Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / White House Works to Give US Agencies Anthropic Mythos AI
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. You're listening to the
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- 0:24Speaker 2: Perhaps there's going to be peace talks of a different
- 0:26Speaker 2: kind in Washington as well, because Anthropics CEO Dario Amuday
- 0:30Speaker 2: is meeting with Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff of
- 0:32Speaker 2: the White House today, and of course there's a lot
- 0:36Speaker 2: of tension between the US government, the executive branch, and Anthropic,
- 0:41Speaker 2: the AI startup AI monster. At this point, I feel
- 0:45Speaker 2: like startup kind of undersells it. Let's bring in Jake
- 0:47Speaker 2: Bleiberg right now. He is Bloomberg News's cybersecurity reporter and
- 0:52Speaker 2: he's been talking to us and he's been doing a
- 0:54Speaker 2: lot of reporting on what the White House is doing.
- 0:56Speaker 2: When it comes to Anthropics' latest AI model, myth or
- 1:00Speaker 2: Mythos as less total lexus is very good.
- 1:03Speaker 3: I approve methos.
- 1:04Speaker 2: Okay, Jake, it's official. It's Mythos, not Mythos. Tell us
- 1:09Speaker 2: a little bit about the backstory here of Mythos because
- 1:11Speaker 2: it's the latest AI model. It's very powerful for ananthropic,
- 1:15Speaker 2: but Anthropic it also has a testy relationship with this
- 1:18Speaker 2: White House.
- 1:19Speaker 4: That's all right, So Mythos is this model released by
- 1:23Speaker 4: Anthropic not to the public, but we learned about it
- 1:26Speaker 4: publicly a couple of weeks ago when the company gave
- 1:30Speaker 4: a select group of government organizations and banks and cybersecurity
- 1:36Speaker 4: firms sort of special, tightly held access to it because
- 1:41Speaker 4: the company believes it's this enormous threat and has sort
- 1:45Speaker 4: of vastly more ability to find holes in computer systems
- 1:50Speaker 4: that might let hackers get in and do malicious things.
- 1:54Speaker 5: If they're limiting access, why are they allowing the government
- 1:57Speaker 5: to have.
- 1:57Speaker 4: Well, we're not actually sure at this point just how
- 2:01Speaker 4: much access the government has, but what we do know
- 2:04Speaker 4: is sort of getting at the tension you raised earlier.
- 2:07Speaker 4: There are a bunch of government agencies that are sort
- 2:11Speaker 4: of eager to get their hands on it, and top
- 2:15Speaker 4: government officials, the Secretary of the Treasury Chairman Jerome Palell
- 2:19Speaker 4: at the FED, they've been urging banks and financial sector
- 2:23Speaker 4: organizations to use this tool to plug their own holes,
- 2:27Speaker 4: and that seems to be out of a worry that
- 2:29Speaker 4: once this type of tool is out there in the public,
- 2:33Speaker 4: those might become vulnerabilities.
- 2:35Speaker 2: So they want them to kind of stress test their
- 2:37Speaker 2: own systems using meet those before Methos is released to
- 2:40Speaker 2: the public. What does that mean for this meeting that
- 2:44Speaker 2: Anthropics CEO is scheduled to hold with Susie Wiles, the
- 2:48Speaker 2: Chief of Staff today. Where what is the relationship right
- 2:51Speaker 2: now between the White House and the company at large?
- 2:54Speaker 2: Because government agencies are at least some of them want
- 2:56Speaker 2: to use this model, but the Pentagon has black listed Anthropic.
