Morning Brew Daily - The Global and Economic Fallout from the Israel-Hamas War & 23andMe Data Breach

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Episode 166: Neal and Toby explain what is happening in the war between Israel and Hamas and how the world is reacting to it. Plus, retailers say holiday shopping is already underway and what happened with the 23andMe data breach? Walgreen pharmacists stage a walkout and the men's marathon world record was shattered over the weekend in Chicago. Also, the winner for the Nobel Prize in Economics was announced and Toby explains what "coffee badging" is and how it is impacting return to office. Finally a look at the week ahead. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Freyman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, we'll talk about the global ramifications of the war between Israel and Hamas. Then for the third time in 54 years, a woman has won the Nobel Prize in Economics. We'll tell you all about Claudia Golden's research right after this. It's Tuesday, October 10th. Let's ride. Toby, today is 10.10, also known as National Metric Day.

The U.S. is still clinging to yards, gallons, and pounds. Why aren't we on the metric system? Well, whenever Congress considered a bill that favored the metric system, it was actually stopped by big businesses who didn't want to go through the time-consuming and expensive process of changing the country's entire manufacturing system that was already based on one measuring system. Also, and this is true, people genuinely believe that the United States should keep our system because it sets us apart from other countries and symbolize our status as a world leader as a world leader rather than a follower. I just like saying I'm 6-1 rather than 1.85 meters, so I'm Team Imperial. Can you imagine first in 10 meters? Sounds horrible. All right, Neil, before we jump into the news today, let's hear a quick word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance.

Now we're fans of Yahoo Finance over here at MBD because it sets us up to succeed on this show every morning. I can get into the weeds on a certain stock and see if it's a contender for stock of the week, Doggle Week. And I can dig into the headlines to find arguments to support why I don't think pickleball will ever be a real sport. So if you like going deeper than just the headlines, or you're a pickleball hater, check out finance.jahoo.com. That's finance.com. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough to get lost. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on.

on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Okay, we're going to begin today's show discussing this story gripping the world, which is the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. The violence began on Saturday morning when Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack from Gaza into Israel, massacring hundreds of people and taking dozens of civilians back to

Gaza as hostages, including children, the elderly, and American citizens. Hamas, which has control of the Gaza Strip and is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and the EU, threatened yesterday to kill the hostages if Israel bombs Palestinian civilians unannounced. In response to what experts are calling its 9-11 or Pearl Harbor moment, Israel declared war on Hamas, mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists, and ordered a complete siege of Gaza, a small and densely populated strip of land, home to more than 2 million Palestinians, most of whom live in horrific conditions. Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade of Gaza for 17 years, and Israel said it would cut off food, fuel, and other supplies to the territory as it pummels it with airstrikes and seeks

to dismantle Hamas. Already those airstrikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians living in Gaza, including dozens of children. While this conflict is ostensibly regional, the impacts are global. Western leaders have condemned Hamas and asserted Israel's right to defend itself. Israel and Palestinian supporters have staged dueling protests in cities like New York and London. Tensions are running high on American college campuses. You two performing in the Las Vegas sphere this weekend changed the lyrics of one of its songs in memory of the 260 people killed by Hamas at a music festival on Saturday. A big question for investors is whether this conflict will escalate beyond Israel and Gaza to become a proxy war between major global powers. That

concern is already impacting global markets. Oil prices have jumped early this week over concerns major crude producer Iran might get involved. Iran has supplied Hamas with weapons and technology for decades, and there are some rumbles. It played an active role in this attack. Yeah, it has been very interesting to see how the global markets have been reacting to this conflict. Obviously, you had defense stocks that kind of jumped right on the news of conflict breaking out. Northrop, Grumman, Lockheem, Lachy Martin, Raytheon all opened the green. They actually all led the S&P as the top five performers yesterday as well. But then you also have some industries that you wouldn't immediately think about. Obviously, we talked about the oil and defense, but there's also

fertilizer markets, stocks jumped because there's a port just north of Gaza that's kind of a key hub for fertilizer exports. So as much as 3% of the global potash fertilizer, which is a potassium-based fertilizer, comes kind of out of that area. So it is interesting to see how not only is it the markets that you would immediately think about oil and defense stocks. You also have some of these other. It reminds me of when war broke out in Ukraine, the grain markets kind of were thrown into whack. So there are these other secondary like commodities that flow through these regions that you wouldn't necessarily think about. Yeah, I want to talk about Iran for a second and its impact on oil and other things.

