fired and the board had fired him for what
they had termed is not being consistently candid.

Speaker 6 (17:40):
Didn't know what about, didn't know what they were referring to.
He says, still he's not totally.

Speaker 11 (17:45):
Sure what they're referring to, and I think, you know,
in the piece, I kind of challenge him a little bit.

Speaker 6 (17:49):
I think ultimately what it comes.

Speaker 11 (17:51):
Down to, and what he talks about is that, you know,
the company was founded with this very you know, noble
and pure ideas about AI research.

Speaker 6 (18:03):
What they determined along the way.

Speaker 11 (18:04):
Is that if you're going to be competitive in the
field of AI, and if your product is going to
be meaningful, you need to be able to pivot.

Speaker 6 (18:10):
You need to be able to devote.

Speaker 11 (18:12):
Very large sums to compute, which is the you know,
the process of actually training these AI models, and that
there was a divorce coming.

Speaker 6 (18:20):
With that board.

Speaker 11 (18:21):
The board was genuine in its convictions that AI needed
to be monitored a certain way. There was some sort
of schism coming. It feels like that schism was inevitable.
Sam in the interview says he probably should have been
aware that there was greater risk of that schism than
he actually was. He says he doesn't have great EQ
on these things. But you know what we really get

(18:42):
out of the piece is just him telling us, moment
by moment, what those four days were about. The negotiations
to come back, the brief window where it looked like
he was coming back and there would be no issues.

Speaker 6 (18:52):
Then the board named Emma Cheer.

Speaker 11 (18:54):
As a CEO, and ultimately, you know, the kind of
rebellion from within the company that brought him back and
I think led to changes that were probably inevitable. In
the future, we may look back on this and say,
you know, this was a company that could have done
all of these things over the course of a couple
of years, and they ended up doing them over the
course of a couple of months as a result, So

(19:14):
it may have turned out to be a blessing. At
the same time, he you know, clearly it's a strange
and traumatic experience to be not only fired in public,
but then to be dangling for four days in public
while there are reporters outside your door, reporters outside the
door of your former company. So I think he was
trying to put that in perspective, and I believe we

(19:35):
got more information on it than has ever been out
there before.

Speaker 6 (19:39):
Just put a very strange episode. Even looking back.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
On it now, Yeah, it's like watching you know, I
feel like a streaming series when we were reading or
going through it. Having said that, does he feel like
Josh that the board that the company is but find
is behind him, does he feel kind of comfortable or
does he feel like he's sot obsessed to look over
his shoulder and kind of gauge where everybody is.

Speaker 11 (19:58):
Well, it's a completely new bor that he had a
large role in composing. I think that the brief firing
was an occasion to basically say, look, are you in
with the new vision or are you going to leave?
They've had a bunch of attrition, some of it high profile,
some of the lower profile. He seems completely at home
inside the company, completely comfortable. I think that they are

(20:19):
on the right trajectory as far as he sees it,
So I don't think there's discomfort there.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
What about moving forward in the future, You know, the
illly is not there anymore. Elon Musk, of course, isn't
there anymore. Microsoft has made huge investments in open AI,
but has also doing their own thing. Anthropic is out there.
You got Meta Platforms doing its own thing as well.
What does the landscape look like from Sam Allman's perspective?

Speaker 6 (20:44):
Right now?

Speaker 11 (20:45):
Competitive? It's super competitive. You know, there's trillions of dollars
in profits to be made by AI by the identification
of AI. Everybody is seeing the same thing. At some
point the marketplace will diversify, but they kind of choose
more of a lane. But right now they're all competing
with these very large models of AI to get to

(21:08):
the to the brass ring. You know, I think they
feel very comfortable that because they were there first, and
because they're pretty disciplined about what they're actually pursuing, which
is as a research focused company getting to artificial intelligence
and artificial general intelligence whatever may come beyond, they are
able to attract talent there. You know, there are other
companies have beer warchest. They are successfully getting talent. But

(21:31):
it's going to be a battle, and I think it's
going to be a three to five year battle to
determine who really owns the AI space, what pieces of
it do they own. And he's determined that not only
does open Ay want chat cheapt to be a very
successful product within it, but that that product is not
the end goal. The end goal is advanced technology, even
beyond what we're seeing now. So he's pretty clear what

(21:54):
he sees for their company.

Speaker 4 (21:55):
What does that look like though, And that's one area
that I'm having trouble envisioning. And maybe it's because I'm
not in the heart of Silicon Valley, maybe it's because
I'm not necessarily using chat GPT to its full potential.
But what does that world of AGI look like or
that world of AI in the next three to five years, Like,
how are our lives going to be different?

Speaker 11 (22:12):
Well, look you're not wrong. I mean, this is one
of the confounding aspects of being alive during AI is
that the people pursuing AI are research scientists for the
most part, but they speak like preachers, right, They speak
with this sort of evangelizing faith about what's coming. But
when you ask them, you know, as I asked Sam, like,
what in your mind is artificial general intelligence? What he

(22:35):
gave me was a sort of decent definition, and at
the end of it he said, and if we achieve that,
that would be AGI ish, right, And so there is
a lack of precision in our terms when we talk
about what AI is and what we talk about AGI,
and so it's confounding, it really is. It is not

(22:56):
on you, though, It is on the industry to ultimately
come up with these definitions of what it is so
that people can figure out what it means for their lives.
This is not standard technology. This is way more disruptive.
And I think, you know, there's a ripple between these
companies and the potential consumers. I don't think it's the
consumers who are to blame for that. Were not yet

(23:16):
at a place where everybody agrees on what these things are.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Josh it sounds like he thinks, based on the interview,
that he thinks Elon could be continue to be trouble
for them going forward.

Speaker 11 (23:28):
I simultaneously think Sam is very sincere and certainly not
above being tactical, and so knowing full well.

Speaker 6 (23:35):
That our interview would be read far and wide.

Speaker 11 (23:38):
I'm certain that he said things knowing other people would
read them, and so the idea that maybe he was
creating some distance between his view of the Trump administration
Elon Musk would certainly.

Speaker 6 (23:50):
Benefit open AI. You know, he knows Elon better than us.

Speaker 11 (23:54):
I think that I've heard from many people that Elon
is very sincere about his concerns about artificial intelligence.

Speaker 6 (24:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (24:01):
Also, I can't deny he has an artificial intelligence company
that competes with open AI. So I took that answer
in particular to be fairly tactical.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
He said he thought he could get more lawsuits and
might be dropped from Elon, but he also thought he
didn't think Elon would abuse his political power in the end.

Speaker 11 (24:19):
Yeah, and many people have told me the same thing,
which is it Elon is one hundred percent sincere when
it comes to technology, but that when it comes to.

Speaker 6 (24:28):
Competitive corporate warfare.

Speaker 11 (24:30):
He'll do anything, and so I think Open AI, much
like everybody else in the space, is kind of prepared
for anything so long as Elon is, you know, in
a position to influence the Trump administration's policies.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Something that Elon has talked about has been the dangers
associated with AI and with AGI. What did Sam Altman
tell you about dangers that could come up as a
result of this technology?

Speaker 6 (24:55):
You know, he has been fairly consistent that he thinks
in the.