- 3:01Speaker 4: It's it's a great question, and it's a it's a
- 3:03Speaker 4: little confusing. On the one hand, we have sort of
- 3:08Speaker 4: top administrations in the officials and the Trump administration saying
- 3:14Speaker 4: this company is a supply chain risk and they've been
- 3:16Speaker 4: doing that as part of this dispute with the Pentagon
- 3:19Speaker 4: over concerns about the artificial intelligence being used in surveillance
- 3:24Speaker 4: or the targeting of weapons. On the other hand, we
- 3:27Speaker 4: have top officials and the Trump administration also saying this
- 3:31Speaker 4: is such a powerful tool. Hey, you banks, financial sector,
- 3:35Speaker 4: we need you to use this. And this email that
- 3:38Speaker 4: we got yesterday my reporting colleague Margie Murphy and I
- 3:42Speaker 4: actually says the federal Chief Information Officer is working on
- 3:47Speaker 4: building guardrails, you know, technical guard rails, so that the
- 3:52Speaker 4: top cabinet level agencies and the government could begin.
- 3:55Speaker 6: Using this tool.
- 3:56Speaker 4: So it's it's a little bit confusing going into this meeting, right,
- 3:59Speaker 4: Maybe a.
- 4:00Speaker 5: Little cynical here, but it seems like individuals, consumers, corporations
- 4:06Speaker 5: trying to figure out what AI is, how I use it,
- 4:09Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff. I don't have a lot
- 4:11Speaker 5: of confidence that my federal government is going to do
- 4:14Speaker 5: a good job with AI here. How to what extent
- 4:16Speaker 5: do we know that the various government agencies are trying
- 4:19Speaker 5: to incorporate AI into their workflows.
- 4:22Speaker 4: I mean, I think we've seen massive efforts across the
- 4:26Speaker 4: federal government, as we have in many different industries across
- 4:31Speaker 4: the private sector to build AI into their workflows. This
- 4:35Speaker 4: tool is a little different, or at least we think
- 4:38Speaker 4: it's a little different based on what we've heard from
- 4:40Speaker 4: the limited number of people and organizations using it, in
- 4:44Speaker 4: that it poses risks of a type that we haven't
- 4:48Speaker 4: really seen taken this seriously before. We've been talking to
- 4:53Speaker 4: people who are using it, and one of that is
- 4:56Speaker 4: okay AI used to be able to do the digital
- 4:58Speaker 4: equivalent of picking a law. Well, now now it can
- 5:01Speaker 4: pull off oceans eleven right now it's doing full hest.
- 5:04Speaker 3: Oh I like that analogy.
- 5:05Speaker 5: I'm gonna steal it, by the way.
- 5:07Speaker 2: Okay, So the capabilities it has is kind of a
- 5:10Speaker 2: different order of magnitude than what we've seen so far.
- 5:14Speaker 3: What kind of AI does the federal government use? Right now?
- 5:17Speaker 3: What do we know in terms of the application.
- 5:19Speaker 4: So different parts of the federal government use all sorts
- 5:22Speaker 4: of AI tools, including chat, GBT or you know, the
- 5:28Speaker 4: same types of large language models.
- 5:31Speaker 6: You or your colleagues, or.
- 5:32Speaker 4: Many people in many different sectors might consult to find
- 5:36Speaker 4: a quick answer to a question, or you know, look
- 5:40Speaker 4: up where they should stay in a trip.
- 5:42Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:48Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 5:52Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 5:55Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 5:59Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 6:03Speaker 2: And we want to go back and talk a little
- 6:04Speaker 2: bit more about Netflix, because even though it didn't raise
- 6:07Speaker 2: its forecast for this quarter, the numbers show that it
- 6:11Speaker 2: is definitely making more money on existing subscribers than it
- 6:14Speaker 2: had been. That's according to the company itself. They said
- 6:16Speaker 2: customer retention has improved in every region in the first quarter,
- 6:19Speaker 2: and we know they raise subscription prices in June as well.
- 6:23Speaker 2: Mark Douglass is president and CEO of Mountain and he
- 6:26Speaker 2: joins us now for some more analysis on Netflix and Mark.
- 6:31Speaker 2: Netflix no longer really pushes the subscriber growth numbers. It's
- 6:35Speaker 2: not even a figure that they released to investors anymore.
