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Quest Means Business

Internet Vulnerabilities Exposed By Outages, Cybercrime; Colonial Pipeline CEO Testifies Before U.S. Senate Committee; Bitcoin Prices Plunge After U.S. Accesses Hacker's Wallet; Aviation's Roller Coaster Year; Uneven Reopenings As Global Tourism Makes Its Return. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired June 08, 2021 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:00:17]

PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST: So, while you were trying to figure out what the heck happened to the internet, the Dow recovered from a near

200-point fall. I want you to take a look at that big board right now. This is not essentially the story, the turnaround is. The story here, we could

be close to a record high in this hour on the S&P.

Those are the markets, and these are the main events.

Break the internet, I was saying. A major website outage has the world hitting refresh out of frustration.

The CEO of Colonial Pipeline admits to paying off hackers without knowing what they've stolen.

And there is a new set of meme stocks, you know it, they're on the menu, now Reddit traders are turning to fast food companies.

Live from the New York Stock Exchange, it is Tuesday, the 8th of June, I'm Paula Newton, and this is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.

And good evening. Tonight, we are getting two reminders of just how vulnerable an interconnected world has become to internet outages and

cybercrime disruptions. First, to Washington. The CEO of Colonial Pipeline defended his company's ransom payment to hackers. He told U.S. senators

that he had to put the company's and the country's interest first in order to keep those fuel supplies flowing along the East Coast.

Earlier Tuesday, Fastly, a little known company whose Cloud services help deliver internet content, suffered a widespread failure. Now, that shutdown

really hit some of the world's most visited websites and that includes some government sites.

Fastly is meant to make the internet faster, ironically. Today, it certainly slowed the whole thing down. Let's say this was on the to-do list

for Tuesday, maybe you planned to check the news, "The Financial Times," BBC, "New York Times," CNN all down.

That song you wanted to hear probably wasn't available for streaming, Spotify, Twitch, Hulu, HBO Max, all off line, and it's going to be 27

degrees this weekend in London. You will need a new swimsuit, Stipe, which processes payments for online stores couldn't take your order.

Okay, so, you get the picture here. The frustration is making you very hungry. Time to order lunch. Right, good try, good luck with that.

Deliveroo, the network was unavailable. More critically, and this is important here, people 25 to 29 years old finally became eligible in the

U.K. for those COVID vaccines. You're out of luck again. The British government's website went down so you couldn't book that appointment.

Brian Stelter is here for us in New York. Brian, I don't want to ever have to remind you about the real world implications for this. You follow it so

closely. You know, you pointed out that this outage was so widespread that there was this quick ripple effect like the one we just pointed out there.

It might be largely over now, but what's the collateral damage here?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Well, it feels like this is happening more often. That's because it is happening more often.

This was one of the most widespread outages we've ever seen because it took down everything from Hulu and HBO Max to Spotify and CNN, and the BBC. And

as you were saying, even government websites. This was also notable because it was not restricted to one part of the world. This was affecting users in

Europe and the United States, in parts of Asia and Africa, all at the same time.

Essentially, what happened is Fastly installed a bad software update and its bad software update then spread and had that ripple effect. Originally,

the reason why you have these Content Delivery Networks like Fastly that are close physically to people's homes and access points is to speed up the

internet, it so make webpages and songs and everything play faster on your phones and your computers.

But when it goes down, it goes down hard, and that's what we saw earlier today.

It's a reminder that there are only a small number of these Cloud computing firms that are keeping essentially the entire internet online. When I say

that, I mean the entire consumer internet. Of course, there are lots of different redundancies, lots of different parts of the internet, but when

you think about these major players, whether it is Hulu or Spotify or Reddit, all of these big companies, they rely on the same handful of firms.

So in the words of recode, it is both the scale today and the frequency of these outages that is what is worrisome.

NEWTON: Yes, absolutely. I want to just point out beyond everything you couldn't get done, right, this did affect the vaccine rollout in the U.K.,

and of course, that is something that people just can't afford, especially given what's going on right now. Now, unequivocally, I'm saying, I am sure

you'd agree this proves the internet is infrastructure, and it's not really safeguarded nearly as well as it should be, right?

[15:05:01]

STELTER: Indeed, and in this case, there is no evidence this was a cyberattack, a case of ransomware. This seems of just been the company that

made -- with a big hiccup that everybody then heard and it was like the loudest hiccup around the world.