Speaker 11 (24:58):
Short term, you know, there's biological weaponry concerns, that the
ability for AI to be used in creating small time
proliferation of weaponry. He thinks it's likely to happen and
we need to be on the lookout for it, and
that in the longer term, we don't know what AI
is capable of. You know, his feeling very strongly again

(25:21):
coincides with his self interest. Is it the only way
to move this forward is to actually make a product,
test it regulated, as opposed to be concerned about things
that you don't know regarding AI and its capabilities. So, yeah,
that's what he sees. That's it's you know, a pretty
standard view from the industry. There are still people at
the edges who believe that the risk of existential risks

(25:43):
from AI is as high as twenty percent. I think
that's a little bit of an outlier, but people think
that we're going to be in for it for sure,
as people come up with new and nefarious uses.

Speaker 6 (25:52):
For the tech.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Josh only got about a minute left. You get into
so much, including energy demands of AI and the data
centers and impact climate. But I am curious in these
final seconds what stood out for you in this conversation.

Speaker 6 (26:06):
I'm really interested in how people run companies like this.
I did not know how granular he really is.

Speaker 11 (26:13):
You know, they now have a couple of thousand employees,
they have hundreds of millions of users, and he is
in on those research meetings. He's in the slack channels,
and they are parts of the company that he that
he really delegates other people to handle. That's interesting. It's
a it's a different kind of style from other folks.
He's also very reflective and analytical. You know, he came

(26:34):
from y Combinator, which was largely this uh, you know,
nurturing fund.

Speaker 6 (26:38):
Which scouted CEOs. It's very aware of what he's good
at and bad at.

Speaker 11 (26:42):
As a CEO, and that kind of reflection is not
common in many of the CEO interviews I've done, so
you know, I was both impressed by it and I
found that to be, you know, relatively abnormal.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, thank you so much, Josh, really appreciate the time. Josh,
of course, is Bloomberg BusinessWeek freelance contributor and also former
editor of BusinessWeek, and you can catch the whole story
in the issue current issue of Bloomberg Business Week, also
online and on the Bloomberg terminal. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each
weekday starting at two pm Eastern up on applecar Play
and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You
can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Our next guest says, it's quote the most powerful technology
company that China has ever built.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
No, we're not talking about ten Cent, which this month
was blacklisted by the Biden administration for alleged links to
the Chinese military. Nor are we talking about Ali Baba
or JD dot Com or Matswan.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
We're talking about Huawei, the privately held maker of telecom
equipment that came into focus in twenty eighteen when the
company's chief financial officer, menguan Zhou, was arrested in Canada
at the request of the United States. And it's an
incident that's set off a diplomatic uproar and complicated relations
between the United States, China, and Canada.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
For a deep dive on the company, we caught up
with Eva Doe, technology policy reporter at the Washington Post
and the author of the new book House of Huawei,
The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company.

Speaker 12 (28:20):
I think to many people where they've heard of Huawei
is from their smartphones, which for years has been one
of the largest smartphone brands in the world. But really
the reason it's become such a policy concerns it's also
the largest maker of the equipment that goes into phone
and internet networks around the world. And of course these

(28:40):
networks they carry all sorts of information, you know, phone calls, emails,
internet traffic, and from that perspective, it's become something that
policymakers have become very concerned about. Is this one company
and its global footprint. It's far head and shoulders the

(29:02):
dominant supplier in developing nations around the world, and even
in Europe is a dominant supplier in many countries.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
You know, one thing we want to ask you. You know,
we've spent a lot of time over the last few
years talking with Andy Purty, who was the chief security
officer for Huawei America. You would come in every few months, Yeah,
and we would talk to him about kind of the
strained er growing strained relationships certainly in the tech environment.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
About Huawei not being a security risk to the United States.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Right exactly. And so I am wondering in this environment
access to an administration you've got Elon Musk, you know,
a certainly high profile member of the tech community. I mean,
what are your expectations of Huawei having a strong communication

(29:55):
line with the incoming Trump administration and maybe it's future
changing in a more favorable way here when it comes
to the United States.

Speaker 12 (30:06):
I think if that happens, that they make this kind
of rebounding communications in the United States, that would be
defying expectations in that the incoming Trump administration. If you
look at who is in Trump's team, there's there there's
a lot of security hawks, a lot of people have

(30:28):
been vocal critics of China for many years, and so
I think what we can expect is for policy to be,
you know, even more stringent than it has been in
recent years as far as control of technology being transferred
to China. And from that point of view, I would
say it's it's hard to see where the bright spot

(30:49):
is for Huawei in the US market and the foreseeable future.

Speaker 6 (30:54):
Oh that's interesting, okay.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
So I have a few questions around this, one of
them being the opportunity for Huawei outside of the US,
because you know, we've talked a lot in the past
few years about China's growing influence with the Belton Road initiative,
and I'm wondering from a cybersecurity perspective, from a telecom
infrastructure perspective, are they able to use that as a

(31:18):
lever in any way?

Speaker 12 (31:20):
Well, I think so, And part of that is just
there have been so few alternatives in this market. There's
very few players, and so the question is if you
don't use Huawei, what do you use for these developing countries.
And so that's sort of been what officials in many
of these countries have been saying, which is, you know,

(31:41):
the United States wants US to take Huawei equipment out,
but what do we do then? Sort of the only
comparable vendors for the most part have been European companies
whose equipment is far more expensive, and that's just outside
of the budget for many countries to do. So. Part

(32:01):
of the US policy under the Biden administration has been
to programs to develop new competitors making this kind of
gear so that countries do have an alternative if they
if they actually want to switch EVA.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
I am curious, you know, you really get into the
details of the history of this company that I think
most people didn't even think about until we had the
problems and the issues right of a few years ago.
Why is it important to understand the history of this
company in light of the security considerations that many global

(32:37):
leaders are concerned about when it comes to this company.

Speaker 12 (32:40):
Yeah, I think part of it is just understanding how
we got to this point where the US and China
are so acrimonious and there's so much distrust, especially regarding
the technology industry now, and so I think Huawei is
such a good case and that it was one of

(33:02):
the very first private tech companies founded in China in
the early eighteen hundreds, and it's been on the front
waves of these changing sentiments. You know, China's globalization, that
heady period where China was very much embraced by the
world and these tech companies were embraced by the world

(33:23):
and moving towards you know, this current moment when you know,
the fear that China is a real rival and adversary,
capable adversary to the United States is so on the
front forefront of policy decision making today.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Okay, So bring us to twenty eighteen. When the company
CFO Menguanzhou was arrested in Canada. It set off that
unprecedented diplomatic uproar. She was held for years as this
played out in the courts. What happened there?

Speaker 12 (33:57):
Yeah, So that that was the moment and the rubber
kind of hit the road. So for years there have
been these concerns bubbling up in the United States and
other Western countries about Huawei, but it really was that
moment when the CFO was detained and at the same
point the Trump administration put these sort of unprecedented sanctions

(34:20):
on Huawei that sort of moved us to a new
sort of Cold War esque era.

Speaker 7 (34:28):
In a sense.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
It's a big part of the story is about the
shift in China over the years that Huawei has existed. Listen,
you did a ton of research on this, interviews, archival research,
You have reported from China, You've reported from Taiwan during
your career. Can you answer the question for us whether
or not Huawei is a security risk to the United States?