- 6:38Speaker 2: It's all about making more money from your existing base
- 6:41Speaker 2: of users. So what do we know about how much
- 6:43Speaker 2: Netflix can extract from its subscribers.
- 6:46Speaker 7: Yeah, so I think that's the right way for them
- 6:49Speaker 7: to look at and for everyone to look at. Is
- 6:50Speaker 7: just monetization. And so the way to think about it
- 6:54Speaker 7: is that you have subscription pricing for all Netflix users.
- 6:58Speaker 7: But I think they've announced in the past half of
- 7:02Speaker 7: the new users are signing up for an ad supported tier.
- 7:06Speaker 7: The numbers you typically think of when there's ad supported
- 7:09Speaker 7: content for any network is that you can make somewhere
- 7:13Speaker 7: between seven dollars or as much as fourteen dollars additional
- 7:18Speaker 7: revenue per subscriber through ad supported tier. This is even
- 7:22Speaker 7: and those numbers kind of originating cable television, but they've
- 7:26Speaker 7: carried over into streaming and so where in cable sometimes
- 7:31Speaker 7: networks are part of a bundle, but then they also
- 7:33Speaker 7: were showing ads. Now you're part of a subscription, but
- 7:36Speaker 7: there's also showing ads. So there's a lot of room
- 7:39Speaker 7: to grow. Netflix is currently undermonetizing those users, meaning the
- 7:43Speaker 7: people signing up for.
- 7:45Speaker 6: The ad supported tier.
- 7:46Speaker 7: So that is just a backlog of revenue that is
- 7:49Speaker 7: coming and it's going to be coming for many years
- 7:51Speaker 7: to come. I've said in the past I think Netflix
- 7:54Speaker 7: could be the first trillion dollar media company in terms
- 7:57Speaker 7: of market cap, be costs of the ads.
- 8:00Speaker 5: Mark you're yea your company Mountain. You guys are right
- 8:03Speaker 5: smack in the middle of all this digital advertising, television advertising.
- 8:08Speaker 5: You know where the dollars go here. Yeah, for Netflix
- 8:11Speaker 5: to really become a player in advertising, do they need
- 8:15Speaker 5: a big sports franchise.
- 8:18Speaker 7: I don't think they need a big sports franchise, mainly
- 8:21Speaker 7: because I think sports is important. But Netflix, because they
- 8:26Speaker 7: own this slot as like the first place the majority
- 8:30Speaker 7: of streaming consumers go to, Like you turn on your
- 8:33Speaker 7: TV and you kind of like, let me see what's
- 8:35Speaker 7: on Netflix. They're able to turn things like WWE or
- 8:41Speaker 7: a normal NFL game into these big events they turn
- 8:45Speaker 7: you know, I think we talked once before about the
- 8:48Speaker 7: largest female professional boxing match was streamed on Netflix and
- 8:53Speaker 7: things like that. So they've been able to basically take
- 8:56Speaker 7: not these kind of like NBA contracts and things like that,
- 9:00Speaker 7: but take other types of sports tournaments to things that
- 9:02Speaker 7: are very attractive to consumers and then monetize from there.
- 9:05Speaker 7: But sports is important, just not like having an NFL
- 9:09Speaker 7: contract but you know, for a whole season, or an
- 9:12Speaker 7: MBA contract for a whole season.
- 9:14Speaker 2: Market strikes me that a subscriber to the ad tier
- 9:17Speaker 2: is probably more valuable than a subscriber who opts for
- 9:20Speaker 2: the advertising free tier. So how would Netflix convince a
- 9:24Speaker 2: Pall Sweeney or Scarlet Food to convert and to downgrade
- 9:28Speaker 2: to that ad supported tier.
- 9:32Speaker 7: From a subscriber perspective, I think that's going to be hard.
