Marketplace Tech

The National Defense Authorization Act specifies the budget every year for the Department of Defense. The House and Senate have each passed different versions of it. One major difference between the two: the House version includes funding for the militarization of space through a new military branch called the Space Corps. Molly Wood talks with Marketplace's Kimberly Adams about what it might look like.

Almost 40 percent of American households have some kind of credit card debt. A startup called Affirm wants to provide an alternative. It partners with stores to offer loans for when you make a big purchase, like a mattress or a bike. Affirm was started by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with him about the project and his own early borrowing mistakes.

Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple are four of tech’s most powerful brands. But have they become too powerful? And is regulation the only way to stop them? Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, about how these companies grew to global dominance and our love-hate relationship with them.

By now we are all very aware of the Amazon effect: how Amazon is changing the retail industry. But it’s reaching businesses you may not expect. One is high-end hair salons, which used to make big profits from selling products like luxury shampoo and styling sprays. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood looks into how online sellers have cut into the business of hair.

The tech industry has a diversity problem. Silicon Valley has had a wave of sexual harassment scandals in recent months. And only 18 percent of computer graduates nationwide are women. But at Harvey Mudd College, women make up half of all computer grads. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks to Harvey Mudd President Maria Klawe about how we got here and what we need to do to close the diversity gap.

There is a lot of technology created for use in space that also finds applications here on Earth. One is radar technology that can hear human heartbeats underneath rock and dust. It’s being used to search for survivors after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico City last week. Tech like this gets licensed to private companies through a NASA spinoff program. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks to Dan Lockney, who leads the Technology Transfer Program.

Politicians, the public and regulators are all starting to see the power of social media companies. Particularly Facebook. That company said last week it would give Congress thousands of political ads linked to a possible Russian propaganda campaign. Facebook will also update its ad technology to try to keep political advertising in check. But it's looking more and more like Facebook's days of sell first, apologize later could be coming to an end. We talk about the social pressure on Facebook to change.

There are whole new systems of money being traded in the digital world. Companies can create their own cryptocurrency and sell it to the public in an initial coin offering. But these offerings are unregulated and risky. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks to Kevin Werbach from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School about how initial coin offerings work.

As the demand for online retail grows, so do warehouse and fulfillment centers. But most of us who order stuff online don’t actually know what goes into getting a product off a shelf, into a box and to our door. On today’s episode of Marketplace Tech, we follow Veronica Mena, a warehouse supervisor for the online store Boxed to see what goes into packing your shipments of bulk toilet paper and how automation is changing the industry.

Some 143 million people had their personal information stolen in the Equifax data breach. And that has a lot of us asking: How did we get here? Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks to Nancy Kim, who teaches internet studies at California Western School of Law, about why regulating data collection is so hard. And we hear from a few New Yorkers about their data security worries — or lack of them.