NEWTON: Right, but doesn't it makes me nervous? It makes me nervous, Brian. Doesn't that make you nervous? You said, it was like a software update.

Think about that.

STELTER: Yes, because of all of the scrambling in so many corners. Here at CNN, we started trying to figure out how do we get news onto the website?

How do we share it on social media?

You know, you had newsrooms scrambling, you had consumer entertainment companies scrambling and governments scrambling because when your app, when

your website suddenly goes down, the viewers at home, you know, we have no idea what's going wrong. You have to wait to actually find out. Sometimes,

you might assume the worst.

In this case, it seemed like it was not the worst-case scenario, but it is a reminder of how vulnerable this infrastructure is.

NEWTON: Yes, and although it was brief, it definitely affected markets even for a small amount of time. Brian, appreciate you staying on top of this.

Good to see you.

Now, the head of Colonial Pipeline is defending his company's response to a cyberattack. This was the cyberattack that disrupted, you'll remember those

U.S. gas supplies. CEO, Joseph Blount appeared on Capitol Hill one day after U.S. officials said they recovered $2.3 million, roughly half of his

company's ransom payment.

Now, this CEO was unapologetic. He told U.S. Senators that he made the right call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH BLOUNT, CEO, COLONIAL PIPELINE: I made the decision to pay, and I made the decision to keep the information about the payment as confidential

as possible. It was the hardest decision I've made in my 39 years in the energy industry, and I know how critical our pipeline is to the country,

and I put the interests of the country first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEWTON: CNN senior U.S. correspondent, Alex Marquardt joins us now from Washington. I am glad to be able to revisit this with you, Alex. We had the

press conference yesterday of them talking about how they were able to recover this.

You know, in terms of what happened, if we can just focus on that for a minute, how was the U.S. government able to do this and actually recover

some of that ransom?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, in their words, Paula, they followed the money and it was because of the fact that

Joseph Blount and his company, Colonial, reached out very early on to the Department of Justice and to the F.B.I.

We should note that despite the fact -- or really the reason that you're hearing the CEO there giving that full-throated defense of the payment of

this $4.4 million ransom in Bitcoin is because he knows that this is a controversial topic. He knows that the guidance from the U.S. government is

don't pay these ransoms.

But as he says, and as many other company heads say, they have to pay these ransoms to get their operations back up and running. In this case, to get

that gas flowing through those pipelines again because they had had days of outages. They had had days of long lines up and down the East Coast at

different gas stations.

But after that ransom that paid last month, almost exactly a month ago, they did go to the F.B.I., and as well as the Department of Justice and

Federal investigators were able to track that Bitcoin payment to a cryptocurrency wallet. We still don't know how the F.B.I. got inside that

wallet, but they were able to and they were able to take back most of the Bitcoins that had been paid to that Russian hacking group, Darkside.

The value of the Bitcoins, obviously, Paula you know very well, changing all the time. So, the value they got back was around $2.3 million, still

more than half of the original value. So, that is a good news story.

Paula, as we heard, this was, you know, Joseph Blount making no apologies for making this payment, saying that it was, again, one of the toughest

decisions of his career, and this is a little bit more of what he had to say today in that hearing with the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLOUNT: I believe with all my heart it was the right choice to make. But I want to respect those who see this issue differently.

I also now state publicly that we quietly and quickly worked with the law enforcement in this matter from the start, which may have helped lead to

the substantial recovery of funds announced by the D.O.J. this week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: So, Blount was also grilled about the company's current cybersecurity that is in place, and he admitted that despite spending $200

million over the past five years to fortify their defenses that they did not have a plan in place for ransomware attacks. And that is something

that's very concerning, Paula.

This is obviously a very basic part of cybersecurity defense, particularly when, as we've seen just in the past few weeks, that ransomware attacks are

very much on the rise -- Paula.

NEWTON: Yes, I mean, the Justice Department went a long way in trying to say, look, companies have to report this. And, yet, what's your opinion? I

mean, I'd be willing to bet other CEOs were kind of cheering him on in the background saying, yes, this is the predicament in which we find ourselves.

You know, something happens in your neighborhood, you call 911, you call police or wherever you are in the world, you call authorities, who do you

call when this happens, especially if you're a small to medium-sized company?

[15:10:10]

MARQUARDT: Well, the D.O.J. and the Biden administration really are saying, "call us." You have to call the F.B.I., if you can, call the Department of

Homeland Security, get the ball rolling there. They are saying that because so often, these organizations, whether it's small, medium, or large, will

pay the ransoms without alerting anybody.