- 9:34Speaker 7: I mean, I think it's pretty binary. You either want
- 9:37Speaker 7: to pay for the full subscription or you don't, and
- 9:39Speaker 7: the people paying the full subscription I don't think are
- 9:42Speaker 7: price sensive. If Netflix is thinking, well, you're worth another
- 9:45Speaker 7: in terms of revenue seven dollars if you're in the
- 9:48Speaker 7: ad supported tier, well, that'll just be in your subscription costs,
- 9:51Speaker 7: maybe a little bit discounted. But I don't think that's critical,
- 9:55Speaker 7: especially when one out of two new subscribers are signing
- 9:59Speaker 7: out for the ads tiers now, So it's not really
- 10:02Speaker 7: I think that critical to convince everyone to do that
- 10:04Speaker 7: when you're at fifty percent already.
- 10:07Speaker 5: So our good friends at mathat Nathanson were out with
- 10:09Speaker 5: the research report a couple of months ago where they
- 10:11Speaker 5: did some work, and their work indicates that YouTube is
- 10:15Speaker 5: actually the biggest media company in the world by value.
- 10:20Speaker 5: What is your view of YouTube in this marketplace?
- 10:22Speaker 6: They're so big?
- 10:24Speaker 5: Do they still have room to grow? They're so big
- 10:26Speaker 5: in the business?
- 10:27Speaker 6: Yeah, I think absolutely so.
- 10:29Speaker 7: The way I think of YouTube versus the entire rest
- 10:32Speaker 7: of the streaming market. But let's continue in Netflix is
- 10:36Speaker 7: YouTube kind of owns the day and Netflix and other
- 10:39Speaker 7: media companies own the night, right like you, I don't
- 10:41Speaker 7: think most people go home at eight o'clock and nine
- 10:44Speaker 7: like let me put on a podcast, Like they want
- 10:46Speaker 7: to watch their favorite shows across whatever networks they are.
- 10:50Speaker 7: But during the middle of the day when they're if
- 10:53Speaker 7: they're driving the work, if they're on the subway or
- 10:56Speaker 7: things like that, You're going to tend to not be
- 10:58Speaker 7: watching a favorite show while he's sitting on in a
- 11:00Speaker 7: subway car in New York City. So I mean it's divided.
- 11:04Speaker 7: Consumers want to be entertained essentially twenty four hours a day.
- 11:07Speaker 7: Their choices are streaming at any time, but I think
- 11:11Speaker 7: generally at night youtubees, Instagram, TikTok, and they're not in
- 11:17Speaker 7: conflict with each other. I think the streaming industry is
- 11:19Speaker 7: very healthy, growing and owns the highest form of entertainment
- 11:24Speaker 7: with consumers and the ones that they like most talk about,
- 11:28Speaker 7: most look forward to. And that's why you're able to
- 11:31Speaker 7: monetize these at these levels and subscriptions at these levels
- 11:34Speaker 7: is because of it.
- 11:35Speaker 5: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 11:42Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 11:46Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarclay, and Android Auto
- 11:49Speaker 1: with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you
- 11:52Speaker 1: get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube right now.
- 11:57Speaker 2: The story also includes Netflix boosting spending on programming this year,
- 12:01Speaker 2: especially live sports programming, things like the World Baseball Classic
- 12:04Speaker 2: really paid off for them this past quarter, and they're
- 12:07Speaker 2: in talks to expand the relationship with the NFL as well.
- 12:11Speaker 2: Randall Williams is our Bloomberg Business of Sports reporter Randall
- 12:14Speaker 2: How big a player is Netflix in live sports rights?
- 12:17Speaker 6: Do you think there's big of a player as they
- 12:19Speaker 6: want to be.
- 12:20Speaker 8: If they would like to get into sports broadcasting and
- 12:24Speaker 8: having exclusive things, then I think that they will be
- 12:27Speaker 8: a huge factor. But right now they've been very selective.