Iran has backed Hamas for a long time. And what's happened in Israel in that region is Israel has normalized a lot of their diplomatic and economic, relationships with its former enemies, countries like the UAE and other countries in North Africa that it had not had diplomatic or economic ties with. Israel is a major economic power. So is so our Gulf states like the UAE. They've become closer together. And there was a push by the U.S. to normalize economic relations and diplomatic relations with the Saudis, which would be this huge partnership that had been deemed unthinkable for decades. Iran and Saudi Arabia do not get along and the theory here is Hamas attacked with the support of Iran to derail that U.S.-led

deal to normalize relations between the U.S. and Saudis and that sort of those negotiations appear to be put on ice because of this. The other angle I want to talk about, too, is the misinformation that was potentially spreading on mostly Twitter over the weekend. A lot of people were going to Twitter for real-time updates about the conflict, but it was kind of a bit of a disaster because, remember, Elon ditched the former verification. system that gave blue checks to people who were verified people, reporters, people you could trust for information, but now anyone can pay for it. So there was a lot of misinformation circulating. A fake White House press release at one point was making the rounds. And then at one point,

Elon himself directed people to an account that was known for spreading misinformation. So it was kind of this come to like, oh my gosh, moment for Twitter. It used to be this very reliable place to get real-time updates and suddenly in one of the more real-time evolving conflicts of the Elon era, it did not perform very well. And these open source intelligence researchers who were so instrumental in bringing us information in real time for things like the war in Ukraine and other conflicts around the world are spending most of their time, not geolocating important events, but fact-checking, debunked videos from three or four years ago. So, So it is a huge problem and Elon has definitely not helped because he also directed Twitter

users to two accounts that are known for spreading disinformation and being anti-Semitic. So he's not helping his cause at all as being a reliable platform. A lot of people went to Meta's rival threads over the weekend, but that is still yet to show itself as a reliable news social platform because Instagram and meta, the leaders themselves have said that news is not something they want to prioritize. So this is a conflict that appears to be going on for weeks and months, and the fallout will be huge and global. Neil, let's move on to our next story.

Now, we know that some of you listening to this are coming off a long weekend, and three days is a long time in the world of business news. So we are going to do a little recap for anything you might have missed to get you back up to speed. Neil, you won the pregame competition of who can recite the most digits of pie. lead us off first with our story that we miss from the weekend. All right, so the leaves have just started to turn color, but the holiday shopping season has already kicked into high gear, not to stress you out or anything. Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, and other

big retailers are launching their holiday mega deals this week to help you knock out your gift buying way before Black Friday. Holiday shopping creeping earlier in the calendar has been happening 40 years, but COVID and the surge in e-commerce put an end to the idea that you should wait until after Thanksgiving for purchasing gifts. Another culprit of this shopping creep is, of course, Amazon, which has decided to do another prime day event for holiday shopping in October that starts today. And that, of course, means that everyone else has to follow in Amazon's footsteps and move their sales earlier in the year. Spreading out holiday purchases may be what consumers want, though, as budgets tighten up from inflation, student loan repayments, depleted savings reserves,

and everything else we've talked about on this podcast for weeks. It's such a vicious cycle. soon as one retailer, mainly Amazon, moves their prime day or their holiday sales period earlier, then the others have to react. So I swear that next year we're going to be doing our Christmas shopping in July because it's just this never-ending cycle of people moving ever earlier. All right, Neil, for our next story, I want to tell the people about the 23 and Me data breach that happened last week. More than 7 million customers had their data exposed with those of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry specifically targeted. The hackers then turned around and listed the data for sale asking between a dollar

and $10 per account from buyers. The hackers reportedly got access to the data by credential stuffing, which is when you get login information from one site or leak, then kind of bulk test them out on other sites to see what you can dig up. Neil's cyber attacks have been a theme in recent month, but anytime there's genetic data involved, it's definitely concerning. Yeah, the problem here, the reason they were, they, seem to be able to get so many accounts information without actually hacking 23 and Me

because 23Mee said, look, they didn't hack us. They used this credential stuffing method. Is this feature called DNA relatives, which allows you to share your genetic information to the public, essentially, to find any matches for relatives. So what makes 23Mee useful in some cases also exposes it to other security problems. So they were telling people also back up, Do you use two-factor authentication? And then also don't use the same password for all these sites. So, Neil, no more morning brew daily, one, two, three, four out of you. It did make me think of the fact that I use, you know, the same password for everything.

