Good morning. Here’s one question that AI can’t answer: When will the Iran war end? A conflict that the president initially predicted would last four weeks marked day 100 over the weekend with Iran and Israel launching missiles at each other. Brian Schimpf, CEO of defense tech company Anduril, told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech audience yesterday that economic warfare along the Strait of Hormuz “is the new normal of what these conflicts are going to look like.”
Indeed, the Pentagon yesterday accused Alibaba, Baidu and BYD of supporting the Chinese military. Stocks were down and then up, alongside the CBOE Volatility Index, Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge. UBS’s Paul Donovan characterized the mood as a “general sense of increasing risk.”
Few CEOs understand risk better than Vince Tizzio of AXIS. He helps clients insure (and reinsure) against complex, high-stakes exposures that traditional carriers often avoid, including cyberattacks, terrorism, environmental disasters, political violence, and management liability. The company was formed in the aftermath of 9/11 to sell terrorism and catastrophe property insurance. Since becoming CEO three years ago, he doubled shareholder returns by streamlining a volatile business to focus on expanding specialty insurance for which historical loss data may be scarce. Such protection is in demand, with analysts predicting the global market could triple to $332 billion by 2035.
