Happy Wednesday, N2K reader!

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

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