announces that the nsa director is retiring this spring. a expects trump to nominate successor in the senate will confirm his replacement. global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti and this is bloomberg. emily: i'm emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." amazon taking another big hardware leap, virtual reality glasses will be shown next week at it convention in las vegas. uber ceo ise former selling some of his stake in the ridesharing startup. and a sensation over the last couple of weeks, can the company strike while the iron is hot with investors. the first ever pair of augmented reality glasses connected to alexa will be unveiled next week. pairing up with the glasses developer to manufacture the device. in a statement the tech giant says it is excited about the possibility of bringing services to customers in a new way. intel ceo sent me the first keynote and as we have been reporting a flaw in the design of electronic chips was revealed earlier this week impacting nearly every single digital device crated since 1995. joining us is the man who broke the story about the amazon glasses. mark, what will the glasses be able to do? what will they look like, etc.? mark: this is what we have been talking about for years now, augmented reality glasses. i can see what is in front of me in the real world and a digital len putting information into my view. it will have a alexa bilton, so i can say alexa, what is the weather and it will show me the weather and the forecast for the week. it's bracingly -- basically bringing an echo to your face, so to speak. emily: let's talk about the pricing. mark: it's $1000. that's the pricing right now. this pricing is even a little bit below the high end of the market right now. emily: cheaper then be our headsets, but much more expensive compared to snap spectacles. do you think people will buy these? think the ordinary alexa user will spend $1000 for a terror of glasses off the bat, but as mark is saying what is going to follow the smartphone in the next -- of computing the next best guess is some kind of augmented reality output probably through glasses. this is an important thing for amazon to have in its ecosystem. they are in the way getting there first with probably the best recognition service. alexis and -- alexa and google are fighting well on that. i think it's an important development. a lot ofroduct per se people get, but many of us will have something like this in the next few years. emily: you know that amazon execs will be roaming the .howroom at ces the ceo of intel is in the hot seat. it is still scheduled -- is still scheduled to give the keynote. what do you think we will hear? mark: it will be interesting. everything he has to say will be a little footnote there, maybe a big one thing this is all happening a mid, not really a scandal, but this expose coming out about these chips. i think everything he says will have that being drowned out by this. emily: we have heard from apple saying this affects every single apple device. mark: it was interesting. they came out and said, everything is accepted. he came out with patches to take care of it and i think it's going to be a cat and mouse game, new exploits or way for they will come up with new updates as things are discovered. a consumer, there's not much you can do. they are issuing software updates, but there are reports that the only way to really protect yourself is by buying new hardware. david: i don't know if the new hardware exists that would lack this problem. that's a big issue and i'd be curious to know if mark agrees with that, but the reality is we are in an age of tremendous cyber risk. and anybody who doesn't keep her machines updated at all times is taking a big risk, but there is no guarantee. luckily, we haven't heard of exploits thus far, but that seems inevitable. we could see negative consequences, but it's one of those things you can't do much about it so you have to cross your fingers. emily: does the hardware market exist right now? considers --weird comparison, i think it's sort of like tonsils. but you mightsome want to get them removed. this is all the chips across the board and they will put patches out to mitigate the damage. thing thatamental every processor has in order to process data. sea will have to be a big change. designing a chip takes three to four years. this is decades of history that has led up to this. emily: david, do you see any company gaining from this? david: i see a country gaining from this. i think china has made a top priority of building microprocessor business for decades. andy grove used to say in the 90's the company he worried about the most was china. now they have an argument why people shouldn't he using the western dominant products anymore. anthey can come out with alternative, which they will be desperately trying to do, because there products have these flaws also, but it does turn wide-open the chip market, because it makes intel look very bad, because they are the dominant player that allow this to happen. emily: all right. thank you so much. thank you for stopping by and sharing your personal update about your tonsil surgery. amazon maintained its online dominance during the holiday season despite increasing competition from walmart, target, and best buy. and a night -- amazon took 89% of all holiday spending. walmart was a distant second topping 4.4% of all online sales. uber ready to sell a lot of his shares. bloomberg tech is live streaming on twitter. check us out. this is bloomberg. ♪ >> google is investing in a chinese game streaming service. the startup is a mobile center platform with 90 million registered users. majorresents the second investment since largely risk -- withdrawing from the country. since then it has attempted to launch live streaming services for gamers via youtube. founder -- cofounder -- you will remember that calendar previously boasted he never sold any uber shares. now he will offload about 29% of his stake for a profit of about $1.9 billion. david kirkpatrick is still with us and eric newcomer who broke this story. why is he selling so much? >> he's not fit ceo anymore so i think the insistence that everything is going to be great, it's not his job to