- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on how a wartime mindset is the new default.
- The big story: Is Cursor dead?
- The markets: Down big as Trump and Tehran exchange threats.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. To some extent, every CEO is a wartime CEO when their country is at war. But the concept, and the characteristics that go with it, extend far beyond geopolitics. As Fortune’s Geoff Colvin points out in this piece, Shell put military-style scenario planning at the heart of its corporate decision-making in the 1970s. I’ve talked about the concept of wartime and peacetime leadership with venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, who wrote about it 15 years ago, and leadership consultant Stephen Miles of TMG. When UiPath CEO Daniel Dines told me last week that “we treat this time as wartime,” he was talking not about Iran but his push to pivot the robotic process automation company he founded towards agentic AI.
What’s changed?
‘War’ is the norm – “Peacetime left us in March of 2020,” Miles told me yesterday. “The new world is now ambiguous, uncertain, and discontinuous … The world is hours, minutes and seconds, not quarters and years, and I don’t see that changing.” In his view, that calls for leadership that’s “total immersion, which provides much higher context and the ability to weak-signal detect so you get the whiffs of smoke before there is a forest fire.”
Anxiety, alignment and agency – For Horowitz, a peacetime CEO has a large advantage in a growing market; in war, they’re facing an “imminent existential threat.” The first is about expanding the market and reinforcing strengths, the latter is about speed and survival. As Dines put it: “In peacetime, you can tolerate different behaviors and try to adjust …We need to implement decisions faster and propagate them to the company much faster.” Anxiety is a motivator to go for it: “If you wait to see where the world is going, it’s not going to work.” Dines defines agency as “people with both expertise and the will to make things happen.”
People become disposable – In war, people die. The corporate equivalent is that they are fired. More risks are taken. Dissent isn’t tolerated and consensus isn’t a priority. There’s also more pressure at the top. My colleague Claire Zillman writes that, broadly speaking, the AI revolution is creating more CEO churn, according to Spencer Stuart. Feigen Advisors found that despite the headlines about skyrocketing turnover, leadership at a narrower band of companies—the top of half of the S&P 500—has held relatively steady, though it also found CEO turnover outside the U.S. is increasing. Does this mean America is winning the war? It depends, of course, on how you define the battlefield.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
The rise—and future—of Cursor
Cursor, the AI-powered coding startup, ballooned to a $29.3 billion company in just four years and is used by 67% of the Fortune 500. The onset of Anthropic’s Claude Code is leading some to declare that “Cursor is dead.”
How Trump could open the Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened by Monday. Experts say blockading Iran’s oil exports is an option that would open the strait faster.
Costco CEO says a signature combo will stay
In a video uploaded to Instagram last week, Costco president and CEO Ron Vachris promised that the big box chain’s $1.50 hot dog and a soda combo will stay put “as long as I’m around.” The video comes as Americans are increasingly squeezed by rising costs.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.69% this morning. The last session closed down 1.51%. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 1.81% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 1.95% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 3.48%. China’s CSI 300 was down 3.26%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 3.54%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 6.49%. India’s NIFTY 50 was down 2.58%. Bitcoin was down to $68K.
Around the watercooler
A turning point at the Pentagon: Anduril’s new mega‑deal rewrites the rules for Silicon Valley—and raises new risks by Jessica Mathews
The K-shaped economy has left many six-figure earners ‘on thin ice’ as housing costs, lifestyle creep, and the job market put them at risk by Emma Burleigh
Ironman’s CEO started out unloading trucks when he was 13. He warns Gen Z networking is ‘dangerous’—and to do this instead by Preston Fore
AI may be helping more people start their own businesses, but without many employees by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Kalshi locks in $22 billion valuation, gaining slight edge over its rival Polymarket by Carlos Garcia
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.
