ANALYSIS – Publicly backing former President Donald Trump has only raised his risk profile. I ran across Elon Musk, reputedly the wealthiest man in the world today (or second or third depending on the day), about six years ago on a trip to South Africa.
We were both in Cape Town checking out the Penguin colony at Boulders Beach. Even billionaires originally from South Africa can be tourists – though I prefer the term traveler.
At the time his security was modest, and most people didn’t recognize. I said hello as I walked by. He had less than a handful of security agents with him at the time and two SUVs.
Fast forward to 2024 and the Tesla and SpaceX CEO worth upwards of $251 billion has a security detail that functions like a small-scale Secret Service for a head of state. And costs millions of dollars a year.
One of the few companies to spend more on security is Meta, which spent $23.4 million last year to protect its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
Musk, as his notoriety has risen, has received his fair share of death threats. And now he is better protected than almost any other global corporate executive, with up to 20 security professionals accompanying him at all times.
Most are reportedly military-trained. All are top-tier.
In addition to the armed close protection officers, they also have a medical professional on the team to care for Musk in case of medical or health emergency.
This, according to an in-depth report in the New York Times on Friday.
The report noted that:
Musk, 53, has long cultivated a devil-may-care persona, traveling the world, hanging out with moguls, world leaders and celebrities, and smoking weed in public. But in private, he has increasingly barricaded himself behind a growing phalanx of armed bodyguards as he has become more wealthy, more famous and more outspoken — and as the threats against him have evolved.
The paper added:
At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Mr. Musk said he thought the threats against him were getting crazier.
“The probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name,” he said. “So they hear my name a lot — I’m like, ‘OK, I’m on the list,’ you know.” He added that this had forced him to be more standoffish to the public.
The NYT report indicates that Musk spends millions of dollars on personal security each year, paid to various security firms including Gavin de Becker &Associates and his own private security company, Foundation Security.
Tesla also has its own security operations, reportedly including an intelligence unit for investigations and the ability to fly drones over facilities and events.
To his security team, following his SpaceX theme, and maybe his own space-oriented vision, his codename is Voyager.
Musk’s security concerns have been growing recently, especially after his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, and his increasingly conservative political views.
In December 2022, he expressed agreement with a post on Twitter that he had become “public enemy number one to some very, very bad people.”
In November, a Florida man was arrested near Tesla’s Austin, Texas, plant for threatening a “mass casualty event” there.
Since opening its Austin factory in early 2022, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office has responded to eight “terroristic threat” incidents at the Tesla site, with at least two aimed directly at Musk
This compared to five terroristic threat incidents over the entire last decade at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California.
In January 2023, Musk posted a sarcastic tweet after sharing an alleged note by Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin that mentioned him and the Pentagon.
The Russian reportedly wrote that “you will be held accountable” for helping Ukraine’s military with his Starlink satellite internet service.
“If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya,” Musk posted.
Publicly backing Trump has only heightened Musk’s risk profile.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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He needs it alone