Jamie Dimon forms adviser supergroup for $1.5 trillion American resiliency pledge
Jeff Bezos and Condoleezza Rice are part of new group advising JPMorgan on its plans to buttress defense and technology industries.
Jamie Dimon wants to protect America from potential foreign adversaries. He is assembling a group of national titans and close friends, from Jeff Bezos to Condoleezza Rice, to help him get it ready.
The head of JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank, announced a $1.5 trillion initiative focused on national security in October, meant to bolster American self-sufficiency for critical technologies including rare earths and artificial intelligence.
On Monday, Dimon said he had poached one of Warren Buffett’s handpicked investors, Todd Combs, to run a $10 billion fund that will invest JPMorgan’s own money in companies that will help buttress American supply chains and promote technological innovation.
And he brought together a who’s who of business leaders, politicians and generals to advise the bank on the “Security and Resiliency Initiative." That advisory group gets Dimon a roundtable of executives from the technology and defense industries, giving him more insight into where to invest and strengthening ties for his $4.6 trillion bank at the same time.
Dimon has become increasingly focused on global politics since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, regularly warning that Western democracy has to wake up. He has been raising concerns about production of everything from bombs to rare earths to penicillin, saying manufacturing is lagging behind and an investment plan is needed.
“National security is critical, not just for us, but for a lot of countries," Dimon told Fox host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “If you had any illusion the world would be peaceful in our lives…it was shattered."
The chief executive has long looked to play a corporate-statesman role as the most famous U.S. banker. The new national-security initiative moves him closer to replicating the work of his bank’s namesake, the Morgans, who helped bring together robber barons and Gilded Age financiers to backstop America’s industrial revolution and stave off financial crises.
JPMorgan’s first investment through the 10-year security initiative was announced in October, a $75 million deal to acquire a 3% stake in mining company Perpetua Resources. Perpetua is excavating a mine in Idaho that, once operational, will be the only domestic reserve of the critical mineral antimony.
The compound is used to harden bullets and strengthen armor-penetrating projectiles. About 60% of the world’s antimony is mined in China, which put heavy restrictions on its export in response to trade restrictions from the U.S.
The ultimate impact of the $1.5 trillion plan will be unclear for years. When JPMorgan announced the national-security initiative, it acknowledged that it had already forecast that it would finance roughly $1 trillion of national-security-related business on behalf of its clients. The initiative essentially amounted to a pledge to do $500 billion more.
Some earlier Dimon efforts on big proclamations haven’t panned out. In 2021, the bank launched a similar $2.5 trillion initiative that was supposed to support the evolution to a greener economy. The bank doesn’t talk about that much anymore. And an attempt by Dimon, Bezos and Buffett (with Combs) to shake up the national healthcare system flopped.
JPMorgan is pledging to invest $10 billion of its own capital as part of the plan, which Combs will run. Dimon had said the bank might invest alongside the U.S. government in deals that support the national interest. JPMorgan worked on the MP Materials deal, a transaction where the Defense Department became the single-largest shareholder in an American rare-earths developer.
At the top of JPMorgan’s initiative are Doug Petno and Mary Erdoes, who run its corporate and investment-bank and asset and wealth-management divisions, respectively.
The council that will advise the bank will mirror an international council that is led by former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. Council members won’t have formal roles but will gather “periodically," to talk about the initiatives strategy and investment priorities.
The council includes Amazon.com’s Bezos; Michael Dell; Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford; Alex Gorsky, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson; and Phebe Novakovic, the CEO of defense contractor General Dynamics.
Other members include Chris Cavoli, a retired Army general and former supreme allied commander for Europe; Ann Dunwoody, a retired Army general; and Paul Nakasone, former director of the National Security Agency.
And from politics: Rice, the former secretary of state; Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense; and Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House of Representatives.
Write to Alexander Saeedy at alexander.saeedy@wsj.com
topics