And that's how they were compromised. Okay, you might notice your local Walgreens is close today. And that is because hundreds of pharmacists and pharmacy staff have walked off the job in protest of working conditions. The protest has led to store closures in certain states. but the company said the majority of its 9,000 locations remain open for business. Still, the walkout is a pattern of pharmacy employees saying enough is enough. The Walgreens walkout was inspired by a similar action at CVS in Kansas City,

which prompted corporate staff to fly in and pledge to help out workers there. The problem pharmacy employees say is that they've been set up to fail. There isn't enough staff on hand to complete the many tasks they're asked to do, from administering COVID and flu vaccines to filing hundreds of prescriptions all while dealing with impatient and sometimes violent customers. They say they want more support from Walgreens, which acknowledges that staff are overwork. The most interesting part of this to me is that there's no formal union leader or anyone to kind of coordinate publicly this movement.

So they've been doing it on platforms like Reddit, Facebook. They're just organizing it themselves to kind of say, listen, people. We are the front lines of health care. They really are. We're not getting the support that we need or deserve. All right, Neil, the final story in our weekend wrap. segment is what I'm especially excited about because the men's world marathon record was broken this weekend in Chicago. Not only was it broken, it was demolished by over 30 seconds by a 23-year-old

from Kenya named Kelvin Kiptoom in just his third ever marathon. This was an insane run, Neil. He literally said after the race that the world record wasn't even on his mind going into it, but then he realized he was feeling good and almost ended up threatening that mythical two-hour barrier that has yet to be broken in a certified marathon. Neil, although it's cool to see a world record broken, I am sad because my favorite runner, the goat, Elliot Kipchogi, lost the record and at 38 years old. I don't know if he's getting it back any. Really?

You don't think so? Well, anyway, the number that stood out to me is to do a marathon in two hours and 18 seconds or 18 minutes? Two hours and 38 seconds, yeah. Two hours, 38 seconds is the fact that this is a four minute and 34 second mile. Unbelievable. Right? That is the pace.

I can't even fathom that. It is truly unfathable. The question that always gets asked whenever these world records are getting broken is how much are the shoes for the playing into play? And what was interesting is,

remember, two weeks ago, the women's world record was broken, and that was broken by a woman wearing these new $500 Adidas shoes that are single-use, $500 shoes because the foam is so delicate that as you, as soon as you run one race in them,

they say it doesn't perform. them the same anymore. So I was a little nervous that Adidas was going to take over and that these shoes were truly mythical. But these were run, the Kiptoam Rana in the same old Nikes that again, kind of set off this whole crazy. They still have a carbon fiber plate in them. But

there's always a shoe debate whenever these records are falling because they're falling literally like faster than ever. Okay. So when is someone going to break the two hour barrier? I'm literally thinking next year because this is his third marathon. He's only 23 years old. I'm going to say with 100% certainty it's going to be broken.

at some point. All right, you heard the man. You heard the man here because he's 23. Kipchuggi's 38 and he's been inching it down. So he's got a lot of years left. Truly amazing. All right, Neil, we have a quick break coming up, but stick around because we're talking

Nobel Prize in economics after this. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard.

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the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal, everything you need to study and play with Select Windows 11 PC. Seas eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.S. College PC. Yesterday, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Claudia Golden, a Harvard professor who has largely shaped our thinking on the gender pay gap and why it persists, even now as women have higher educational attainment than men in advanced economy.

With her award, Golden is just the third woman to be awarded the economics prize since 1969 and the first woman to win it solo. I follow a lot of economists on social media, and to a T, they said she was extremely deserving, and economists don't agree on anything. One of Golden's key insights from her work is to show that women's wages are persistently lower than men's, a 13% deficit currently, mainly because of the unequal dynamic in child rearing. Women's career prospects and earnings take a major hit because they are tasked with raising kids more than men are.