sell that message to the same extent. this is when he is going to be a cash billionaire for the first time, so i think there is a budget to diversifying your wealth a little bit and making sure all of your money isn't in uber. 2019,ipo isn't until late that's a long time to wait to cash out a little bit. emily: it makes sense to diversify and what you make of him selling this much and now? david: it's perfectly rational and i can see why he is doing it. it's an unfortunate thing all over that the message it sends about what kind of entrepreneurship we want to reward in our economy, because he was a very aggressive entrepreneur who created a lot of value in a company that is transformative. however, he did it raking al qaeda's of rules, doing a lot of things that i think were truly wrong and in many cases in moral and that he should walk away with that kind of money i think reinforces a narrative about silicon valley being essentially -- you could almost say -- i don't know of the word is evil, but dangerous place that is not contributing to society. emily: and something that might be illegal. this is what the paperwork said. this is his thing. fermi it's just sort of hard to -- i can see the sentiment in that there are a criminal -- people could go after him for this issues now that he has all of this money, but he had 10% of the company, so it some point he was going to sell it now or sell it later, but that's the reality of these ownership stakes. asee the point that question prose is about society is a perplexing one. emily: you also broke news about the amount that benchmark is planning to sell, tell us about that one. eric: i didn't break that. they are selling 900 million worth, 14.5 percent of their stake. they still have a time of, but 900 million for sale, certainly some cash to distribute to their limited partners and start making actual money off of their uber investments. emily: all of this means that structure ist going to start to shift and the idea that cooper will be the coming a more mature company with a traditional corporate structure, how hopeful are you that things really well yet the contract and quickly? david: i'm very hopeful about that. i think the new ceo really has made an enormous number of very welcome reforms, said all of the right things, shown that he doesn't want to do business the way the company has done business in the past. he has a lot to clean, especially in europe where the company's reputation was formed in the earlier regime and reaction has been extremely negative, but uber is an incredibly powerful company with an unbelievable market position and a well-run if opportunity remains huge. a lot of focus has shifted for all kinds of reasons, that i still have a lot of optimism about uber's long-term trajectory. all right. david kirkpatrick eric newcomer, thank you. coming up, peter thiel is potentially eying a new media network. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ emily: amazon hopes to -- for the rights to stream. haver, amazon deals focused on tennis and the national football league, not the biggest for the the u.k. audience. investor peter thiel is said to be exploring the possibility of creating a conservative news outlet. this according to revelations in the hotly discussed new book " fire and. by michael wolff. he is said to be back by the mercer family. david kirkpatrick is in new york. the book has a lot of revelations and definitely a lot of pushback, but what does it say about peter thiel? >> he's very interested in starting this conservative network. he had been talking with roger ailes about that idea, but then roger il's died and peter thiel has apparently stuck with the idea and has talked with the mercer's about helping him that it. michael wolff talked a little bit about trump's relationship with peter thiel. sarah: that's true. trump tends to go across strong and say about it -- i'll be your best friend forever, but peter thiel apparently believed it was sincere, but was deprived when he couldn't get phone calls returned or wasn't quite as cozy as he was led to believe. these what do you make of revelations, let's start with those focused on peter thiel? david: it is interesting that he will team up with the mercer's. he's not a steve bannon conservatives, more of a hard-core libertarian. a lot of his views are different than trump's i find it fascinating to imagine what such a network might be and i don't think it's all out of the question that it might happen, especially with the mercer's being so important breitbart getting behind peter thiel's effort. we saw peter tale in the stanford review which continues influence on campus and it is a decent quality periodical and it is very conservative. in might be something he would do. they: what are some of other good stories in the book about the tech community and tech figures? sarah: i should tell you there is actually very little in the book about tech. that puts us in our place here in silicon valley. but jeff bezos is mentioned and apparently he and trump, as --ryone knows, exchanged during the campaign trump was ,"d at "the washington post which bezos owns and trump talked about amazon would be in trouble for its attacks situation and apparently after the election jeff bezos called trump, smooth things over and trump start calling bezos an american genius or words to that effect. sarah: and peter -- emily: and peter thiel broker that meeting. sarah: that's true. that meeting got things off to a promising start that seems since then there hasn't been, compared to the obama administration, nearly be back-and-forth tween the tech community and washington as there used to be. there is a funny story in the book how afterwards at rupert murdoch was talking with the president about how the president said, oh, it went great. the tech execs had so much regulation under obama, we can fix that and fix theirh-1b visa problem. and murdoch said back, actually there were a lot of tech people in the obama administration and also i thought you didn't want to expand immigration. that was one of your main campaign strategies good we had to take this with a grain of salt, but he basically said back don't worry, we will resolve that. it will be fine. emily: david, difficult to