Security push to ‘blow way past’ its $1.5 trillion target
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told members of the WSJ CEO Council that cyber is now “our biggest risk by far” — a threat he said he wrote about this year, weeks before an incident he referred to as “Mythos.” He made the remarks during a sit-down at the bank’s new Manhattan headquarters that was captured for this week’s episode of “WSJ Leadership Institute presents: Leaders” and reported by Alan Murray, the institute’s president.
Murray wrote that the conversation took place on the 50th floor of the new building, “backed by a stunning view of Manhattan,” and marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of Dimon’s $1.5 trillion, 10-year Security and Resilience Initiative. He noted that Dimon “routinely ranks as one of the CEOs most admired by other top CEOs, so all were interested in his thoughts on a range of topics.”
Dimon said the initiative’s scope had expanded since its launch. “The purpose is security, resiliency, and it’s breadth has just gotten bigger. We’ll blow way past that trillion and a half dollars,” he said. “We should have done this way before. China did. China was very strategic.” A “Keep reading” line in the report pointed to related coverage headlined “Jamie Dimon’s National-Security Pledge Finances $230 Billion in First Year.”
Asked about the biggest geopolitical threats, Dimon named wars and cyber. “One is that these wars develop in a way that you don’t expect and they can cause huge disruption to populations, to who allies with who, and obviously to the world economy,” he said of the first. Of cyber, he said: “The second is cyber…I wrote about cyber this year. I said about cyber, and I meant it, it’s our biggest risk. And that was a couple of weeks before Mythos. And now it is our biggest risk by far.”
Dimon opened the conversation with the theme of patriotism, pointing to the flag flying in the lobby of JPMorgan Chase’s monumental new New York skyscraper. “I salute that every morning,” he said. The building also has a bar on its 57th floor known as the Patriot’s Bar, where Dimon talked with pride about some of the flags hanging in the bar. “One of the flags is from the top of Pointe du Hoc, June 6th, 1944,” he said. “There are flags from Apollo missions, from Vietnam, from the Revolutionary War. A black regiment…that I think was one of the first fighting regiments that actually helped take Richmond.”
Dimon described a conversation with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani built around their families’ immigrant histories. “I said, ‘Mr. Mayor, I just want you to know that my grandparents, who were Greek immigrants, who didn’t finish high school, three of them came here right after World War I. And I salute that flag every day. My grandparents came for the same reason your parents came—this country and its freedoms,’” Dimon said. He added that he told the mayor “exactly what I think about stuff, including I am against racism of any type, including anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-whatever you want to call it.”
Dimon also recounted his decision years ago, when Trump became president, to join “that business council thing.” He said his daughter Julia wrote him “a long letter, beautiful, elegant, thoughtful…” that posed the question “How could you, Dad?” and ended with the quote from Martin Luther King from the Birmingham jail. Dimon said his wife and other two daughters responded: “Then my other two daughters and my wife said, ‘Ditto and don’t come home for dinner.’” He said he wrote back: “You know, Julia, you got everything right except for one thing.” When she asked what that was, Dimon said he answered: “The conclusion. Martin Luther King would have gone to the White House every day to further what he thought was in the interest of his goals and values.”
Asked whether he is sure he will not run for president, Dimon said: “Pretty sure. I love what I do. I have a real job. I can affect policy from here. …I’d have to give this up for a quixotic thing that I couldn’t possibly win.”
Dimon described his approach to the job in personal terms. “I work hard and I’m relentless. The people in this room know that. I just don’t let go and I love it. And I have the energy for it. …It has purpose for me. When I grew up, the values were: work hard, have purpose,” he said.
On the leadership qualities he considers most important, Dimon stressed emotional intelligence. “I think the real one for leadership is the EQ, various EQs. And EQs are a funny one. Do people trust you? [Some] people just don’t like having the room. They bulls—. They’re always looking around. Who’s saying what to who? How can they get away with it? Do you have grit to do the right thing when it’s tough? And do you deal with a tough issue? Do you put the dead cats on the table? Do you have a little heart? People don’t want to work for people who are a—or mistreat people,” he said.
Asked about the biggest mistake he has made as CEO, Dimon said it is “always people mistakes.” “It’s always people mistakes … and it takes a while to figure it out. The torture goes on for a while. Then you’ve got to replace them and that is usually a big step back,” he said.
Dimon named two peers he admires. “There are lots I admire. I think Doug McMillon did a great job at Walmart. I think Frank Blake did a great job at Home Depot,” he said.
The report also carries a quote from Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster on the future of investing advice in the age of AI: “I think the vast majority will continue to want the combination of people and technology.”
On whether the market’s AI-fueled boom will become a bust, Dimon said a downturn will eventually arrive, driven by causes that cannot be predicted in advance. “Eventually there’ll be a downturn. Eventually it’ll be driven by a confluence of events that today you can’t guess what they are. You can throw stuff on the wall and make believe you know,” he said. “We’re prepared for all that so we can serve our companies, so we can serve our communities, so we can serve our country.”