ICE Protests Spread to San Francisco
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ICE protests spread to San Francisco. Plus, the World Bank considers a policy shift that could open the taps to funding for nuclear power. And we'll hear from one of Europe's tech champions about why the continent's lagging behind in the global tech race. We're very clear, just Europe is significantly behind the U.S. I mean, when you look at public market liquidity, retail trading, it's 10, 20 times below. So there just isn't enough funding, actually, for European upcoming companies as well.

And that's one thing Europe very particularly can change through government action. It's Tuesday, June 10th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

After days of unrest in Los Angeles over President Trump's immigration policies, protests are spreading to San Francisco. The city's police department says it made around 150 arrests on Sunday and that it was forced to declare an unlawful assembly yesterday evening after another night of demonstrations.

Meanwhile, we are learning more about a May meeting chaired by Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump's immigration agenda that sparked the L.A. migrant crackdown in recent days.

According to people familiar with the meeting, Miller told top officials at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to drop the long-standing practice of developing target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, and instead told them to, quote, just go out there and arrest illegal aliens, end quote, directing agents to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores.

Federal agents are now making warrantless arrests, and ICE agents appeared to follow Miller's tip, conducting an immigration sweep at an L.A. area Home Depot that helped to set off weekend protests. And the administration is holding firm in the face of criticism of its tactics.

Here was Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, who has threatened to arrest those who obstruct immigration enforcement efforts on MSNBC's Morning Joe. People have to stop calling ICE terrorists and criminals and racist because they're enforcing the laws enacted by Congress, signed by a president. And that's exactly what ICE is doing. They're enforcing the law. They're not making this up.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed all 17 members of a key committee that recommends vaccines and when and how often adults and children should get them.

In a statement, Kennedy said, quote, the committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas, end quote, arguing that the change would help to restore public trust in science. Public health leaders and Democrats decried the move. The panel next meets at the end of June, and Kennedy will need to name new members by then.

Asian markets showed mixed signals today as wary investors size up high-stakes China-U.S. trade talks, which are entering a second day in London. Following Monday's session, U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett signaled progress, saying Beijing could soon greenlight rare earth exports, while Washington could help to ease China's semiconductor squeeze. Comments that boosted chip stocks and helped to lift major indexes.

Meanwhile, Apple released an array of new software at its Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, including live translation capabilities and upgrades to group chats. However, it was far from the AI comeback that investors were hoping for, with shares falling when Apple announced that an upgraded voice assistant wasn't yet available. In fact, Journal senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern said that Siri was mentioned just

just twice. That's a big change from last year. But Apple did talk about how it's bringing Apple intelligence to more parts of its operating systems. The biggest one, visual intelligence. Now, when you take a screenshot, it will give you an option to search those images and even discuss them using built-in chat GPT. And Apple opened its on-device large language models to developers so apps can now tap into offline AI features. Still, Apple's looking really behind in AI, and it's clear it didn't really want to talk about it today.

And you can find a link to Joanna's full video in our show notes. And the board of the World Bank is meeting today as it weighs ending a ban on funding for nuclear energy projects. The move is supported by Bank President Ajay Banga and comes after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant urged it to invest in gas and fossil fuels earlier this year.

I asked journal reporter Ed Ballard about the choice facing the Washington-based lender. There's several things going on here. So what Bangor has said he wants is an all-of-the-above energy strategy, which would include nuclear.

as well as the renewable energy, which is what the World Bank is mostly funding at the moment. And of course, that's in keeping with the Trump administration's own preferences. Other countries are also expanding their nuclear fleets. The UK has just announced a major new nuclear power plant project. The other thing to bear in mind is this isn't just about political preferences about which energy sources are best. It's also about competition for geopolitical influence. Russia is involved in nuclear projects, and so is China.

So really, there's also the question of if countries in Africa and other parts of the developing world are going to build nuclear plants, who is going to help them do it? Coming up, I'll speak with the CEO of Bolt, Europe's rival to Uber, about how the continent can help homegrown companies to catch up in the global tech race. That chat from London Tech Week after the break. ♪

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Download the Realtor.com app because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com. Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings. February 2024 through January 2025. Tech leaders have been gathering in the UK in recent days for London Tech Week as politicians and members of the European business community reflect on why the continent continues to lag behind in the global tech race.

A recent journal analysis put some numbers on that, finding that Europe is generating far fewer unicorn companies, private firms worth more than a billion dollars compared to China and the U.S. It's falling behind on R&D spending and worker productivity, and venture capital levels are just a fifth of those seen in the U.S. in dollar terms, all of which is stymieing the creation of global tech companies and stalling economic growth. Though

though there are some success stories. Among them, Estonian ride-sharing and food delivery platform Bolt, which operates in 50 countries and in a number of European markets, says it's outmaneuvering industry heavyweight Uber. I caught up with CEO Markus Villig and asked him how. It was actually a very contrarian bet when we started 11 years ago. We talked to dozens of VCs. Nobody believed in the idea. Nobody thought that you can go and challenge the incumbents in this space.

which we have now successfully done where we're the market leader in more than 20 countries. We have millions of daily trips going on on the platform and we're growing much faster than anybody else in the sector. So I think now coming to the root causes of what has caused that, it's been a couple of things. A, we think that this is an industry where you need to localize very well. So

So it doesn't matter how many cars you have in New York. What matters is how many cars you have available right then in Prague or in Nairobi or whatever other city you operate. I've heard you talk in extreme detail about Serbia, for instance. You're getting to know each country individually. Absolutely. So localization is key. And the other thing is that we've got to recognize this is a space that's very...

cost efficiency driven. So when you compare this to the likes of e-commerce, why do people use Amazon? They use it because it has great selection. Why doesn't it have great selection? Because they are paying the merchants more than anybody else. The merchants make more money on Amazon than elsewhere. So it's the same philosophy here. Why do drivers enjoy our platform more than others? Because they make more money per hour driving with Bolt. I mean, looking ahead to future technology, you've gone on the record saying the driverless car, boy, that would be lucrative for us. What else? I mean, is there...