So in that case, the authorities don't learn anything about the attackers, they don't see where that money goes. So at the very least, they want to be

able to track and disrupt these networks.

We heard yesterday from the Department of Justice, they didn't criticize Colonial for paying this ransom. In fact, they praised them for telling

them so quickly. But it is true that the Biden administration and the U.S. government are in a very tough spot here, both telling companies, tell us

when you make these payments, but also please don't make these payments.

So, they have to come up with a difficult solution to try to prevent companies and organizations, small to big, from not paying these ransoms,

but also being able to operate -- Paula.

NEWTON: Yes, and that's a perfect intro to our next guest. Alex there for us in Washington, appreciate it.

Theresa Payton, meantime was the White House Chief Information Officer for former President George W. Bush. She is now CEO of Fortalice Solutions and

she joins us now from Charlotte, North Carolina via Skype.

A good person to talk to, I know when you were in office perhaps, this sort of thing was in its infancy. You point out that, look, you need the three

R's -- resiliency, reliability, recoverability. I would add redundancy to that, the fact that when you have one system and it is rendered impotent,

you need to be able to backtrack and go to another.

How do you interpret first off, happened yesterday with the Department of Justice saying that they were able to recover some of that ransom?

THERESA PAYTON, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER FOR FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes. I think it's fantastic and it is a partial win in the

win column for the good guys that some of that money was clawed back. It's certainly a small percentage of the overall money that was taken from

companies that were victims of the Darkside syndicate over the course of the span of their lifetime, which was really late summer of 2020.

So, in less than a year, they accomplished quite a treasure chest doing the same thing to other organizations that they did to Colonial Pipeline.

I love the fact that they basically followed the money, which is not easy to do. I've worked on these cryptocurrency cases in the past where you try

to follow the money, and you just have to follow every single digital track and do your link analysis and sometimes you get lucky and the criminals

make a mistake, and that leads you to figuring out who owned the wallet or potentially a way to get into the wallet.

But you're right. The whole redundancy conversation needs to happen, and it can't just be that you create backups where the cybercriminals can't get

access to them. You have to create backups that are actually stored out of band because what we're seeing in the cases that we have worked at

Fortalice is the cyber criminals study you, they know where your backups are.

They take data that they know is valuable to you, they steal it, they lock up your backups, then they lock up your main systems. Then they tell you

you're a victim.

NEWTON: Yes. It is incredible the level of sophistication and the fact that companies have not been able to keep up. You know, you identified

ransomware. As you said, the carbon monoxide really, it is poison in the system. It's stealthy, it's silent, and it's deadly. What do you think the

best course of action is now?

I mean, I know the Biden administration is going ahead with a task force, but this is a global problem.

PAYTON: It is a global problem. You hit the nail on the head, and it is an all of the above type of answer here. We need international courts. We need

to get together with other countries. I'm hoping that President Biden in every single conversation that he has while he is overseas talks about an

attack against one company and one country is an attack against all of us, and that countries need to come together. We need an international accord

to basically come up with a way to combat and defend against this.

Secondly, for businesses, we have to stop saying to businesses you're on your own, you're your own cavalry right now, and that when they are a

victim, you should do more and you should do better.

Yes, we all need to do more and do better, but we need to continue to put into place innovative creative out-of-the-box thinking around solving for

this problem. Wouldn't it be incredible if a company like Colonial Pipeline, should they fall prey to an attack like this, if they could go to

a rapid response team that says, you know what, I'm going to create decryptor keys for you -- don't pay, give me a couple of days, I have the

best and the brightest minds on this and I'll give you the de-encryption key and we'll figure things out on the back end.

[15:15:08]

PAYTON: And then, lastly, I'm finding it very disturbing as I talk to victims of ransomware, one of the things that they are confiding in us in

is, one, they're being told that often times paying ransom is considered cheaper than going through a recovery effort. So, they are being encouraged

to pay the ransom.

Secondly, they are so afraid of the legal costs from the lawsuits, the penalties, the regulations, the oversight that they are being encouraged by

both internal and external counsel that paying the ransom when there is extortion involved about leaking the data may be cheaper for them than the

legal battles they'll face after the fact.

I find this highly objectionable, and I think it says that we have to change our thinking and make it less attractive to want to pay, not have

companies backed into a corner feeling like it's their only option.

