Jamie Dimon is personally working the phones to recruit rival CEOs into a broadened industry effort to address the risks posed by artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the outreach. The JPMorgan Chase chief executive has reached out directly to CEOs of other large banks and technology companies to enlist them in an initiative built on a group JPMorgan helped found called the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure. The outreach, which began in July, has already touched more than 40 companies spanning financial services, energy, water, utilities, telecommunications, airlines and railroads. YourDailyAnalysis treats the scale of that outreach – more than 40 companies across seven industries in a single month – as the detail that separates this from a typical working group, since campaigns recruiting across that many unrelated sectors at once are usually reserved for risks viewed as genuinely systemic.
The alliance’s leadership has also contacted additional prospective members to schedule collaboration calls in August, though the organization has not yet disclosed results from the effort. Dimon is among a small group of major bank CEOs publicly warning about the risks posed by advanced AI systems, which gives his personal involvement here more weight than a delegated outreach effort would carry. YourDailyAnalysis reads that personal involvement – rather than delegating outreach to subordinates – as a signal of how seriously the bank’s leadership views the coordination effort, since CEOs rarely spend personal time recruiting peers unless an issue is viewed as a near-term priority.
Recent cyberattacks on water systems in Minnesota and other states have added urgency to the push for more information sharing across industries, according to people familiar with the planning. The initiative aims to build a shared understanding of how AI is being used, the risks it introduces, and the safeguards needed, while also working with the current administration on those questions. YourDailyAnalysis flags the water-system attacks as the likely trigger for this expansion, since infrastructure sectors with historically lighter cybersecurity investment, like water utilities, are the ones most likely to expose gaps that better-resourced sectors like banking have already addressed.
JPMorgan was a founding member of the original alliance alongside Mastercard, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and other companies, created to coordinate cross-sector resilience planning against cyber, physical and geopolitical threats. Dimon said the alliance’s leadership recognized the need to prioritize AI “years ago and got critical infrastructure companies working together.” Mastercard and Berkshire did not respond to requests for comment.
The group aims to have the revamped alliance fully functional by year-end, working alongside government officials to identify core AI and technology risks as they emerge. Dimon has separately voiced concern about specific advanced AI models capable of assisting with dangerous technical tasks, warning in July that unrestricted access to the most capable systems amounts to handing dangerous capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. The effort runs parallel to a separate industry push among banks to test those same models, and to a new federal initiative launched in July that brings AI developers, infrastructure operators and agencies together to share vulnerability information.
Watch whether the August calls translate into concrete commitments from the 40-plus companies contacted so far, since an organization built mainly on outreach and stated intent risks stalling before producing the practical protocols its members will actually need. Your Daily Analysis will also track whether more bank and technology CEOs join Dimon in speaking publicly about specific AI risks, since a wider chorus of similar warnings would suggest the concern driving this alliance extends well beyond one outspoken bank chief.