- 12:29Speaker 8: They've done a lot of boxing things. As you said,
- 12:31Speaker 8: they've been more involved in MLB, but their strategy thus
- 12:34Speaker 8: far has been event focused, and in the NFL in particular,
- 12:38Speaker 8: there's few events like the NFL. I think is try
- 12:40Speaker 8: to make big events. So you think Thanksgiving, you think
- 12:42Speaker 8: Kickoff Day, you think the Christmas Day game, and then
- 12:45Speaker 8: of course NFL playoffs. But there are also other bidders
- 12:48Speaker 8: and Netflix hasn't I think, dove into the process of
- 12:51Speaker 8: trying to win a Thanksgiving Day game. They have Christmas
- 12:55Speaker 8: and Christmas has been great, but it's a lot better
- 12:57Speaker 8: than Beyonce's performing.
- 12:59Speaker 5: I'll think they're serious when they go bid for a
- 13:01Speaker 5: Sunday afternoon NFL package.
- 13:03Speaker 6: That's going to be the day.
- 13:04Speaker 5: I'm going to ask you something else, Okay, because I
- 13:05Speaker 5: think for me at least and for a lot of people,
- 13:08Speaker 5: one of the bigger stories in sports in the last twenty.
- 13:10Speaker 9: Four hours is Live Golf, absolutely, and there's some of
- 13:13Speaker 9: the reporting. I'm surprised that we haven't heard anything definitive,
- 13:15Speaker 9: but generally some of the reporting is perhaps the Saudi
- 13:19Speaker 9: Arabian Fund is going to pull back its economic support
- 13:23Speaker 9: for LIV and if that's the.
- 13:24Speaker 5: Case, people wonder whether it can continue at all.
- 13:28Speaker 8: Yeah, that's what's been what we've reported, what everybody else
- 13:30Speaker 8: has been reporting. You know, there was suspected that an
- 13:33Speaker 8: announcement could come yesterday and then nothing came, and then
- 13:37Speaker 8: Live Golf CEO Scott O'Neill said earlier this week that
- 13:41Speaker 8: they're funded through the end of the year and we'll
- 13:43Speaker 8: see what happens next year. And so it sounds like
- 13:45Speaker 8: based on that that the funding will be pulled. It's
- 13:48Speaker 8: not a matter of if, it's just a matter of
- 13:49Speaker 8: when and then whoever, whether that be Scott himself, an
- 13:53Speaker 8: investment bank, private equity will have to go out and
- 13:56Speaker 8: find more money to keep this tour life.
- 13:59Speaker 2: What happened to the players who went over to live golf,
- 14:02Speaker 2: signed would live golf and then were essentially it feels
- 14:06Speaker 2: like they're blackball from the PGA Tour. What happens to them,
- 14:10Speaker 2: what happens to their careers?
- 14:11Speaker 6: They're going to have a decision to make.
- 14:12Speaker 8: I think the PGA Tour obviously opened the possibility for
- 14:16Speaker 8: some golfers live golfers in particular, to come back. I
- 14:19Speaker 8: don't know if that window has closed it or if
- 14:21Speaker 8: they will reopen that possibility, but I think in any event,
- 14:25Speaker 8: if they were to decide to go back to the
- 14:26Speaker 8: PGA Tour that they probably would face some penalties, and
- 14:29Speaker 8: the PGA Tour has been very strict with that.
- 14:31Speaker 6: So they could go to the DP World Tour.
- 14:33Speaker 8: There are other different leagues out there, but obviously, if
- 14:36Speaker 8: you ask golf fans where do they want the best
- 14:38Speaker 8: golfers playing, it's the PGA Tour.
- 14:40Speaker 6: And the golfers.
- 14:40Speaker 8: Themselves know that live was an option, but it remains
- 14:44Speaker 8: unclear if it will continue to be an option long term.
- 14:46Speaker 5: Interesting I've heard that. I mean, it's been reported that
- 14:49Speaker 5: the Saudis have lost you know, north of five billion
- 14:51Speaker 5: dollars in then now they're like, wait a minute, listen.
