- JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said US adversaries want to dismantle the world order.
- The bank chief said the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza conflicts could escalate into World War III.
- Dimon said nuclear proliferation was the greatest threat to mankind.
Jamie Dimon says US adversaries want to topple the world order, and the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts could explode into a new world war.
China and Russia are "clearly talking about dismantling the system" established by Western nations after World War II, and "the risk of this is extraordinary," the JPMorgan CEO said at the Institute for International Finance's annual meeting in Washington, DC on Thursday. Business Insider obtained a recording of his comments.
Dimon emphasized the risk that global warfare could break out, citing his historical knowledge and a recent Washington Post article that said, "World War III has already begun."
"You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries," the billionaire banker said. The fighting could diminish and peace deals might be struck, but "mistakes happen," he said.
"So, to me, we shouldn't be naive," Dimon said. "We can't take the chance this will resolve itself. We have to make sure that we are involved in doing the right things to get it resolved properly for the sake of the free democratic Western world for the next 100 years."
Dimon underlined the difficulty of preparing for what might lie ahead. "We run scenarios that would shock you. I don't even want to mention them."
The bank chief pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine as a particularly grave threat.
"We have to be quite clear that we can't have a bad outcome there," he said. "We've never had a situation where a man is threatening nuclear blackmail," adding: "If that doesn't scare you, it should."
Dimon also said the spread of nuclear weapons technology was the "biggest risk mankind faces." He said that if Iran secures a nuclear bomb then many other countries will too, "and then folks, it's just a matter of time before these things are going off in major cities around the world."
Dimon has been sounding the alarm on global threats for a while. In JPMorgan's third-quarter earnings this month, he said geopolitical conditions were "treacherous and getting worse."
How the conflicts are resolved could have "far-reaching effects on both short-term economic outcomes and more importantly on the course of history," he added.
Ray Dalio, another Wall Street billionaire and a financial historian, said last October that the chance of a world war involving the US and China had jumped from 35% to 50% over the previous two years.