Here's an example. In one study, Golden and others looked at MBA students graduating from the University of Chicago from 1990 to 2006. Right after graduation, the researchers found no gender gap in employment for wages, but 10 years later, women had taken off an average of one year from work, while men had taken off only one and a half months. This implies that women take on the majority of child care duties and get a wage. penalty for doing so. Golden was instrumental in figuring out the gender pay gap. Yeah, she explained the last 200 years of women in the workforce, essentially. Another thing I found interesting from her research was that women's participation in the workforce has not ticked upwards consistently. It actually is a U-shaped graft. So right in literally starting 200 years ago, kind of in a more agrarian society, women's participation was very high in the workforce

because you just needed people to farm the fields and to subsist in an economy like that. But then it slowly ticked downwards as industrialization hit. And then it's now ticking back upwards. Now that contraceptives, expanding education and social norms have shifted a little bit. So it was, we kind of think about women's participation in the workforce as this thing that is always just growing. But it started very high, decreased dramatically, and then it's back up. And that's because the place of work changed. in when it was farming, the home and work were one and the same. When industrialization happened

and people started working factories, that meant women had to leave the house to go to work, and that is just untenable for many women. So that's why you saw labor force participation drop in the early 20th century. Now it's back up, and this July, actually, women's labor force participation in the U.S. hit a record high coming out of the pandemic. That could change now with this child Claire Cliff with $12 billion in funding from the U.S. government drying up to support child care services. And we know that this could be a big deal

because of Golden's research over the past 200 years and really identifying the key barriers for women's career prospects, which is really motherhood. Yeah, I am going to miss Nobel Prize season. It was very fun talking. We got to talk about Nobel Prize in medicine. Next year we'll hit mathematics

in some of the more deeper fields, but this was fun. and I'll remember it until next year. And they always get a call early. They always get a call at 4 a.m. And they're always sleeping. I don't know why they don't just wait until 7 or 8 a.m. when people are awake in the East Coast.

I do love those calls, though, when they find out, it is, it's such a good feeling. All right, Neil, it is Tuesday. So we're going to hit on, hit the people with a little bit of Toby's trends, where I, a young whippersnapper who can still touch his toes, educate you a wise millennial with some tightness in his hamstrings about a trend that I've had my eye on recently. And that trend is something called coffee badging. So as we all know, we live in an era where remote and hybrid work have settled in

as part of the reality of working in America. But what has also settled in as a reality is that 58% of hybrid workers admit to coffee badging, according to a survey from Aowel Labs, which is when you go into the office for a morning coffee, check in and earn whatever imaginary badge you might get for showing face, then dip out and go work from home for the rest of the day. Now, there's a variety of reasons for doing this. People say they are more productive from home or they want to beat whatever hellish commute awaits them. But whatever the reason for people doing it, I'm happy they are because it gives us a chance to discuss this new trend, Neil.

This is a trend that's actually happening. I mean, for quite quitting all that other stuff, like bare minimum Mondays, all of that other workplace jargon stuff that's come after COVID. I'm a little dubious about, I see this happen every day, and I've admittedly done this myself many times. If you don't have a long commute, I do want to kind of qualify this by saying you need a not a long commute for this. You need to be in a particular white collar job. It is not available. Coffee batching is not available to the majority of the workforce. But if you're a white collar worker who's been called in three days a week, you know, you can kind of just go in, show face, have a meeting or two, and then dip back home. I'm kind of also into the idea of reverse coffee badge.

though, which is when you start the day from home, kind of get most of your deep work done, then you commute into the office at a time where your commute is less bad, and then finish out the day there. I'm a big fan of changing locations for work. I don't like being in one place for too long, so that's why I'll go to a coffee shop or stay in the office or go home. So I'm into the idea of reverse coffee badging. So that maybe is our trend for next week. I think big tech companies do not like this. I mean, Bloomberg, for example, checks your badge when you badge in and badge out. So there are certain workforces that are clamping down on this. And not only checking that you come in three days a week as per requirements, but that you stay

there the whole time. Because I don't know, I just have friends who work at Bloomberg and they're like, you know exactly when someone checks in and when someone checks out. And I think a lot of other big tech companies are ramping up their surveillance to require more, you know, tapping of the badges so they have a record of when you're there. I think that's such a bad idea. No one wants to feel like they're, yeah, you're checking in for school or something like that, held against your will or something like that. I think that's a short-sided. Of course, it might increase productivity in the short run, but in the long run, I think you're alienating some of the trust aspects. So we support coffee badger's. Yeah, I'm all in. Okay, let's go finally to our week ahead section