- 14:54Speaker 8: They were cutting checks for players for hundreds and millions
- 14:57Speaker 8: of dollars, and I think for at a certain point
- 14:59Speaker 8: of view, were a player, it was sort of silly
- 15:01Speaker 8: to not accept some of this money. You're talking about
- 15:03Speaker 8: one hundred million dollars in cash that was going to
- 15:05Speaker 8: be paid right away, and for some of the players
- 15:07Speaker 8: it's like, do I think am I confident enough that
- 15:11Speaker 8: I'm going to be able to get this on the
- 15:12Speaker 8: golf course?
- 15:13Speaker 2: Scar Did livgolf ever really catch on with viewers or
- 15:18Speaker 2: fans in the US?
- 15:20Speaker 6: I would not say so.
- 15:21Speaker 8: In the US now, there have been reports from Live
- 15:23Speaker 8: Golf that their business is growing, that they are on
- 15:26Speaker 8: track with different metrics that they have for themselves. But
- 15:29Speaker 8: if you were to ask the average American, you know,
- 15:32Speaker 8: where do you watch live golf? I'm not sure that
- 15:34Speaker 8: they would have an answer. And the reason for that
- 15:36Speaker 8: is because the PGA Tour has been around a long time.
- 15:38Speaker 8: It's hard to uproot any league that has been here
- 15:41Speaker 8: in America that is deeply rooted in American culture with
- 15:45Speaker 8: something new. It just doesn't happen across any sport.
- 15:47Speaker 6: I'm going to tell you what.
- 15:48Speaker 5: I'm not a supporter of the Live Tour. I'm a
- 15:50Speaker 5: PGA person, but I'll tell you what every golfer, every
- 15:53Speaker 5: professional golfer, should thank Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson for
- 15:58Speaker 5: creating this whole live thing, because what a sentence. Lifted
- 16:00Speaker 5: the wages for everybody rare, including this weekend when the
- 16:04Speaker 5: Arbasi Classic down in hilton Head, which is historically a
- 16:07Speaker 5: smaller tournament, it's now what has a purse of twenty
- 16:11Speaker 5: million dollars. Thank you, Greg Norman, Thank you for much.
- 16:13Speaker 5: So now the question put them back together? Right?
- 16:15Speaker 6: I mean, that's the thing though.
- 16:17Speaker 8: That is an interesting perspective because for a long time,
- 16:19Speaker 8: if you listen to the PGA Tour speak publicly about this,
- 16:23Speaker 8: they blame Live Golf for splitting things up, and there
- 16:25Speaker 8: was not a lot of accountability on how they could
- 16:28Speaker 8: do things better until the Strategic Sports Group came in.
- 16:31Speaker 8: They invested a whole lot of money, and since then,
- 16:34Speaker 8: between the Strategic Sports Group and Brian Rollapp, the PGA
- 16:37Speaker 8: Tour has been on fire. And I would say that
- 16:39Speaker 8: Live is running out of fuel.
- 16:41Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 16:47Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 16:51Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 16:54Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 16:57Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 17:01Speaker 5: Lots of M and A out there. The question is
- 17:04Speaker 5: what can get I guess past the regulars, And we
- 17:07Speaker 5: have an administration here that M and A bankers, M
- 17:09Speaker 5: and A lawyers felt like they can get a lot
- 17:11Speaker 5: done in this environment. And we'll see here. But there's
- 17:14Speaker 5: a lot of cases that the regulars are going to
- 17:16Speaker 5: have to deal with here, and who better to do that?
- 17:19Speaker 5: Look us up as Jennifer Ee, senior litigation analysts for
- 17:22Speaker 5: Bloomberg Intelligence. Jen let's just talk the one that popped
- 17:25Speaker 5: up this week and I was involved with as a
- 17:27Speaker 5: banker back in the day, Live Nation ticket Master. Everybody's
- 17:31Speaker 5: out there feels like our ticket prices are way too high,
- 17:33Speaker 5: there's way too many fees and what's going on in there?
