Making Sense · Oct 20, 2026
With Doug Petno, Co-President of JPMorganChase and CEO of the Commercial & Investment Bank
US military officials told JPMorgan they were struggling to secure defense technologies through the normal procurement process, and asked the bank for help. Most people think of a bank's job as lending money, not patching holes in the defense supply chain. Doug Petno, co-president of JPMorganChase and CEO of its Commercial & Investment Bank, told Jay Horine on Making Sense why the bank built a whole initiative around exactly that gap.
"Military officials had actually reached out to J.P. Morgan and said, 'We're having a hard time securing those types of technologies with the procurement process. Can you help us?'" — Doug Petno
Doug runs the division that answered that call, a year into JPMorgan's Security and Resiliency Initiative, with a $1.5 trillion financing target behind it.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 3 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
The Pentagon asked JPMorgan directly for help securing defense technologies it struggled to procure
A single Chinese export control on rare-earth magnets could bring the US industrial base "to its knees," Doug says
JPMorgan has $1.5 trillion targeted over 10 years, and is "well on our way there"
Its $10 billion equity pool is "not quite halfway through," with room to grow much larger
The MP Materials deal "lit the fire" for similar public-private rare-earth financings
1. The Pentagon Called JPMorgan
No single event triggered the Security and Resiliency Initiative, Doug says. It grew out of a confluence: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the "liberation day" tariff shock and export bans, and the race for the US and its allies to lead in quantum computing and AI. What made it concrete was a direct approach from the Pentagon, which told the bank it could not secure the technologies it needed through its own procurement process.
The Pentagon told JPMorgan it was struggling to procure critical defense technologies
"Military officials had actually reached out to J.P. Morgan and said, 'We're having a hard time securing those types of technologies with the procurement process. Can you help us?'" — Doug Petno
Doug traces client concern back further, to COVID-era supply-chain failures, sharpened when China restricted exports of rare-earth magnets. The US has the raw deposits but no refining or magnet-production capacity, despite those magnets sitting at the center of the industrial base. He says the exposure extends to a long list of other critical minerals and chemicals beyond rare earths.
A single Chinese rare-earth export control could cripple the US industrial base
"That one single item could really bring our economy, our industrial base to its knees." — Doug Petno