where it's Tuesday, but we were, we didn't have a live show yesterday. So let's just preview what you can expect for the week ahead, because it is going to be busy. To start, let's skip ahead to Friday the 13th when Taylor Swift's era's tour movie hits theaters around the world. Even though it wasn't originally intended as a movie, it could be one of the biggest box office hits of the year considering that it has already sold a

staggering $100 million in advanced tickets globally. If Swift's movie meets expectations and shocker, I'm going to guess it will. It will cruise past Miley Cyrus's best of both worlds as the highest grossing concert film ever. Toby, how will we not got on tickets yet? Have you? And you just haven't

told me. Yeah, I haven't told you. I set it up with my other podcast house. But I just wanted to give a shout out to Miley Cyrus here. That is a great trivia of what was the previous highest grossing concert film ever. Would never in a million years have picked Miley Cyrus. She was big. Well, now it's just going to be the number two after this weekend. Also this week, earning season is back because if you miss when we talk about corporate earnings on this podcast, you're in luck because Pepsi, Delta, Domino's, and Big Banks headline the start of Q3 earnings season this week. the major themes will be how companies are responding to slowing inflation, a potential consumer

spending pullback, and yeah, we'll probably hear a lot about AI too. As far as this week's reports are concerned, let's see if Pepsi mentions weight loss drugs like Wagovi. A number of analysts have warned that snack companies could take a hit as these appetite suppressing treatments become more widely adopted. Yeah, we'll see how many times Ozempik slash Wiggoi is mentioned. But I also an interesting Domino's reports earnings next week, and I'm interested to see if their partnership with Uber Eats from

that was a big deal. See if they actually increased their footprint through that partnership. So get hype for earnings. Yeah. The SBF trial also enters its second week today,

and the start witness could take the stand as early as today. That would be Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of SBF's hedge fund Alameda Research and his former girlfriend, juicy. Her testimony could be damning for Sam.

Yeah, this thing is just getting into the good part. So I'm interested to see if we get any leaks or any quotes that come out of Caroline. What else we got this week? Sports fans can really have it all. The feast includes MLB playoffs, the WMBA Finals, Rugby World Cup, the Cricket World Cup,

and the start of the NHL regular season today. Plus football, of course. We're in the span where there's 50 straight days of football on every single day. But I was watching rugby this weekend. I turned on Samoa v. England, and I saw one of the coolest plays I've ever seen, and I might be hooked on rugby.

Rugby. Rugby World Cup is going on in France, kind of the prelude to the Olympics next year. I don't know how many are infected with bedbugs. Oh, boy, yeah. Okay. Also, ugly shoes hit Wall Street as Birkenstock plans to IPO on Wednesday at a valuation of up to 10 billion. What do you think Crox is thinking? I'm team Birkenstock, so maybe we should come in and wear our footwear of choice on the pod. I only wear just these sneakers every single day. Okay, on Saturday, people in the Western U.S. will be in for an astronomical treat because of a ring of fire solar

eclipse. What is the technical, is Ring of Fire the technical term for this? Or is there a... No way. This is just the way that scientists branded so we all pay attention. But a Solar Eclipse is very cool. Either way, I don't think they need to brand it as a ring of fire, but it will get more people out.

Also, on Saturday, SNL returns for its first show since the writer's strike began. Pete Davidson will host with musical guest Ice, Spice. Meanwhile, the writer's strike is officially over after guild members overwhelmingly approved their new contract with the Hollywood Studios. I love that S&L just went with old faithful people.

Old faithful. Yeah, can't go wrong. And Ice Spice, who's a new new faithful. Probably the summer, you know, the non-Bioncé Taylor Swift music star of the summer. Okay, that is a wrap on today's show. Hope you have a great Tuesday and do something special for 1010. As always, please write us at

Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Vela's and Raymond Lou are associate producers. Euchenoa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Now that I think about it, hair and makeup is the ultimate coffee badger. Devon Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's

run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19, Tickets on sale now at yamava theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U-N. Must be 21 to enter.