Speaker 12 (34:53):
A security risk, I would say probably, and that's something
that's outside strictly the company's control, and that what we've seen.
I think the clearest evidence we've seen has come out
in Edward Snowden's leaks, which is that tech company's equipment

(35:14):
can be used by and is used by intelligence agencies
who find backdoors or build back doors into them even
without the company's knowledge. So in a way, it's not
entirely in Huawei's executives' hands. They can say, you know,
our equipment is safe. We're doing everything that we can,
but it's not entirely the company's control.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
I am curious just for size and scope, something we're
very into certainly here at Bloomberg. What are the capabilities?
I mean, how should we be thinking about them? In
terms of Huawei surveillance systems, which are used by governments
all over.

Speaker 12 (35:51):
So this has very much become something that's part like
a new business line, these sort of citywide survey lens systems.
That has to do with you know, data networks becoming
fast enough that you can transmit huge amounts of data,
so you can have video cameras and other sorts of

(36:12):
sensors all across the city that are just streaming all
sorts of information. And there's a number of governments around
the world that are using these systems from Huawei. Yeah,
and it's very controversial. Huawei is not the only company
that supplies them. IBM was actually the US company was

(36:34):
actually the first company that started supplying these kinds of systems.
But yeah, it's very much a debate, ongoing debate about
just how much data governments should be collecting and to
what degree citizens have privacy or not.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
You know, Tim and I we spend a lot of
time I'm sure you do too, as we know, talking
about large language models, generative AI. What's next in terms
of the impact continuing to track, So I think about
what you are saying, what you have learned in the
context of Huawei. You know, their role, whether it come,
whether it's five g in terms of communications. Are AI

(37:16):
technologies the AI races on. We know that. So I'm
just wondering, how are you thinking about that next chapter
and the concerns that we should have considering Huawei's dominance.

Speaker 12 (37:30):
Yeah, so Huawei is going to continue to be in
the in the conversation for this AI era. So they
are China's most advanced company for designing these chips that
drive these AI systems, and so China has been importing

(37:52):
huge amounts of US chips for years to build you know,
their big data centers for large language models, and US
sanctions have really been tightened in the past couple of years,
which means they're more reliant on Huawei tips than ever before.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
So are they being hurt by these restrictions and maybe
not having access and you know, we continue to see
headlines about what this means for Nvidia being able to
share you know, it's higher and technology. I mean, are
they is China is Huawei being hurt as a result
of all of this or does it just make them
double down? From what you have learned, does it just

(38:29):
make China and Huawei double down to make sure that
they have the best and greatest.

Speaker 12 (38:35):
Well certainly they've very much been hurt in that. If
you look at their trajectory before these sanctions began, they
were growing year after year at enormous clip, and now
that growth has stopped. I think the question during the
first Trump administration was, you know, can they survive? And

(38:56):
so the question, so the answer to that is clear
now that you know they're too important to China that
China is not going to let this company die. It's
going to do everything possible for it to survive. That
being said, yeah, they've very much been sort of hurt
and slowed down by by these growing restrictions from the

(39:20):
United States.

Speaker 4 (39:22):
It's interesting too, because it's not a publicly held company.
It's a privately held company. Ownership structure, what is it?
Who owns it? And do they remain Does it remain
a private company for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 12 (39:33):
Yeah, so it's privately held, but with the shares dispersed
among numerous current and former Huawei employees. And that for
years has been a major part of the incentive program
of how Huawei's founder and they got engineers to work
incredibly hard towards this cause, which was part of their compensation.

(39:58):
Was in the dividends they would receive even from the
company's performance. Since it's privately owned, that means it does
not have much of the scrutiny of a publicly owned company.
There's definite, definitely limitations of what they have to disclose
to the public. And they also aren't at the winds

(40:19):
of the stock market. And so that's been actually part
of their success and that they've been able to execute
really long term plans and sort of long term expensive
investments that you know, short term investors would not necessarily
be on board with. And so at at this point,

(40:40):
it's hard to see why Huawei would go public. They
have plenty of funding China's state policy banks are very
supportive when they need funding for their projects, and so
it's probably going to remain private for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
I think about you know, people who are listening. I
mean when the Bloomberg audience, right, there's obviously investors, there's consumers,
you know, and they continue to look at their goods
and their security breaches and so on and so forth, pecially
when it comes to telecom. How I mean the consumer
based do they they need to be concerned right? And
they I assume you're going to say they want their

(41:19):
governments to make sure that they're overseeing global technology because
this is the new world order. And to be fair,
I mean, can we say that US companies I mean,
I mean, obviously I would assume the US government is
not involved in those technologies. I mean, it's not apples
to apples. It's different, right when it's China and the
Chinese government when it comes to some of their big companies,

(41:40):
particularly tech companies.

Speaker 12 (41:42):
So one thing is just that technology systems are hacked
all the time, and probably hacked more than the average
consumer would would realize. And so to an certain extent,
it is just what is your risk level if you
work for the government, if you work for you know,

(42:03):
certain sensitive industries, Yeah, you probably want to think twice
about exactly what kind of equipment you're using. And in fact,
your employer probably has already guidelines in place. For the
average consumer, you know, there is a certain risk that
your data could be hacked, but that probably existed whether

(42:28):
you knew it or not.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Even just one last question, got about a minute and
a half here, what was the most revealing thing to
you in writing this book, doing the deep dive, going
into the archive, talking to so many different voices. What
was again the most revealing thing in this process for you.

Speaker 12 (42:45):
I think one of the most fun parts for me
was just seeing all the places and all the historical
moments where Huawei popped up while I was sort of
researching in archives in the US and China and around
the world, and it really gave me an appreciation of

(43:06):
companies like this just all plugged in how they are
affected and how they affect events going on around the globe.
You know, in China, for the Hong Kong the historic
Hong Kong Handover, when Hong Kong was returned from being
a British colony to China, Huawei was there and helping

(43:28):
to do the service of video surveillance for it. You know,
for the Arab Spring, the Iraq War, uh, Huawei.

Speaker 5 (43:38):
Was on the ground.

Speaker 9 (43:40):
Uh.

Speaker 12 (43:40):
So they were there far more than a consumer company.
When you supplied the phone and internet networks, it was
our crucial and the first thing that you're you're expected
to be furred on the ground with anything big happening.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Listen, great stuff, and so glad we got so much time.
Even though she's take Dnology policy reporter at Washington Post.
Her new book House of Wahwei.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
of Bloomberg Business Week, including the CEO of Attractions and
hospitality company Pursuit on the demand and costs of outdoorsy experiences.

Speaker 4 (44:33):
Plus a daughter of Martin Luther King Junior on her
father's legacy, racial equity, and the upcoming Trump presidency.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
First up this hour, you or your friends maybe partaking
in the trend known as dry January. That's where you
put down booze for the month last weekend. You might
recall our Bloomberg Pursuits team even gave us some of
the best mocktails to try, and we are already seeing
declines in alcohol consumption. We've talked about those trends a
lot on air and at the same time arise in
non alcohol options.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Two years after launching low alcohol products, the California based
wine maker Libby Wines is now shifting its entire focus
to non alcoholic beverages. Grant Hemingway is co founder and
CEO of Libby Wines. He stopped by it to chat
a share a glass or two about Libby's latest offerings.