- 17:37Speaker 10: Yeah, well, you know, it's a perfect example of what's
- 17:40Speaker 10: happening in this administration because the Department of Justice has
- 17:43Speaker 10: been pursuing that company for years. I mean, they had
- 17:45Speaker 10: a settlement when you were involved. Right when they acquired Ticketmaster,
- 17:48Speaker 10: they violated that settlement, they were found to be in violation,
- 17:51Speaker 10: they entered a new settlement, and now still we've had
- 17:54Speaker 10: a trial. The Department of Justice had sued. The Department
- 17:57Speaker 10: of Justice wasn't part of that trial because they settled
- 18:00Speaker 10: the case in the first week with Live Nation. It
- 18:02Speaker 10: was a pretty big surprise to a lot of people.
- 18:04Speaker 10: But apparently it's been reported that there were lobbyists hired
- 18:07Speaker 10: that influenced the administration and got a pretty good settlement
- 18:10Speaker 10: for Live Nation out of it. But we have states
- 18:13Speaker 10: that also enforce the antitrust laws. They can enforce the
- 18:16Speaker 10: exact same laws the Department of Justice can, and they continued.
- 18:19Speaker 10: Most of them. A few settled, but most of them
- 18:21Speaker 10: continued to pursue Live Nation, and they won a liability
- 18:24Speaker 10: verdict from a jury that Live Nation has monopolized certain
- 18:27Speaker 10: aspects of the live concert industry.
- 18:30Speaker 2: So put it all together, what does that likely mean
- 18:32Speaker 2: for Paul Sweeney when he wants to buy tickets to
- 18:35Speaker 2: a summer festival next year.
- 18:37Speaker 10: Well, let's just hope it means that those tickets are
- 18:39Speaker 10: a little easier to get and less expensive. Probably not
- 18:42Speaker 10: by next year, though. These things take a really long time,
- 18:45Speaker 10: and it's highly likely that once the judge issues is remedy,
- 18:48Speaker 10: which could take another six months, that Live Nation will
- 18:51Speaker 10: then appeal that, and usually a remedy, particularly if it's
- 18:54Speaker 10: fairly intrusive, it will be stayed depending the appeal, which
- 18:57Speaker 10: means nothing's going to change. So when Paul buys a
- 19:00Speaker 10: tickets next year, he's still going to face some a
- 19:02Speaker 10: lot of fees until this gets through the appeals process,
- 19:06Speaker 10: possibly even get all the way through to the Supreme Court.
- 19:09Speaker 2: What happens with the ticket resellers, those other companies out
- 19:12Speaker 2: there access some thinking.
- 19:14Speaker 3: Stub Hub, did they have a role in all of this?
- 19:17Speaker 10: You know they do because several of them have really
- 19:20Speaker 10: been trying to get into what we call the primary
- 19:22Speaker 10: ticketing market, not reselling, but being hired by the venue
- 19:25Speaker 10: to sell the tickets for the concert in the first hand,
- 19:28Speaker 10: and they've really struggled because Live Nation has such a stranglehold.
- 19:31Speaker 10: So right now they're watching and waiting hoping that whatever
- 19:34Speaker 10: this remedy is that the judge imposes will open up
- 19:37Speaker 10: competition and allow them to gain a little more market share,
- 19:40Speaker 10: get a few more contracts with some venues and sell
- 19:42Speaker 10: more primary tickets.
- 19:43Speaker 5: Let's get some get to some rand news here. President
- 19:46Speaker 5: Trump said Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear program indefinitely
- 19:50Speaker 5: and will not receive any frozen funds from the US.
- 19:53Speaker 5: Trump set in a phone interview on Friday that a
- 19:55Speaker 5: deal to end the war, which the US and Israel
- 19:58Speaker 5: began with Iran in late February mostly complete. Talks overlasting
- 20:02Speaker 5: agreement will quote probably be held this weekend, the President said.