NEWTON: Yes, and if you wonder if the threat of punitive damages or something like that would be something that would tell companies, look,

that CEO was compelling, though, from Colonial Pipeline. Right? I mean, he said, what did you expect me to do? The infrastructure was crumbling on the

East Coast. It is completely seized up.

PAYTON: Yes, and there is a real challenge because we heard the commitment to security spending. But many organizations, Colonial Pipeline is not

alone, they have a vast amount of technical debt. They have systems that need to be updated or retired. And in this case, you know, the forensics is

still ongoing.

But in this case, it appears that a legacy remote access protocol was part of the downfall of Colonial Pipeline to this ransomware syndicate known as

Darkside.

NEWTON: And it raises a good question internally in these companies as we've seen disclosed how much are they actually paying to update their

systems and how much is that going into their cost structure. Fascinating conversation, Theresa Payton, for us, I really appreciate it. Thanks.

PAYTON: Thanks for having me.

NEWTON: Now, speaking of digital currencies, they are suffering a brutal selloff after the U.S. government revealed, as we were just saying that it

was able to access one of the Colonial Pipeline hacker's Bitcoin wallets.

Now, the price of Bitcoin as you will see here is down about 1,350 as you'll see it down there, about four percent, but it was down more than 11

percent at one point Tuesday morning.

Paul La Monica is here. Paul, really good to see you. I haven't seen you in a while, and look, we're talking again about Bitcoin. Oh, my goodness, how

times have changed.

PAUL LA MONICA, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Times have changed.

NEWTON: Do you think that it made the investors and Bitcoin a little twitchy thinking, ha, long arm of the law reaching into this wallet as

well?

LA MONICA: I mean, I think it is possibly, Paula. I mean, you have to keep in mind that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies just suffered a horrific

month of May where prices plunged dramatically. And you have the kind of Elon Musk saying he loves crypto, he hates crypto sort of drama going on.

And, I think, also, you can't rule out the comments from former President Trump, you know, last night where he talked about not liking Bitcoin

compared to the U.S. dollar. And you know, like I joked on "First Move" with Julia Chatterley this morning, if you close your eyes, you didn't know

it was President Trump saying that, you could have thought it was Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger because those are two investing legends who have

also been bashing Bitcoin.

So, I do think the Colonial Pipeline aspect is a part of the bad news for Bitcoin, but let's be honest, most people that are using Bitcoin for

legitimate and legal means don't have to worry about the government reaching into their wallets because presumably they are using Bitcoin not

to hack the energy infrastructure of the United States of America.

NEWTON: Yes, it's going to be really interesting developments though as we go forward, especially given the fact that they did crack the wallet and

what kind of preventive measures in that.

Okay, one thing I have not spoken to you about because it wasn't a thing the last time you and I spoke, retail investors on Wall Street, again, all

over these meme stocks. I mean, Wendy's, who knew, Paul, explain all of this to us. I mean, what could be next?

LA MONICA: Yes. Wendy's is a fascinating addition to the meme stock club companies like AMC and GameStop because Wendy's is not a company that is

heavily shorted, so you don't necessarily have this David versus Goliath retail investors trying to squeeze the big bad hedge funds.

In fact, you know, you have a top hedge fund with Nelson Peltz being the largest shareholder of Wendy's, so here, it just seems to be a coordinated

effort to try and get that stock to move higher because the combination of institutions and Peltz owning such a big portion of that stock, there's a

small float. So, you could have retail investors buying up what little is left and driving the price higher and that seems to be what this

coordinated effort is all about.

NEWTON: Yes, it just leaves you wondering, right, who is going to be next, and what is next up with this?

Paul, good to see you, I am sure I'll see you again in the next couple of weeks. I appreciate it.

LA MONICA: Thank you.

NEWTON: Now, coming up, manta rays have become a symbol of ocean health in Peru. "Call to Earth" is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:22:58]

NEWTON: Nature lovers around the world are celebrating World Oceans Day today. Now, throughout this entire week at CNN, we are marking this

occasion with a cluster of content about our Blue Planet.

I'm dressed appropriately today, and so was the stock exchange.

Today's "Call to Earth" is a rallying cry from Rolex Awards laureate, Kerstin Forsberg, a champion of manta rays in her native Peru. This is just

stunning. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KERSTIN FORSBERG, ROLEX AWARDS LAUREATE: There are many reasons why we should protect the ocean. We're talking about 70 percent of our planet's

surface and over 95 percent of where there can be life. So, it's really the most important part of our planet.