Speaker 13 (45:18):
John my now co founder, and I actually were connected
through some mutual friends and yes, a beer guy and
a winemaker getting together. John did cut his teeth in
that sessionable category, but I think it was one of
those early indicators for him and for me watching from afar,
that this moderation wave was was forthcoming and we really

(45:39):
wanted to lean into my way.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Did you really see this moderation.

Speaker 10 (45:42):
Wave coming one hundred percent?

Speaker 3 (45:44):
What were you seeing specific?

Speaker 13 (45:45):
I mean, the crystal ball that we saw was which
we couldn't have predicted was going to be this self
regulating meaning there are a lot of people out there
and there's these buzzword terms zebra striping or bookending.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Which is what that means.

Speaker 13 (45:58):
So a session, it's like a drinking session or a
socializing session in which you have a full fledged cocktail
or a glass of wine and then you mix over
to a non alcoholic.

Speaker 10 (46:08):
Okay, So it seems to me that this.

Speaker 13 (46:10):
Is the consumption pattern happening for those that still are
consuming not the abstainers, which seem to be growing also
by the day.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
What can I ask you while you I know you
had talked about it because you don't really drink. You
used to drink some alcohol.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
Yeah, and even you know, to be fair, I did
have a sip of like a really nice stout that
my wife opened the other night. I get really bad
headaches when I drank, and when what I found was
that the less I drank when I did drink, the
worse the headaches got. With less alcohol. Yeah, and I
thought to myself, you know, it's not worth after drinking
one beer to wake up and have my my day

(46:46):
the next day completely ruined. So I don't know if
it's like an allergy or something, but it was. Unfortunately,
it was very easy for me to stop drinking because
I wasn't drinking that much anyway. But what I noticed
grant and maybe it's just kind of like a bias
of where I am in life, but a lot of
my friends were having kids, they were getting into their forties.
They were like, if I, you know, if I need
to be up early, I can't be staying out late.

(47:08):
I need to be prioritizing rest and sleep and this
was how they were dealing with that, and.

Speaker 10 (47:13):
That's our exact experience. To my wife and I.

Speaker 13 (47:15):
We have two kids back in California, and really started
to almost like this self awareness or observation that we
were just not drinking wine as much and it was
a lifestyle thing.

Speaker 10 (47:27):
We know, had young kids and we were.

Speaker 13 (47:29):
Managing careers and alcohol was kind of getting in the
way of that. And so it was kind of that
moment that light bulb were kind of set out and
surveyed the competitive set and nothing was really enticing from
a qualitative perspective. But I had been eighteen years in
wine making and this was a big loss, Like, why
am I not drinking.

Speaker 10 (47:49):
The product that's supporting our career?

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Well, what are your friends in the wine industry say,
Because they're getting hit hard right now.

Speaker 8 (47:55):
We're getting hammered.

Speaker 13 (47:56):
It's concerning, I mean the downward and you just reported
on the Surgeon General like that's there's an anti alcohol movement,
which I don't know that I'm all for in our business,
I would say I'm four, But generally speaking, this moderation
is a cultural movement, and I think the wine is
she's really waking up to it and look no further
than the results at the register.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah, and you know it's funny to watch, you know,
kind of old television where people are constantly smoking and
had a cocktail. I even think of like my dad
coming up from work and had kind of a serious
you know, spirits and cocktail, you know, fairly regularly when
we were younger, and then eventually all of that stuff
started to go away, even with his generation and easing

(48:39):
of it.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
Have you heard of California sober?

Speaker 6 (48:41):
What is it now?

Speaker 3 (48:43):
What is it?

Speaker 10 (48:44):
California?

Speaker 4 (48:44):
And so yes, California fairly California sober as you abstained
from alcohol, but you partake in to see.

Speaker 10 (48:50):
Or everything else, everything else?

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Wait wait is he flushing?

Speaker 8 (48:55):
No?

Speaker 13 (48:55):
Well no, this is just the bronzing that I get
from being a California.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
So let's let's talk about because you brought us a
couple of sparkling You brought us a sparkling white and
a sparkling Rose, and I'm curious about I'm going to
pour some and you can kind of walk us through it.
But like, tell us, because Tim and I have actually
tried some non alcoholic beverages and some better than others,
we can say, so tell us about how what went
into making this.

Speaker 10 (49:20):
I think that was shared around.

Speaker 13 (49:22):
Yeah, the biggest white space for me was was trying
to take a wine maker's perspective with a wine drinking expectation.

Speaker 10 (49:28):
Please, it's our expert.

Speaker 13 (49:30):
And so I really tried to deconstruct the whole wine
making process. So where the grapes growing, when are we
picking them, how are we fermenting them, making sure that
the non alcoholic was the end result, and so the
whole process.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Oh, do you have a glass? Do you already have
or did you ready past the glass? Folks, you're the sausage,
the sausage and non alcoholic wine is being made great,
so go ahead, please.

Speaker 13 (49:53):
So the whole process for me was trying to appeal
to a wine drinker's expectations. And so the dealcalization or
alcohol removal process is very aggressive. It's not as exact
as we'd like, and hopefully technology keeps improving. But you
remove a lot of the aromatics, the texture, and certainly
the alcohol, which is a massive component to the integration

(50:15):
of the overall wine experience. So you're limiting, eliminating fourteen
roughly fourteen percent.

Speaker 8 (50:21):
Of your product.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
That's the thing that really interesting. We spoke to Duncan
far earlier, not yet of Bloomberg Intelligence. He's a consumer
products analyst, and he talked about this at the top
of our program today, that the technology to remove alcohol
has gotten so much better in recent years. He mentioned
caliber when he was a kid being a terrible alternative
to like it was like the alcohol freak Guinness. He

(50:42):
called it drain back up what I don't know what
he can right now, like it was draino or something,
And so what is the technology and how has it
gotten so good? Like how do you do it?

Speaker 13 (50:51):
It's a filter or there are various ways that you're
doing alcohol removal, but it basically is a molecular weight.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
It's pretty nice.

Speaker 7 (50:57):
Thank you, This is good.

Speaker 10 (50:58):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
And we're a tough craft.

Speaker 13 (51:02):
The process though, it's very extracted on weight and it's selective,
but it's not perfect. And so the the the imperfections
are the removal of aromatics and then removal of varietal character.
And so that's why some of you know, some of
the early entrants you might have seen are adding a
lot back to try and replace, but it's not adequate.

Speaker 10 (51:20):
And so with this like it's very bright, it's very refreshing.

Speaker 4 (51:23):
I gotta be honest. When Grant walked in with it,
I saw it and you opened it up. I was
thinking to myself, Am I going to be drinking Martin
Ellie's right now?

Speaker 10 (51:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 14 (51:31):
That's what it?

Speaker 7 (51:31):
Right?

Speaker 4 (51:32):
Yeah, and I'm not.

Speaker 8 (51:33):
I mean, this is.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Martin Ellie's the apple juice right.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
That we get your your kid New Year's Eve? Yeah,
this is not the sparkling apple juice. This is something different.
It is closer to wine for sure.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
So is it essentially and forgive me because I was
kind of running around pouring and stuff, but so is
it wine just with the alcohol pulled out one hundred percent?