separate fact from fiction when it comes to things related to the trump administration and you know, obviously this book there has been some pushback against it, but if indeed -- there have been a lot of distractions and things going on in washington, but if indeed there isn't much of a bridge despite the meeting between washington and silicon valley, what you think the consequences of that are? david: it's not good for the competitiveness of the united states, because increasingly countries around the world, whether friend or adversary, are recognizing that working closely with the tech sector is one that every country biggest strategic advantages in global competition. and we luckily have an extraordinarily powerful tech sector, obviously better than anybody else's. but it would be very much to the nation's advantage if the government work with the tech sector rather than against it and obliquely to it, and ignorant of it, which i often feel is the case. emily: all right. david kirkpatrick, with us for the hour. and sarah mcbride, thank you. ivf venture arms will become the largest supporters of startups. a starter accelerator plans to invest in five or six companies over the next six months and also connect startups with fortune 500 -- interested in their technology. coming up, tech firms are scrambling after finding a flaw in chip processors could make any device made in the last decade vulnerable to hackers. what you need to know to keep your information secure, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ >> i am a alisa parenti in washington and you are watching bloomberg technology. through the check of your first word news. president trump says michael wolff's behind the scenes look at the white house is a lie. but wolff says he can back everything up > i. >> i have recordings and notes. i am comfortable with everything i have reported. went on saleok today and is already number one on amazon. the trump administration has been putting sanctions on four venezuelan military officials linked to corruption. it freezes any assets under u.s. jurisdiction. americans are banned from doing business with them and the u.s. has already sanctioned current and former venezuelan officials. chuck lasley has asked the justice department to investigate whether the author of a dossier on donald trump lied to federal investigators. lindsey graham of south carolina made the request to rob rosenstein. criticized the move is an attempt to distract from the broader russia investigation. the dossier's author is a former spy from britain, christopher seale. the environmental protection agency's scott pruitt is said to be interested in becoming attorney general. according to people familiar, prewitt said he will be willing to leave the justice department should that position become available. this comes amid speculation on jeff sessions' tensure. he excused himself from the russian meddling investigation. securityd nations council is holding an emergency meeting on the protests in iran. u.s. ambassador nikki haley says the international community cannot let iran silence the protesters. rising up people are and over 79 locations throughout the country. ofis a powerful exhibition brief people who have become so fed up with their oppressive government that they are willing to risk their lives and protest. before the meeting, a russian deputy foreign minister says americans were trying to 's sovereignty. the storm that pounded the east coast was more than inconvenient, it was expensive. moody's analytics says the storm is estimated to cost between $3 million and $4 million -- $3 billion and $4 billion. movie says that is in line with the cost of most other winter storms. global news 24 hours a day. powered by more than 2,700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti. and more ofmberg, bloomberg technology is straight ahead. technology is straight ahead. emily: this is bloomberg technology. i am emily chang. if you own a pc, tablet, or smartphone you are likely looking for answers after researchers revealed a flaw in intel and other chips that could allow hackers to access secure data. dubbed meltdown and specter, the flaws reflect every meltdown from the devices over the past few years. dimitri is the cofounder and chief technology officer at a cyber firm and joins us from washington. just how serious is this? dimitri: this could have been much worse. i do a lot of stories about the cutthroat industry we have in the tech sector, but this is a great story about for the last six months, technology companies , companiesspecter like microsoft and apple and google and manufacturers like intel coming together and working together to put out a fix and mitigation for the problem that has impacted processors built over the last 20 years. if this had come out publicly earlier, we would have been in much worse shape. now,ome up most of the -- most of the problems have been patched. either from our phones are using the cloud services directly, the information would have been comprised by bad guys. emily: that said, it is unlikely everyone is going to use the updates that have been provided. sayingre some who are you cannot protect yourself a musty buy new hardware likely does not even exist. what about that? dimitri: is true in the end of this will have to be solved in hardware but it will likely take 3, 4, or five years before the new chips are designed and built that will mitigate against this problem. however, the software fix is available now for most of the systems that need to be patched, there are a few still coming out, but most of the patches are out now, they can mitigate the problem. the problem with these fixes as they can have a performance impact on your system. on modern computers, computers that have been manufactured in the last five years. that problem is not going to be that significant. it is probably a worse case 5% performance, but with all the other hardware can be significantly worse. emily: we're getting a new report from the register that qualcomm processors are also affected by this flaw.how surprising is that ? dimitri: it really is not because this technique for processors to figure out processors toich execute in order to optimize the execution of these instructions is something all of these processors have been doing for decades. it has been a standard design consideration. of this particular vulnerability is not a flaw in the code. is really something that everyone has been doing and we just navigated up -- we just now figured out a prevent a serious security problem. emily: everyone knows about the flaw now. many people will not update their systems. we do not have new hardware for three to five years. if someone does take advantage of this phone or ability, look at happen -- vulnerability, what could happen? >> there are two scenarios we need to be concerned about. what is the system that has a number of different users logging into them. this vulnerability is not a remote exploitable vulnerability. 