00:00So Republican lawmakers have been lobbying the U.S. government to add 19 new companies to a Pentagon list
00:06that would list these companies as Chinese military companies.
00:11So among them include DeepSeek, the robotics firm Unitree, some of the firms that you see on the board there,
00:17Wuxi is a pharma company, Xiaomi as well, RoboSense.
00:22So these are pretty wide-ranging sectors that are affected.
00:26The implication is the Department of Defense will not be able to start new contracts or renew contracts with these companies.
00:33But for other regular companies, it also sends a signal, a warning signal for them about the risk of associating or working with some of these companies.
00:42So certainly this is something that could worsen ties between U.S. and China.
00:46And it's very hard to get off this list because we know that Hersai, for example, the Chinese LIDAR company,
00:51has been one of those that had sued the Pentagon for including it on the list.
00:56And it claims that it does not have relationship with the Chinese military.
00:59It successfully got off the list, but then it was immediately relisted.
01:03And that shows you the stickiness of the label and how hard it is to really challenge the Pentagon on this.
01:09All right, Bloomberg's China correspondent to Min Min Lo there.
01:13Let's get some more market insights from Ed Gomez, CIO of SGMC Capital, a multifamily office.
01:20Ed, thanks so much for joining us.
01:22And I do want to start on some of these themes in the tech and AI space.
01:28First off, we always mention AI in the same breath as a potential bubble.
01:35Can this rally continue?
01:36Are we in bubble territory?
01:38Can you give us the case for each potential scenario?
01:41And which do you believe?
01:42So the way we look at bubbles, you know, clearly there is a lot of enthusiasm for anything which is AI, and that in itself is problematic.
01:53At the bottom of the markets in 2022, 2023, people were talking about AI, but not too many people were interested in buying because you had just gotten into a massive decline in the NASDAQ of around 30%.
02:06Today, you say AI, and everyone's willing to throw money at almost any project.
02:11So clearly, projects which will fund fairly weak technologies, sometimes borderline fraud.
02:20You know, investors have to be very, very clear about what they're funding.
02:24But when you have companies which are delivering very, very solid products, services, and have a very clear sight into what the future will hold, not just for themselves, but the overall wave of technologies, then yes, valuations could get stretched.
02:41But most of these companies will bounce back from any kind of sell-off.
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