Speaker 13 (51:49):
It's it's fully fermented grapes from California, right, that we
reduce or eliminate the alcohol from and then go through
the uh you know, flavor composition or formula and then
carbonated up to basically a prosecco level. So it's it's
really meant to replace that spark perseco level.

Speaker 8 (52:07):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Yeah, what does.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
Your consumer research told you about when people buy this
and they drink it, if they drink more than they
drink of the counterpart with alcohol in it?

Speaker 13 (52:17):
I mean, my own consumer research is telling me I
drink much more of it because there's not the guilt
or the shame of knowing like oh I have to
be tempered or tall it like temper my consumption on
this because of what I have on the horizon. So
there's I think what you mentioned athletic at the top
of the call. They have done such a phenomenal job

(52:38):
on matching quality that people don't have to compromise anymore
on what they want for a beer occasion. That needs
to happen in the wine category, and I think there
is a massive wake up call. We talked about the
downtick in wine sales.

Speaker 10 (52:52):
Please, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
I'm gonna start pouring the rose. So what's the different
same process for.

Speaker 13 (52:58):
The same exact process, just different grapes produced in a
kind of in a rose style. You hear that clanking,
that's the swing top we've got on the bottle so
that you can so you.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Can put a close it, pop it back in the fridge.

Speaker 13 (53:10):
Would you like, I'm okay, you're good, Yeah, ok I've
got a drive very funny.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
So you close it, pop it back in the fridge,
and it stays.

Speaker 13 (53:17):
Yes, that was one of our learnings from Like I
think in terms of trying to be innovative around the
wine category is like, you're never going to see a
champagne bottle with a swing top on it or a
proscco bottle.

Speaker 10 (53:28):
They're etched in tribution.

Speaker 13 (53:29):
This is nice to try this, and so with the
addition of the swing top, we wanted to really do preservation.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Can you do can you softer touch a little bit?

Speaker 8 (53:39):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 7 (53:41):
Nice?

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (53:41):
Are you planning to do any non carbonated versions?

Speaker 13 (53:44):
Absolutely? Yeah, R and D. I'll admit sparkling was more
in my repertoire and our wheelhouse easier to do.

Speaker 7 (53:52):
I would say it's easier.

Speaker 10 (53:53):
To replicate or replace a sparkling.

Speaker 13 (53:56):
But the still wine category, I think is very It's
a huge opportunity for the category if we're to nail
a Chardonnay or a savingon Blanc or a pan and
a war a lot of drinkers out there, and you
talked about who is this consumer, It is definitely the
wine consumer that is self moderating.

Speaker 4 (54:15):
What I'm also finding is bars, restaurants, parties, social events,
professional events have increasingly non alcoholic options that are not soda.

Speaker 13 (54:26):
Huge real estate being being garnered by the mocktails and
commanding quite a price. But I think it's about, you know,
more options for inclusive occasions, making sure that everyone is
able to participate and not feeling sheepish or needing to
you go with the line in a Seltzer water as

(54:47):
the chameleon.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
All right, So you introduce this October?

Speaker 10 (54:50):
Is that October?

Speaker 3 (54:51):
All right? So I know this, but we're bloomberg. So
give us any indications of the kind of demand you're
anticipating or maybe already seeing.

Speaker 13 (54:59):
So in eighteen years in wine and this would be
the fifth startup for me, I've never seen something like this.
And to your point, October, we didn't have a lot
of data behind us. Yeah, but we have gotten so
many fortunate retail programs in anticipation of dry January. Big
moment and timing could not be you know, we're blowing

(55:21):
aware goals and obviously the proof will be in the
pudding with repeat business and velocity. But the early adoption
has been through the.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
Roof funding, self funded, raised money, have you done it?

Speaker 13 (55:32):
Raised? A fair bit of money, went to the outside
for the first time, but John and I actually self funded.
The initial wine is very capital intensive business. You guys
likely know this, but we feel like the.

Speaker 10 (55:45):
Category is not a fad. This thing is here to stay.
It's going to keep growing.

Speaker 13 (55:50):
The retailers are now starting to get behind it, which
is a massive win.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Well, Happy Drid January. Yes, promised to come back soon
and listen. Thos are going grant having co founder and
chief executive officer of Libby Wines. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay and Android
Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen
live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station.
Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
How does a trip to Banff to do some gondola
riding or cycling sound or visiting fjords in Alaska to
gaze upon Glacier's wales and sea lions.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
It sounds amazing. How about also maybe a whitewater rafting
trip in Montana. Got to say yep, sign us all
up for all of it, and you can experience all
of them courtesy of a company known as Pursuit. The
company calls itself a pure play hospitality and attractions company.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
David Berry is president and CEO of Pursuit. He stopped
by our studio to talk about the demand and the
growing demand for outdoor travel.

Speaker 15 (56:57):
What's unique about our business in sites, seeing and attractions
and hospitality is everyone in the world loves a beautiful view.

Speaker 8 (57:04):
Doesn't matter where you're from.

Speaker 15 (57:05):
It doesn't matter what language you speak, doesn't matter whether
you can ski or golf, or you have any athletic
ability at all.

Speaker 8 (57:11):
All you have to do is love a beautiful view.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
Well, it's interesting, what does the environment the you know,
for tourism. We've talked about coming off the pandemic. All
people want to do is experience things and go out
and do things. They want to get out of their
house to do things. Is that continuing or give us
some perspective versus what you've seen over the last couple
of years.

Speaker 15 (57:27):
Well, what's everyone looking for? And then my opinion, they're
looking for authenticity. So no one goes to Iceland to
experience Alaska. They're going for very unique things around the world,
and so buy less stuff, do more things.

Speaker 8 (57:42):
Life is precious. This is no dress rehearsal Right.

Speaker 15 (57:44):
You might as well go and see and do the
amazing things that you would like to do. And that's
really what makes our business model work, and that you know,
we're in a rather unique position. We have a ten
year head start, a ten year track record of great
investments that have driven shareholder value, and it's a way
for us to position ourselves into the future, continue to

(58:04):
grow and think of iconic, unforgettable and inspiring experiences.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
So, David, the demand though, continues at the pace you've
seen over the last year or two, like, give us
an idea in terms of what consumers are up to.

Speaker 8 (58:15):
I think consumers are excited.

Speaker 15 (58:17):
And yes, there are certain segments of the consumer base
that are more pro sensitive, but in the markets that
we're dealing with, folks are ready to go and spend
money on great experiences, and you've just got to work
hard to deliver to people's expectations.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
Fourteen attractions around the world, twenty eight lodges, fifty one
restaurants and other dining experience. You've got fifty one retail stores.
How do they all come together to offer sort of
a package. Because when I see some of these experiences,
I say, Okay, this is a good one off here.
But how do you get to control the entire experience
with these assets?