- 20:06Speaker 5: Bloomberg Balance a power with Joe Matthew will bring you
- 20:08Speaker 5: all of the details in just a few minutes. Jen,
- 20:11Speaker 5: let me get to another deal. It's deal. It's near
- 20:14Speaker 5: and dear to my heart, which is Paramount Sky Dance, Yes,
- 20:17Speaker 5: acquiring Warner Brothers, Discovery Mega mega deal in the media space.
- 20:22Speaker 5: What are the regulators going to say about this?
- 20:23Speaker 10: Well, in the US, they've already spoken and they said
- 20:26Speaker 10: we're fine with it.
- 20:27Speaker 5: Nice.
- 20:27Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, the Department of Justice allowed the Heart
- 20:30Speaker 10: Scott Redina waiting period, that's the period the companies have
- 20:33Speaker 10: to wait before they can close to allow for anti
- 20:35Speaker 10: trust review. They allowed it to expire. Now I've seen
- 20:38Speaker 10: news that some subpoenas were sent out since then, I
- 20:40Speaker 10: don't really think that means much because in the US
- 20:43Speaker 10: right now, legally the companies can close. The reason they
- 20:46Speaker 10: haven't is because they're waiting for Europe and UK, which
- 20:48Speaker 10: also have jurisdiction, to review the deal, and they cannot
- 20:51Speaker 10: close until they get that. But I'm not so sure
- 20:54Speaker 10: that the European regulators are going to have much of
- 20:57Speaker 10: an issue with this because the impact is more in
- 20:59Speaker 10: the US in terms of labor in putting together those
- 21:01Speaker 10: movie studios.
- 21:03Speaker 2: But we know that there's a lot of opposition, especially
- 21:06Speaker 2: in the Hollywood creative community, to this deal. In fact,
- 21:09Speaker 2: more than one thousand Hollywood actors and screenwriters have written
- 21:14Speaker 2: this letter of opposition, really pointing out the harm that
- 21:17Speaker 2: it will do. The goal, according to these folks, is
- 21:20Speaker 2: to get state attorneys general to stand up and oppose
- 21:24Speaker 2: this deal. Does that have any legs to it?
- 21:27Speaker 10: Absolutely? The States, as I said, can enforce the same
- 21:30Speaker 10: anti trust laws as the Department of Justice, and they've
- 21:32Speaker 10: been talking for several years now about stepping in. If
- 21:35Speaker 10: the new Trump administration was lax on anti trust enforcement,
- 21:38Speaker 10: they would step in and pick up the mantle and
- 21:40Speaker 10: run with it. And we're seeing that they've done that.
- 21:42Speaker 10: They have a lawsuit right now pending against the next
- 21:45Speaker 10: Star techna deal, which was also cleared already by the
- 21:48Speaker 10: FCC and the Department of Justice. And if they get
- 21:50Speaker 10: enough pressure, if there's enough consumer concerned about the Paramount deal,
- 21:54Speaker 10: I could see the States bringing a lawsuit and they
- 21:56Speaker 10: have a shot.
- 21:57Speaker 5: Thirty seconds. Jen, there was a story recently United and
- 22:00Speaker 5: American Airlines singing together.
- 22:02Speaker 6: No way.
- 22:03Speaker 10: I think no textbook anti competitive. Of course, I said
- 22:05Speaker 10: that about Sprint and T Mobile and that deal got done.
- 22:08Speaker 10: I think that it's just posturing. I don't really see
- 22:10Speaker 10: that deal coming together. I think even if there's lobbying
- 22:13Speaker 10: to the Trump administration, I don't know how the Department
- 22:16Speaker 10: of Transportation or the Department of Justice clears that deal
- 22:18Speaker 10: without massive divestitures. And I don't even know if that's fatal.
- 22:21Speaker 2: I mean, Jeppelin Spirit weren't allowed to get yes, and
- 22:23Speaker 2: I know that was under a different administration. If you
- 22:26Speaker 2: put together American and United, that becomes the biggest airliness
- 22:29Speaker 2: in the US by a lot.
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