My name is Kerstin Forsberg, I'm a marine scientist and conservationist and I work to protect giant manta rays in my homeland of Peru.

In the past, they were not protected, they were being harvested, and many times even while citizens didn't even know that giant manta rays existed in

Peru.

Manta rays typically have small population sizes. We were talking about a species that has really been jeopardized by this continuous

overexploitation.

When we were able to secure national protection for giant manta rays, that's what makes me feel like an achievement, once you start creating

those changes.

[15:25:09]

FORSBERG: What Planeta Oceano does is we really bring people together. We empower people to conserve marine environments.

When I grew up, I wasn't taught about the ocean as much as I should have been in school. And, really as I moved forward in my career and really

recognizing how this issue was also going on worldwide, there is still so much to do to engage ocean issues within the curriculum within classrooms.

It's not enough to just research or educate. You need to think about creative solutions that can support livelihoods of these impoverished

communities.

We've been working with fishermen to build manta ray ecotourism and this serves not just as a way for fishermen to contribute to conservation, but

also to develop additional income that is really benefitting them and their communities. There's fishermen that perhaps in the past harvested giant

mantas, but that now go out with us to study them.

They don't throw plastic bags in the water anymore. If they see a plastic bag in the water they'll pick it up and they will bring it back to coast.

They will talk about sustainable fisheries and how they can't fish juvenile fish, for example.

You start seeing changes in behavior thanks to this, one flagship species that has created even more care for the environment.

For me, it's always about looking at those connections with the people, meeting with the teachers, seeing a smile on a child's face, working with

local volunteers, that's what gives me most hope really.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: And Kerstin Forsberg whom you saw there is guest editor of the "Call to Earth's" webpage until the end of July. Now, she is helping us to

continue showcasing ocean-related stories as part of the initiative right here at CNN.

Now, let us know what you're doing to answer the call with the #CallToEarth.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:30:00]

(MUSIC PLAYING)

NEWTON (voice-over): The CEO of Airbus says airlines have managed to survive, quote, "a life-threatening situation" during the pandemic. Now he

said the entire industry has been on a roller coaster as carriers try to regin (ph) their orders for planes. Richard spoke to him ahead of this

week's Airlines for Europe summit and asked him how hard it's been to really manage his way through that chaos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUILLAUME FAURY, CEO, AIRBUS: It's been a roller coaster for the industry, for the OEMs (ph) as well for the suppliers. We were all together in a very

steep combat (ph) in '18, '19, beginning of 2020.

Then we had to do a very fast and challenging rundown (ph) being at a much lower rate than we were before and all the adaptation that comes with it.

And now we have to ramp up again.

And we think it's a lot about anticipation, about planning, about scheduling, onboarding, recruiting people, training and be ready on time.

That's the reason why we have tried to be as transparent as we can moving forward, giving indication of what we think will happen.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: I know that you've worked with airlines rescheduling delivery dates, particularly on the wide-bodied

equipment.

But how many airlines have either gone bust and left you with planes or have simply said, I'm not taking them, do what you like?

FAURY: We've had many, many different situations, depending on the airlines and also, other times, it's fair to say that the airlines have been and are

in a very difficult environment. It's sometimes life-threatening for the airlines.

But I would say, generally speaking, we're able to find solutions, to sit down, to look at the situation as it is and work hard to find outcomes that

are more manageable for all parties. But it's been a very difficult bit of time and it continues to be and it takes a lot of work, a lot of

negotiation, a lot of creativity as well to find a solution that can work.

QUEST: It reminds me of the old joke about, I owe the bank 500; that's my problem. I owe the bank 50 million; that's the bank's problem.

An airline that's got a large order book with you, there is a vested interest on both sides to sort that out, isn't there?

Nobody wants to push the other to the brink.

FAURY: That's right. But what we have observed as well is the trust of the majority if not all airlines that there will be a recovery, that we need

modern planes moving forward, that it will be a tough competition in the market.

And to be equipped to compete, they need planes. And, therefore, as I have said already a couple of times before, we thought entering into the

pandemic, there would be more cancelations than what we have actually observed.

QUEST: In this case, we also take the opportunity to look at the environment. I know you have very ambitious plans where the environment's

concerned.

How far have those plans had to be adjourned, not canceled but just put off, delayed, moved to the future, while you're dealing with the crisis?