Speaker 15 (58:52):
So think of pursuit as a house of brands, not
a branded house. So think of human behavior. And you
had mentioned Banff. Might you know you're planning a cycling
trip to BAMF with your buddies. Sounds good, you're planning
there common so he knows Tim a little bit, do
some searching and upcoms, and you search BAMF as a destination,
and then the next thing you enter in the search
bar is great things to do in bamp Damn Up

(59:15):
it comes Lake Minlwauka, boat tours or the BAMF gondola
or any of our different experiences.

Speaker 8 (59:20):
So we're lucky.

Speaker 15 (59:21):
We get to surf behind the power of the destination,
which drives search results and drive.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
But all those things are your assets that you mentioned. Correct, Okay?
So I want to bring in Elizabeth Sedrin's comment from
a little earlier today.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
She was one of our producers.

Speaker 7 (59:34):
Here's one of our producers.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
She said, are they trying to compete with a company
like Veil Resorts? And I said to myself, Oh, I
said to Elizabeth, I don't think they are. But now
after hearing you say that, you remind me of what
happened over the last twenty years. And I think Elizabeth
was right when Vale Resorts bought Colorado Mountain Express and
now rebranded at Epic Express, or especially Sports Ventures, the
chain of rental shops where you rent skis and stuff,

(59:55):
so then they control every different aspect of a tourist
dollar that comes out.

Speaker 15 (01:00:00):
So I spent three decades in skiing in a former life,
and I can tell you the one thing that's very
different in our world is we're not getting involved in skiing.
So I don't need snow and I don't need anyone
with an ability to ski. So all you have to
do to enjoy our experiences is enjoy a beautiful view.
And so we have a simple strategy refresh, build, buy,
So refresh existing experiences, build things that are unique and

(01:00:22):
connected for guests to visit and enjoy, and then buy
things that we think fit our platform.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
But the idea is you want a customer to go
to one of your locations or one of your experiences
and hopefully continue to do other experience.

Speaker 15 (01:00:34):
It's correct, Yeah, you want a guest to really think
about when they're visiting a destination. How do they connect
with what is authentic in that destination and what is
unique and different because so much of the world is
the same when you travel, So if you can create uniqueness,
a guest then enjoys going from one experience to another.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Okay, not apples to apples. Our Charlie Pellett is a
big cruiser, a lot of cruise ships. We talked to
the Carnival CEO. I'm like, I'm saying, not apples to apples.
But there are often repeat customers and I've done pieces
where I'm on a cruise ship and they're like, yeah,
this is my thirteenth cruise or my twentieth cruise. If
you will, how many of the people who do some
one of your experiences come back and do others.

Speaker 15 (01:01:14):
I do think we have less frequency than the cruise
industry in terms of that really devoted, participative type visitor.
But what we do have is folks that really enjoy
an experience, say in the Canadian Rockies, and the next
year they're looking to go to Alaska and experience that,
or they've somehow gotten onto the Pursuit website through a
variety of different things, and they realize we have an
amazing attraction in Iceland called sky Lagoon, And so they

(01:01:37):
weren't really planning to go to Iceland through US, but
all of a sudden they're going to Iceland and have
an experience that they know, Wow, the BAF Gondola is
so much fun. I'm pretty sure sky Lagoon's going to
be fun.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
Do people know that the Jasper Skytram or that BAMF
Gondola is owned by Pursuit?

Speaker 8 (01:01:52):
Some do, some don't.

Speaker 15 (01:01:53):
We brand everything sort of an experience by Pursuit, but
we want the experience in Jasper to be very unique
and connected to Asper.

Speaker 8 (01:02:00):
Jasper is a very unique place.

Speaker 15 (01:02:02):
If you told a citizen in Jasper that we want
you to be like BAMF, you know they would come
for you with the pike and the muskets. Right, It's
not what they want. They want their experience in Jasper
to be truly unique. So uniqueness and authenticity is.

Speaker 8 (01:02:16):
The order of the day.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Is expansion of where you offer up new locations, David,
are you thinking very carefully about You want to make
sure that while it's a different experience, the level is
the same, so that people understand the Pursuit brand stands
for something.

Speaker 15 (01:02:31):
Yeah, I can cover our criteria for acquisition and growth
really quickly. So one, is it iconic, is it unforgettable?
Is it inspiring? Does it have perennial demand? Are there
big barriers to entry? Is it an ebitdal margin that's attractive?
So we run at thirty percent ebadal margin before public
company costs, which a great margin.

Speaker 8 (01:02:49):
Do we want to go down to fourteen? Well? No,
it's got to be something.

Speaker 15 (01:02:52):
That we think is going to be able to be improved.
And then finally we look for good neighborhoods. What I
mean by that is Gudrula law, good property protection, good
places to do business in that our investments will be
well protected.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
Where you thinking about expanding to or buying assets in.

Speaker 15 (01:03:07):
So firstly, I mean we're very lucky and that we've
identified a couple of growth leavers. One is internally within
the business where we can invest and make things better,
and we've put about two hundred million dollars aside for
that growth over between now and twenty twenty nine. But
on the acquisition side, what are we looking for. It's
got to be iconic, it's got to be unforgettable, got
to be inspiring. So Dona's pretty iconic place, a good example.

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
Well, what could you acquire in a place like that
that would add to your portfolio?

Speaker 15 (01:03:32):
You know, I'm not sure I would say even if
I knew, but I think the opportunities we have are
really global in nature. We're very concentrated North America Q
two Q three, So the benefit of being doing something
counter seasonal if we could. You know, we're very weighted
to the calendar of Q three in North America, so
we've got opportunity counter seasonally and that leads you to

(01:03:55):
different locations around the world. So yeah, if we could
be busy December to April, that'd be even better.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
Soolobal acquisitions at some point absolutely.

Speaker 15 (01:04:02):
Now, I mean the benefit of this transformation of the
sale of GS and the repositioning of Pursuit and our
new clean, strong balance sheet is guess what, We've got
a great pipeline, we've got a great plan, we've got
a great strategy, and now we've got great drive powder
to go do somethings.

Speaker 8 (01:04:17):
So we're excited.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
So I'm going to say yes, global acquisitions, man, So
talk to us about pricing. David. I'm just curious, and
I know we talked a little bit in the break
before we got back here live on air, but I'm
just curious, what is give us an idea of range
kind of things. So we have an idea.

Speaker 15 (01:04:33):
It really depends on the experience. So we have some
attraction products that are very accessible for people, and you
can do that based on time of day, tim how old.

Speaker 4 (01:04:41):
Are kids two and six?

Speaker 15 (01:04:44):
Let's say, all right, so you travel from the East
Coast to Banff and at eight o'clock in the morning,
your kids are wide away because it's ten o'clock New
York time, and they're bouncing around the hotel room looking
for something to do. You, my friend, are a prime
character to take a breakfast program and a gondola ride
with little kids.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
Yeah, that sounds about it like Carol, maybe a little
more relaxed.

Speaker 8 (01:05:03):
As Yeah.

Speaker 15 (01:05:05):
So there's the sleeping crowd, and there's the early morning crowd,
my friend, and you're part of the early morning crowd.
So there's a good example of your pricing and providing
an experience that's well suited to someone at that particular
time of day is part of.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
The business strategy to make sure that you've got different
price points.

