Happy Wednesday, !

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how you should totally give all your medical data to a robot. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

And now for some news you really N2K…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Counter-intel boss quits over Iran conflict, 'serv …

• Finance bros don't want tech bros to mess with the …

• OpenAI to cut back on side projects

• SEC looks to drop quarterly business reporting

• How Saudi Arabia’s bet on Iran backfired

What’s the stock market up to, eh?*

$SPX ( ▲ 0.25% ) $DJI ( ▲ 0.1% ) $NDX ( ▲ 0.47% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$BBERG ( 0.0% )  $MS ( ▲ 1.37% )  $ARMCO ( 0.0% )  

Counter-intel boss quits over Iran conflict, 'serves no benefit'

The administration faces its first major resignation since launching the Iran war, as National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent resigned in a scathing public letter.

Kent, an army veteran who previously advised Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, posted his resignation on X, declaring he "cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives."

The resignation marks a significant crack within the MAGA movement, which has historically opposed foreign military entanglements. Kent claimed Washington launched the conflict "due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby" — accusations that drew swift backlash.

President Trump dismissed his former appointee at the White House Tuesday, calling Kent "very weak on security" and adding, "It's a good thing that he's out, because he said that Iran was not a threat — Iran was a threat in every country."

Critics of the war rallied behind Kent. Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called him "a GREAT AMERICAN HERO" on X.

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, offered measured support: "On this point, he is right: there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East."

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called Kent's allegations "both insulting and laughable."

Finance bros don't want tech bros to mess with their sacred Bloomberg terminals

A full-scale social media war has erupted between Wall Street and Silicon Valley — and the battlefield is a $30,000-per-year computer system, reports the Wall Street Journal.

When tech evangelists recently declared the Bloomberg $BBERG ( 0.0% ) terminal "cooked" after AI startup Perplexity released a new tool promising similar capabilities for just $2,400 annually, finance professionals responded with fury.

The Bloomberg terminal isn't just software to professional investors — it's a way of life. Some have met spouses on its chat feature. Most spend more time with it than their families. At least one devotee commissioned a wedding cake shaped like it.

Jason Lemire jumped into the LinkedIn fray with an AI-generated image of churchgoers praying to the terminal, calling suggestions it could be replaced "laughable."

"It seems quite obvious to me that those propagating that post are either just looking for easy engagement and/or have never worked in a serious financial institution," he wrote.

Tech advocates pushed back against what they called "pearl clutching."

"There's a definite naiveté," said Tom Fry, who built trading software at Morgan Stanley $MS ( ▲ 1.37% ) before co-founding AI startup Agentcy. "Everything is disruptible."

Michael Terry, an investment manager with 30 years of terminal experience, tested the AI alternative using Anthropic's Claude. His verdict? "It was laughable at best, horrific at worst."

Lemire's message to the tech world was blunt: "There's nothing that you can vibe code in a weekend or even like over the course of a year that's going to come anywhere close."

Quote of the Day

OpenAI to cut back on side projects

OpenAI is preparing what tech bros call “a major strategic pivot” (tech speak for trying to please nervous investors), pulling back from its do-everything-all-at-once approach to focus squarely on coding and business users (tech speak for making some money).

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications, previewed the changes at a recent “all-hands meeting” (tech speak for wasting everybody’s time by requiring all your staff to listen to a zoom call for an hour), warning employees that the company's sprawling ambitions have become a liability.

"We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests," Simo told staff, according to remarks reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Side quests. Really?

"We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front,” she said.

In other words, they need some clients and revenue. Otherwise, rival Anthropic will continue expanding its lead among software developers and enterprise customers with its viral Claude Code and Cowork products. Last year, OpenAI launched an array of new offerings — video generator Sora, web browser Atlas, a hardware device, and e-commerce features — but the scattered approach left employees struggling to understand the company's strategic direction.

Simo didn't mince words about the competitive threat: Anthropic's success "should serve as a 'wake-up call' for the company,” she said.

The consequences of overextension are already visible. OpenAI's Sora app briefly topped Apple's App Store last September before usage flatlined.