You're waiting for something big to change this business? It's old school in many ways, currently. Absolutely. So when we think about the next 10 years, then the most important thing for this whole sector is going to be self-driving. No question about it. We actually already have thousands of deliveries we're doing on the delivery side. So we deliver robots where you can order your groceries or restaurant meals for a robot. Which is going down the sidewalk. Exactly. And it's working already perfectly well. And we think that's going to be a huge opportunity for the next decade.

And the other one you mentioned, of course, is robot taxis or self-driving cars. And we think that most people haven't yet made the connection that if you get very cheap, very smart general AI, then that's also going to, over time, transfer over to the physical world. And you will also have very cheap and affordable and very efficient self-driving cars. So we're betting on that to be the future. Does it make...

your current drivers nervous to hear that talk? This is a business with hundreds of thousands of physical partners around the world, but transitioning to a future maybe without them. Well, we don't think that's a big concern for any of them for at least the next decade, to be honest. The demand of this industry is so vast and we're still talking about only one or two percent of trips in every city. So we think there's plenty of room for us to grow significantly.

And actually, when you get into the mechanics of it, then we think there's going to be a hybrid period for a very extended period of time where you will want to have some base level of demand served by these robot taxi cars. But there's going to be plenty of trips on the peak hours where you will actually still need human drivers to complement the network as well. When you close your eyes and imagine this Bolt driverless vehicle, is it European? Is it a Chinese product? Is it an American car? I mean, the auto industry is becoming a fierce arena for geopolitical competition right now.

Absolutely. And that's actually where we think Volt is very uniquely positioned. Because unlike most other technology, this actually has massive national security implications. How many governments actually want to have, for example, millions of Chinese or other foreign-made cars on their streets that can theoretically be controlled by a type of button from anywhere else around the world?

And obviously you want those to be aligned very closely with the values of your own administration. So in that sense, we think Bolt is in a unique place that we can be this European player who is going to be working with European governments and somebody they trust already for more than a decade. You talk about positioning yourself as kind of the trusted partner in mobility for European governments. Tell us a little bit about how you're looking at European business policy. Is it an ecosystem that would allow Bolt to be created?

So I'd actually argue that Europe has not been protectionist at all, and I think to our downfall. So when you specifically contrast China versus Europe, what China has done is they've had a very strong walled garden where their own local tech champions barely have any competition.

And what's been the result of that? It's been fantastic for them. They have many companies worth in the hundreds of billions that they're now exporting their products globally, whether that's anywhere from like TikTok to BYD to many others. And Europe took the opposite stance. So Europe was that we're going to allow free markets. All the U.S. and other competitors can come in and compete with our companies. And what did that result in? Devastation. We basically don't have a European technology ecosystem. The vast majority of our companies are tiny compared to the U.S. ones. And basically everybody's being wiped out.

So I think very clearly Europe needs to take some lessons in how do you actually enable some type of support to your local businesses so you can actually build the likes of Facebook and Google and so on, which Europe is lacking. What specifically could the EU be doing now

to make this ecosystem more prosperous, more growth-oriented? Well, just reduce the bureaucracy, reduce the nonsensical regulations slowing local companies down. And I think it's especially critical in the world of self-driving and transportation, where it's very sad, but you look at markets like Germany or Italy, they haven't updated their ride-hailing, their taxi laws in three decades. So they're still stuck in the 90s, imagining smartphones don't exist. And

Obviously, as a result of that, who's suffering? So overall, what I see is that Europe needs to somehow support these six champions. I think there's very different ways how to do that. One of those is capital markets. We're very clear in just Europe is significantly behind the US. I mean, when you look at public market liquidity, retail trading, it's 10, 20 times below. So there just isn't enough funding actually for European upcoming companies as well. And that's one thing Europe very particularly can change through government action.

You've had some big American participation in your past fundraisers. Do you think European money is ready to come off the sidelines now in ways it wasn't in the past? So actually, that's a sad reality of most European startups and tech companies, right? So the vast majority of funding they raise is still from the U.S. In our example as well, more than 80% funding we raised from the U.S. because they were simply just more forward leaning. They gave us significantly better terms than European investors.

despite this being a European company. So I think we're just another example in this line where Europe, if you give investors the right incentives, I think they should be benefiting more from these tech stories as well. Marcus Villig is the founder and CEO of Bolt. Thank you so much for being with us on What's News. Yeah, it was great. Thank you.

And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivant. Our supervising producer was Pierce Lynch. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. ♪

Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for realtor.com, the pros number one most trusted app. Finding a home is like dating. You're searching for the one. With over 500,000 new listings every month, you can find the one today.

Download the Realtor.com app because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com.