Speaker 15 (01:05:20):
You bet and your price dynamically, and you also work
hard to provide value. So we get asked all the time,
you're going to continue to take price. Real question is
are you going to continue to improve experiences? Because when
you improve experiences, you have pricing power. It's not just
taking price and making everybody angry.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Work something on sale or offering a discount or something
like that.

Speaker 15 (01:05:39):
You're always going to have channels a distribution where you're potentially,
if you have a time of day that you want
to move more folks into, you're going to price that advantageously.
But can you create an amazing product that people are
going to feel comfortable paying a fair price.

Speaker 4 (01:05:51):
For I I You said earlier that the a big
difference between you and the ski industry and the big
conglomerates out there now is that you're not focused at
all on skiing. Does that make you less concerned about
climate change?

Speaker 15 (01:06:03):
Well, I think the benefit for us is where we're
not focused on any particular athletic skill that you need
to enjoy a product. All you need to do is
enjoy a beautiful view. So in our summer destinations, climate
change is less of a factor, but we're very sensitive
to We have one planet, and we want to make
sure that we do everything we can to protect this.

Speaker 8 (01:06:22):
Planet and be mindful.

Speaker 15 (01:06:24):
And if you go to our website, you'll see a
thing called Promise to Place where we talk about sustainability,
respect and community. Those are the three things we spend
a lot of time on. We report very candidly. Sometimes
it makes us uncomfortable, but we tell the truth about
what we're doing and what's working and what's not working,
and what we're going to do to make it better.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
So I am curious in terms of running a business,
labor like hospitality, we talk about it a lot, and
access to enough workers. Do you guys have all the
workers that you need?

Speaker 8 (01:06:54):
We do.

Speaker 15 (01:06:55):
And what makes that happen is people want to voice.
They want to work in a place where their opinion
is respected and heard. They want to understand what is
the greater purpose of this organization. We do multiple team
member surveys in a year. The amount of comments we
get are incredible. I do a live town hall broadcast

(01:07:15):
every month where people can ask questions anonymously, and they do.
And so it's all those things that work to create culture.
So a culture of respect, a culture of innovation, a
culture of great leadership and genuine interest in others will
drive great hospitality experiences.

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
Okay, what's an experiential trend that you're seeing happen right
now that you haven't tapped into yet, Like, what what
do you see out there? Like I want to go
do that because that looks really cool. I've never done
it before. We don't offer it.

Speaker 15 (01:07:44):
I think that there are things that involve winter product
in exotic destinations that people are experimenting with, and so
that might be any gluo in the northern lights, and
you know in Iceland at sky Lagoon, we will get
complaints every once in a while, like I came for
the northern lights and they did not appear.

Speaker 8 (01:07:59):
Can you make that happen?

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Nay, Mother Nature?

Speaker 15 (01:08:01):
You just smile and you know, I'm only God's assistant.
I can only do so much. But the benefit of
looking at how do you continue to innovate? And we're
lucky we work in a vibrant, relentless, restless culture that
always wants to innovate, and so we have teams. Every
day they're waking up with a great idea. So there's
not one thing, specifically, tim that I would say. I

(01:08:21):
would just say There's a thousand things the team's working
on right now that are exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Starting out as a ski instructor, it worked out pretty well.

Speaker 10 (01:08:28):
You're pretty happy, right.

Speaker 15 (01:08:29):
I'm pretty like somehow I made it here, I don't
know on your show, so I'm could cross my fingers
and try not to say anything dumb.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Well really fun. Let us know has the year progresses,
and let us know how things are going.

Speaker 8 (01:08:39):
You bet, Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
Love to hear back from you. David Barry, He's president
and CEO of Pursuit, joining us right here in studio.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple, Cofflay, and
Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also
listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Well, as all of you know, Monday is Martin Luther
King Junior Day, a federal holiday that celebrates the life
and legacy of Martin Luther King Junior.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Right, And just a reminder, of course, Martin Luther King
Day also happens to fall on January twentieth, which is
the day that President elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated
this Monday. We Tim and I will be doing a
special edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek that afternoon looking at the
new incoming administration and all the policies that may come down.
So we want to get into that and more with

(01:09:40):
our next guest, who has a certain very personal story
and attachment of course to Martin Luther King Day. We
are joined by Reverend doctor Bernice King. She's the chief
executive officer of the Martin Luther King Junior Center for
Nonviolent Social Change, which is also known as the King Center.
She is the daughter of Martin Luther King, Junior and

(01:10:00):
her mom, Coretta Scott King, founder of the King Center.
Doctor King, so nice to have you here with us.
You know, Monday for many it's a holiday. Well, nice
to have you here. For many more, it's also a
reminder of our difficult past around race relations and discrimination.
What does the day mean to you? Honoring your dad?

Speaker 14 (01:10:22):
Well, it's an opportunity, obviously for us to not just
commemorate his life, but to really look further into his teachings.
He was not just a civil rights leader, he was
a teacher. He left us a blueprint as to how
to create a just, humane, equitable, and peaceful world.

Speaker 5 (01:10:45):
And every year.

Speaker 14 (01:10:47):
One of the things that I encourage is that we
study him more because he spoke about things that we
as a nation and world needed to do to fight
against what he saw as a trip with poverty, racism,
and militarism as a threat to our humanity. And so
here we are once again this year, and as we

(01:11:09):
inaugurate a new president.

Speaker 5 (01:11:10):
Those teachings don't change, they stay the same. What we
have to.

Speaker 14 (01:11:14):
Do is to connect to them and to connect to
the spirit of that movement so we can continue to
move our nation and world forward.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
I was going to ask you just to follow up.
You said, you know, your dad leaving us a blueprint.
How would you think he's doing how we are doing
today with that blueprint?

Speaker 5 (01:11:33):
Well, you know, he said to us, and where do
we go from here?

Speaker 14 (01:11:36):
Chaos the community in nineteen sixty seven, the book that
he published then that we must find a way to
live together as brothers, and he meant humanity as brothers
and sisters, or together we would be forced to perish
as foods.

Speaker 5 (01:11:57):
And I think we've not found the way to do that.

Speaker 14 (01:12:01):
I think he further divided around different ideologies instead of
trying to spend time learning in spite of our differences.

Speaker 5 (01:12:10):
How do we live together?

Speaker 14 (01:12:11):
How do we create a coexistence where we don't co
annihilate one another?

Speaker 5 (01:12:17):
You know?

Speaker 14 (01:12:17):
How do we create a world where everyone has decent
and affordable housing and access to healthcare?

Speaker 5 (01:12:27):
You know?

Speaker 14 (01:12:27):
How do we ensure that people who may end up
in the homeless population, how do we ensure that that
is short lived and we create a pathway to people
to reclaim their lives. How do we create a fair
distribution of wealth in this nation? He talked about having
a radical redistribution of wealth. He didn't talk about it

(01:12:48):
in the sense that we just have to remove wealth
from someone else, but we have to figure out how
do we balance our economy so that people can have
enough to do well. And then, of course he talked
about how do we respect who we are from different
cultures and different backgrounds. We'll never all agree on everything,

(01:13:10):
and will never all like each other, We'll never all
think alike, but we certainly can spend time learning how
to live together. So that takes a lot of listening, curiosity,
It takes a lot of courage, It takes a lot
of humility.

Speaker 5 (01:13:25):
It takes compassion.