Net zero, everybody's working towards it and aviation continues to be one of the most criticized sectors.

FAURY: I believe and the team around me believes that this mega trend of environment, global warming and the pressure that comes on many industries,

including aviation, is very strong. It will not slow down and we have not reduced our ambitions and our speed when it comes to environments, to net

zero, to the decarbonation of aviation.

So we have trimmed a lot of projects. We have reduced our capex, our expenses. But on R&T side, on the technologies, we have maintained the

pace.

[15:35:00]

QUEST: The crisis, what have you learned about yourself and the way you manage your company?

Because I was talking to Carson Spohr recently and I talked to Ed Bastion and they were both telling me that there were days when they woke up, to

see the money flowing out and they said that there was an existential moment, in their cases, for the company. And they had to draw upon their

own resources.

So what have you learned about yourself?

Never mind your team, yourself?

FAURY: I would say I was part of the team. And we have learned that we can do more than what we think. And probably in crisis, under pressure, when

the situation is really complex, we, I, we can do more than what we think.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: And a lot of companies are going to have to do more. I want you to take note. It is about 3:35 Eastern here in New York City. It is 10:35 time

in Paris. You see it there.

Remember the days you could leave New York, fly over, you'd be in Paris in the morning?

Those days may not be far away. In a few hours from now, the world's most visited country will welcome tourists again, back from those destinations

that are on their so-called green and orange lists.

Now the Eiffel Tower, however, this is key, will not open until next month. Now it's part of a bigger post-COVID tourism challenge. In many places, you

can see the sites from a tour bus but you can't actually go inside yet, as several popular spots will be closed, even longer than the Eiffel Tower.

The re-openings have been uneven right around the world while all UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Europe and North America are at least partially

open to the public. A majority of them in Asia are still closed.

Enrique Ybarra, the founder and president and CEO of City Sightseeing from joins me from Seville, Spain.

Thanks so much for being here. It is nice to see France, at least for one, is opening. Hopefully, many capitals around the world to follow. This could

still be an existential crisis for you. You have said you guys are really the masters of reinvention.

How are you doing it?

ENRIQUE YBARRA, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CITY SIGHTSEEING: (INAUDIBLE). OK, good evening here from Seville. Yes, of course, we see every crisis as an

opportunity. We lived already through three crises.

The first one actually was six months after we founded the company in 1992. And actually we created from that City Sightseeing. We passed by the crisis

in 2008, 2014, the financial crisis. And this crisis, of course, we see opportunities. Know we're going to see new travelers. We're going to see

new ways and new demand from the travelers.

And that's what makes it a little bit different from what it was before.

NEWTON: What's interesting here, though, is the fact that you are trying to engage tourism and those local tourists. Let's face the facts. At worst,

you can't get to these countries anymore. And at best, it's a hassle to actually be the kind of tourist that all of us were prior to 2020.

It seems to me the time to engage people locally might be a hard sell.

YBARRA: Actually, there are some destinations where we've been able to develop our service, to manage our service. Actually we targeted locals

because there was not international travel, not even domestic travel, because in a lot of the country, there was really no restrictions.

But we have seen the people in their own cities traveling, people enjoying those activities and seeing the monuments that they never did before. But

this time they don't have the opportunity to travel, other places in the country don't have roads, they really enjoy.

And we really got very good feedback from travelers and we will keep targeting to domestic travel, local travel in their own cities.

NEWTON: You know, some people have found being on your buses as we see there a great experience. But there have been complaints inside

communities. You've talked a lot before about the trends, people who want it to be contactless.

It's clear that even local people in a lot of these cities, the ones that are overrun and the environment is a problem right now. They're not sure if

this is the way that these cities should be seen.

YBARRA: Actually, yes, that happens. But of course, the travel industry is evolving all the time. A big part and a big trend in the travel industry,

of course, our company have that, not only as an appendix of the business case or budget (ph) every year.

[15:30:00]

YBARRA: Now it's in the center of the business case and development of the company. Actually, we are already involved in projects, for example, with

hydrogen because we see that the future of heavy vehicles, it will be with hydrogen and not electricity.

So we want to be leading that market. That's why we are starting now to research and be involved in projects like that.

NEWTON: OK, it will be interesting to see around the world how many tourists actually are back. I appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

(CROSSTALK)

NEWTON: And that is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS. I'll be back at the top of the hour as we make a dash for the closing bell. Up next, though, "CONNECTING

AFRICA."

END