's knowledge the worms we talked about last year that affected so many computers by jumping from one computer to another. set of vulnerability does not allow you to do that.you need to already have a code on the system to begin with. you need to have access to the computer to leverage and get access to data you may otherwise to.have been able the common scenario is cloud providers and other servers where you may have users logging in and the users may not have high levels of privilege. through this exploitation, they can get access to data that they otherwise should not have access to. that is one consideration. the second consideration, which is probably more of a consideration for an individual and people working inside companies that are not maintaining servers, is the fact that browsers are also vulnerable. browsers can execute remote code by visiting websites. javascript will be automatically executed anytime you go to a website.you have to update your browser's .there are patches available for all the major browser platforms to make sure when you are visiting a malicious website, it cannot get access to some of the data stored in your computer. emily: why did this flaw exists for so many years without anyone catching it? : the actual acquisition of this plot is challenging to understand. it requires deep knowledge of the low-level operation of these processors. the way the vulnerability is exploited is really ingenious because they are measuring timing differences between execution of instructions and how those instructions are cached. it is not easy by any means to build us and to figure out now when the papers have been published how exactly it works. it is not surprising there were only a few people in the world that really understood that designction of processor and computer issues and mary that process together to discover the vulnerability. emily: we are just days into 2018. is this the worst we will see this era rather be something worse? -- this year or will there be something worse? dmitri: it is hard to predict. cybersecurity is an industry that attempt to surprise you and not in a good way. i'm sure there will be many major attacks coming out. enterprise ransomware attacks that can take cold of a network, similar attacks we have seen. hold theseally comings ransom and get them to pay millions of dollars to get the network back up and running. i think we will see a lot more of these attacks coming up this year. strike, thank you so much for joining us. mark zuckerberg has made a personal goal to fix facebook in 2018. so will he incorporate cryptocurrencies in the change? will discuss next. this weekend on bloomberg television, we will bring you our best reviews from the week, including our conversation with blackberry ceo don chen on the company's's new partnership. tune in for the best of bloomberg technology. this is bloomberg. ♪ loomberg. ♪ emily: twitter commented on tweets by political figures and world leaders on their blog. the social network saying blocking a world leader from twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. the company says it reviews tweets by leaders within the political content and enforces rules accordingly. mark zuckerberg gave cryptocurrency enthusiasts optimism for the new year. he referenced cryptocurrencies in a post thursday in which he laid out how he will spend 2018 trying to correct problems, including the proliferation of hate speech and miss information that has dogged the social years. for the last few he stated his interest to study the positive and negative aspects of cryptocurrencies and how best to use them on the platform. joining me now with more, selina wang. also our guest host for the hour, david kirkpatrick. zuckerberg did not explain how cryptocurrencies might be incorporated into facebook but what does that mean this is within -- mean? selina: this is within his broader context. facebook is that a high for manipulation and spreading fake news. the way he has framed cryptocurrencies and talking about it in a lofty, grandiose way is a good pr spin on facebook. he want to make it likable again and he wants to build a trusted. he is brimming as decentralized. facebook has grown through a centralized system and has led to a few large tech companies that control the data of the vast majority of u.s. population.. and now he is saying blockchain -- population. and now he is in blockchain -- lthough he is not particularly saying blockchain -- will change the technology so we can bring the power back to the people. if it did actually come to fruition, facebook would be harmed because it would not be necessary to spread information in the social network. emily: several guests on this show have suggested blockchain could be one thing that could disrupt some of the big tech monopolies. what do you think of zuckerberg saying he will be spending time on cryptocurrency this year publicly? david: i think that was a very smart note he posted yesterday. i think it was a necessary step in the right direction. the first of many steps he will have to make to addressing the challenges to his services in modern society. on the one hand, the cryptocurrency part is defensive and on the other hand creative. , many peopleout believe the best way to compete with facebook down the road might be with a blockchain-based system that somehow gave individuals more control over the personal data. if that were to be possible somehow, it is very hard to angine how you create ecosystem. issue discussed for a long