Speaker 14 (01:13:26):
These are all the things that he taught us through
the spirit and the heart of nonviolence that he led
that movement in.

Speaker 4 (01:13:32):
Well, it's that last point that I want to talk about,
doctor King, because we've been talking about over the last
few months the dismantling of DEI programs at many companies.
If I just look at the stories that are one
of our reporters, Jeff Green, has written in recent months,
here's some headlines. Walmart under fire from investors for cutting

(01:13:53):
DEI programs, Meta retreats from diversity and inclusion, appeasing Trump.
Amazon is halting some of its diversity and inclusion programs.
McDonald's walks back DEI goals in the latest corporate retreat.
Other companies including Deer and more.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
And we talked about Corporate America, you know, did hire
more black workers for a while and then it stopped.

Speaker 4 (01:14:18):
How do you like, how do you in an environment
such as this where seeing things seem to not necessarily
be going in that direction? How do you have optimism?

Speaker 14 (01:14:29):
Well, always have optimism because there are always people, you know,
like Target and Costco and others who who choose to
follow the pathway that we all know is for the
best of our nation and our world. But if we
don't have an inclusive economy as a nation, then we're
not going to survive in the global economy.

Speaker 5 (01:14:51):
And so I think there are going to be some.

Speaker 14 (01:14:53):
Hard realities we're going to be faced with in a
few years. If what those who have ought to remove
DEI have done, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:15:05):
It's going to show certain results.

Speaker 14 (01:15:07):
I think it's up to certain courageous leaders to combine forces.

Speaker 5 (01:15:13):
And stand against this.

Speaker 14 (01:15:15):
It really, at the end of the day, it's really
not about the language anyway, you know, It's about who
we are as a people. Do we have a love
centered way of leading our cultures? In corporate America, you know,
in our educational institutions when we look a lot around
at our different cultures, do we have everyone that's needed
in terms of representation at the table. You know, whether

(01:15:38):
you call it DEI, you call it representation, or you
call it a belonging culture or for us, the beloved community.
How do we create beloved community cultures? Because at the
end of the day, it's about the outcomes. So if
they remove the names, they remove what they call DEEI,
But then they are still committed to getting to certain outcomes.

Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
Then maybe there's no problem.

Speaker 14 (01:16:00):
But if removing it also means that we're not going
to ensure that we have cultures that reflect who we
are as a nation and even as a world, then
it just means those of us who practice non violence
are going to have to organize and stratle our chives
and come up with plans to put pressure where is needed.

Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
Doctor King, what do you think white Americans still don't
understand about Black America today and what do you believe
it will take to achieve true racial equality.

Speaker 14 (01:16:28):
Well, the first thing is Black America is not trying
to take anything from anybody.

Speaker 5 (01:16:32):
I think that's the first thing people need to understand.

Speaker 14 (01:16:35):
There's this threat, like you know, if Black America were
in charge, they will remove.

Speaker 5 (01:16:40):
Us and nothing to be further from the truth.

Speaker 14 (01:16:42):
If you study the history of our race, we've always
been holistically. It doesn't mean there are exceptions in every
racial grouping, but if you study as a whole, we're
very forgiving people.

Speaker 5 (01:16:53):
We are very inclusive culture.

Speaker 14 (01:16:56):
We tend to stand, you know, with what is right
and what is fair and what is just. And I
think there's a misnomer that if we are in these roles,
we may do what others do. I think there's a
misnomer as to who we are that you know, we
just get jobs or we get opportunities just because we're black.

Speaker 5 (01:17:16):
No, we're very qualified.

Speaker 14 (01:17:18):
If you spend any time on social media, you see
the number of young children out of the black community
who are finishing college and getting PhD degrees when they're
not even fifteen yet.

Speaker 5 (01:17:28):
They're not even fourteen yet.

Speaker 14 (01:17:29):
So we have a very intelligent, very skilled community. And
it doesn't take anything away from anybody else's community who
has intelligent and skilled individuals. And so the biggest thing
Daddy says a little very powerful. He said, people hate
each other because they don't know each other.

Speaker 5 (01:17:47):
They don't know each other because they don't communicate with
each other.

Speaker 14 (01:17:50):
They don't communicate with each other because they're separated from
each other. And so as long as we keep division
and separation, then the myths can continue to be the truth.
So we have to find a way, as I said,
to learn to live together and cross some of these
boundaries and not allow whatever every other commentary may say
about you know, any community to rule the day.

Speaker 5 (01:18:13):
I need to come and connect with you. I need
to learn more about it.

Speaker 14 (01:18:17):
I need to spend time with you, I need to
experience your culture. It doesn't mean I may embrace all
of it, but I have a greater understanding of it.
And I think that's what a love centered person, a
compassionate person, a curious person. Right, we're doing a person
more importantly, who wants to see a better world.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
Well, you know, we we think about We've only got
about a couple of minutes left here, but we are
thinking about Martin Luther King Day on inauguration Day, incoming
President Donald Trump and what his administration might bring in
terms of policies and what it means for Black Americans
in equality in the United States. You know, we kind
of get the sense that your dad, you know, tried

(01:18:54):
to engage power to influence change. She seemed very pragmatic
and yet took those risks. Do you think your father
would try to engage with the right, the conservative right,
to get them to better understand the implications of their
positions or is that not even possible? And again, only
about a minute and a half here.

Speaker 14 (01:19:12):
Oh, it's always possible. Non violence believes in the impossibility.
Non violence actually can help overcome what seems to be impossible.

Speaker 5 (01:19:20):
So through strategy and plan.

Speaker 14 (01:19:21):
When he went to see Johnson and Johnson said, look,
I've done as much as I come the civil rights
Right now, I can't get the votes on voting rights.
Daddy went back and said, well, we're gonna have to
get him some power. We're going to have to help
him figure that out. So in this administration, we got
to figure out where are the connection points. You know,
who are the people in the administration we might be
able to have access to who may understand that can

(01:19:41):
then translate the message.

Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
It's about strategy, and nonviolence helps you with that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:46):
Do you have faith in the Trump administration helping out?
I have the Black community.

Speaker 14 (01:19:53):
I have faith in God, and I believe in the
power of a collective conscience that is committed to freedom,
justice and quality.

Speaker 5 (01:20:01):
And I believe it is possible.

Speaker 14 (01:20:02):
That's why our theme is, you know, mission Possible, protecting freedom,
justice and equality. Excuse freedom, justice and democracy through the
spirit of non violence three sixty five, which is Kingy
and non violence is taught and demonstrated by my father.

Speaker 5 (01:20:17):
That's what I have faith.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
In, doctor King. Just twenty five seconds left here, What
do you hope every American kind of thinks about when
it comes to our country here.

Speaker 14 (01:20:25):
I want them to remember that as a humanity, we
have been to these places before. Maybe not literally us,
but human beings have been in difficult, challenging times. We
come from those individuals, and we too have the capacity
to rise to the occasion and meet the challenges and
move our nation and worl for.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
Thank you so much for finding time for us. Our
thoughts with you, certainly as we prepare for the holiday
and to mark his memory and his legacy on Monday.
That is Reverend Doctor Bernice King, chief executive Officer of
the King Center, joining us from Atlanta. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 17th, 2025

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