"We are very much acting as if it's a code red," Simo told employees. "I don't think necessarily declaring codes for everything makes a ton of sense."

CEO Sam Altman and other top executives are now deciding which projects to deprioritize, with staff notifications expected in coming weeks. I think that’s tech speak for “expect layoffs,” and I didn’t even need an AI-powered translator to figure it out.

SEC looks to drop quarterly business reporting

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly moving forward with a proposal that could fundamentally change how public companies communicate with investors — making quarterly earnings reports optional rather than mandatory.

According to people familiar with the matter, the SEC could publish the proposal as soon as next month. Regulators have already been consulting with major exchanges about potential rule adjustments.

The push for semiannual reporting gained momentum late last year when the Long-Term Stock Exchange petitioned the SEC to eliminate the quarterly requirement. President Trump and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins both quickly endorsed the idea.

American public companies have reported results every three months for over 50 years. Trump briefly explored changing this during his first term, but the effort stalled.

Supporters argue less-frequent reporting could help reverse the shrinking number of U.S. public companies. Many firms cite the time-consuming and costly compliance work required to maintain public listings as a key reason for staying private.

However, the proposal is likely to face pushback from investors who depend on the transparency that regular disclosures provide. The change would follow precedents set abroad — European companies haven't been required to report quarterly since 2013; the U.K. ended its mandate about a decade ago, though many companies there still choose to report every three months.

Song of the Day: Haute & Freddy, ‘Showgirl at Heart’

This is a standout track from the debut album “Big Disgrace” by the Los Angeles-based synth-pop duo. It features theatrical energy and a campy, 80s-inspired aesthetic, so it’ll be familiar, I expect, to readers of this newsletter.

Free yourself from advertising forever!

How Saudi Arabia’s bet on Iran backfired

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's gamble on détente with Iran has spectacularly unraveled as the US–Israeli war triggers furious retaliation against the kingdom.

Just years after calling Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "the new Hitler of the Middle East," the crown prince pivoted to engagement, wagering that stability was essential for his ambitious Vision 2030 economic plans. Now, Iranian missiles and drones are targeting American bases in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, and critical oil infrastructure. Oops!

"It's the last thing he wanted. He wants stability and order, he doesn't want missiles and drones flying around," said Bernard Haykel, a Princeton professor who speaks with Prince Mohammed, and who also spoke with the Financial Times this week. "He didn't want this at all."

No way, Bernard. Really?

The war threatens to derail the crown prince's drive to attract foreign investment. Formula 1 has already cancelled its Saudi Arabia and Bahrain races scheduled for April.

The CIA concluded that Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, for those of us who might be tempted towards an excess of sympathy for the poor chap. Bin Salman, I mean, not Khashoggi. One is always inclined to be sympathetic to any journalist who was dismembered on the orders of a head of state.

Saudi Aramco $ARMCO ( 0.0% ) CEO Amin Nasser warned last week of "catastrophic consequences" for the global economy if fighting continues. "This one by far is the biggest crisis the region's oil and gas industry has faced," he said.

Firas Maksad of Eurasia Group called the conflict a major setback for Saudi Arabia’s economic development: "They were already missing their targets,” he told the FT. “Now they're also going to have to reorientate spending to defence. It's going to be a much longer timeline."

Haykel said Iran had made its position clear: "If we are existentially threatened it's going to be a scorched-earth policy, we're going to burn the whole region down."

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👍️ 

Yes. Markets actually went up yesterday, yet again (two days in a row!), although they went down a huge amount last week. You might want to wait a bit before checking in, actually.

Poll of the day: Iran, Iraq, Eurasia…

Poll of the day: You hate car dealers

We asked: “How annoying is it that, to save money on a new car, you've got to "hire a middleman to deal with the middleman to make the middleman more efficient."?”

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Seriously, I hate car dealers. (220)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ I actually think this kid is onto something. Pay him a grand, save thousands. What's not to like? (174)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ "The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people." — Karl Marx (159)
553 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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