time is using micro-payments to induce people to look at advertising. it is conceivable that facebook might, down the road, be able to use cryptocurrencies for that. those are just two things that make it reasonable why he should be making it like this. there is a vast set of opportunities that crypto was opening up with.the one thing it does not mean is he is going to be investing in bitcoin. emily: i do want to ask you why you are here about twitter saying they will leave world leader's tweets up no matter what they tweets. have developed all in line with their policies and their big mission against hate speech and abuse? selina: twitter has had a huge challenge of the past few months addressing how in the world do they deal with their policy. they said they will not have viewers that site violence, harm, and harassment. many users say that trump tweets have violated those services in quotes against women. there have been many nuclear war tweets, most recently won this week. now users are saying that we set in the past the newsworthiness of these tweets are part of the reason and now they are reiterating that after the recent uproar against trump tweets towards kim jong-un saying he has a big nuclear button and it is getting even bigger. is not really helping the situation. they are trying to say that we like trump as an average user but we consider it within the political context. a lot of people say that trump is extremely important to twitter's platform. many analysts and their 2018 preview said trump is the key thing to keeping twitter relevant and any press, even bad press, is good for twitter and brand awareness. emily: is twitter contradicting itself by saying they will leave up world leader's tweets, including president trump whether it is abusive or violates the terms of service? david: i think it illustrates just how challenging the question is how you perform these services. they are dammed if they do a dance if they don't. tothe one hand, they want control the nature of speech so it is more civil. on the other hand, many people do not think it is appropriate that a commercial company ought to be in it position of deciding what is and is not legitimate in the public sphere of things that can be said. --ly: the how is trump david: i think -- this is not a commercial decision. the government has to get more engaged with the services and collectively work with them to see what is and is not allowed. right now, the u.s. government is in the position. -- i think they have to air on the side of liberty rather than constraints. otherwise, they are really the sensors that are too powerful. emily: certainly more to debate.david kirkpatrick , sticking with me. bloomberg's selina wang. thank you great coming up, this week's addition taking a look at the mobile game show hq trivia. how the company is funding your prize money next. looking ahead to the next series of u.s. economic reports, including retail sales. we will get earnings from jb --ning and will spout jpmorgan and wells fargo. emily: intermediate hq trivia may look like an ordinary mobile gameemily: intermediate hq triva may look like an ordinary mobile game show but it has made serious headlines of the past few weeks. each online broadcast starts out with questions that start off easy and get tougher with every round grade the principal ranges from $2000 to $18,000. still with us, david kirkpatrick and what were your initial thoughts about hp trivia when you went to visit? >> my initial impression playing the game because it is so weird, as many people observe, this is so hot that there have been a zillion think pieces. it has this black mirror quality because there is a guide by himself in a room and you are interacting with him by answering a question. there is a weird feeling but very quickly, it is addictive and fun. theg there, you have of trying to capture this thing that is very hot. are suddenly getting hundreds of thousands in close to one million concurrent users. emily: talk to us about the potential here in terms of investment and just how big something like this could be. >> one of the blind spots, if you want to say, for online media, has been by concurrent viewers. live television is still really good. way better at the internet in terms of getting a large group of people at the same place at the same time. if they're able to get a few hundred thousand people at once, you can show atv-type at and that could show this. emily: what is your take on this? >> i think max said it well. and we havehis age this mass-market audience. this is one of the best things we have seen for internet to compete with television in real-time or he have to be looking at that exact moment in order to experience this entertainment. that could be very valuable to advertisers if it were to grow to the scale of many many millions. -- ink the investors an think with the investors it is possible. emily: it is not all sunshine because they have suffered technical glitches and there have been scandals associated with the company. tell us about those. >> it is a fascinating case study and started -- in doing what a startup is like in 2018. after they experienced this boom in popularity, there were reports that one of the cofounders engaged in creepy behavior at twitter. they sold their previous startup vine to twitter and there were these allegations. the venturef seeing anitalists work at this at early stage. venture capitalists will look at --. as well like they did an investigation of they have been trying to raise an additional rounds. a level ofng scrutiny that is unusual for startups and i think that is interesting. the other thing that is happening is technological. this is a wildly popular thing and they have been scrambling to get the technology to work. all sorts of glitches and people not able to play. emily: something that they are definitely working through. bloomberg businessweek, a great piece from you. think you for joining me on the show. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. we are livestreaming on twitter, check us out at technology weekdays 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. have a wonderful weekend everybody. this is bloomberg. ♪

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