Disgruntled influencer Nasim Aghdam burst onto a courtyard at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno in 2018 and shot three people before killing herself. A Virginia woman obsessed with Apple CEO Tim Cook drove across the country and showed up outside Cook’s Palo Alto condo in 2021 after sending him photos of a loaded pistol. Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe, was kidnapped by two men with guns when he got to work in Mountain View in 1992.
In the wake of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, those threats and acts of violence targeting the Silicon Valley technology industry and its leaders highlight the dangers that have forced tech companies to spend whopping sums to prevent their CEOs and other high-profile employees from being targeted.
“Whoever is presented in the media probably would be at the most risk,” said Tom Lafraniere, a former Bay Area FBI agent who arrested one of Geschke’s kidnappers in the Monterey dunes and now heads security consultancy DynaSec International, based in Rohnert Park.
Among the big Silicon Valley tech firms, the CEOs typically present the public face of the company via the media. Photos circulate world-wide when Cook takes the stage at Apple’s annual conference, when Sundar Pichai talks products and strategy at Google’s yearly gathering, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg touts innovations at Meta events.
“Mr. Zuckerberg is one of the most-recognized executives in the world,” Meta said in a shareholder statement this year that noted assessments had “identified specific threats to Mr. Zuckerberg” because of his high profile.
Police said UnitedHealthcare’s Thompson had received threats and appeared to have been targeted, possibly by someone angry over coverage decisions, frustrations that many share. But technology companies can be similarly controversial. Aghdam appeared to have been angry about posting and monetization practices at Google’s YouTube. Zuckerberg has been criticized and Meta sued over social media’s effects on young people.
Trying to keep leaders such as Zuckerberg safe in a country awash with guns, and in an industry that can generate volatile emotions, does not come cheaply.
Last year, according to a regulatory filing, Meta spent $9.4 million on security for Zuckerberg at his homes and during his personal travel, plus $969,000 in costs related to his private plane “in connection with his overall security program.” The Meta CEO received a $14 million allowance to “cover additional costs related to his and his family’s personal security,” bringing the firm’s total cost of keeping its CEO and his family safe to $24.3 million.
Security for Pichai cost Google’s parent company Alphabet $6.8 million last year, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Santa Clara computer chip maker NVIDIA spent $2.2 million last year on home security and consulting fees to safeguard CEO Jensen Huang, the company reported to regulators.
Cook, despite his experience with the stalker, appears to cost Apple less than other major Silicon Valley companies for security: $820,309 last year, the Cupertino company reported.
The technology industry itself has increased the risk for Silicon Valley executives, security experts said.
“It’s so easy to access where somebody lives now,” said an executive-protection professional who works for a major Bay Area tech company but cannot speak publicly because of a non-disclosure agreement. “You can go onto these apps and follow people’s planes. It’s so easy to access people.”
Executive-protection teams assess potential threats, and for safeguarding CEOs, that means considering why someone would want to commit violence against them. Money can be a motive for kidnapping, Lafraniere noted. Grudges can motivate attackers, related to a corporate leader’s personal life, decisions they make in their job or decisions subordinates make that get hung on the CEO as the face of the company, Lafraniere said. Disgruntled employees can pose a risk.
Danny Gonzalez, CEO of San Francisco security company Execushield, said that in a time when many Americans are emotionally volatile and people’s locations are often easy to pinpoint, the potential attackers that concern him most are “the ones that are just going to show up like the one in New York and do their thing and walk away.”
Many factors govern the size and cost of an executive-protection service, including a company’s budget, how many people are in the executive’s family, frequency of travel and number of locations where they spend time, Lafraniere said.
Levels of protection also vary. When a CEO is traveling by road, maximum protection can include an armored car with an armed driver and an armed bodyguard in the passenger seat, both trained to use onboard emergency medical equipment, plus a lead car and a follow car with a driver and a “shooter,” Gonzalez said.
Related Articles
Federal appeals court upholds law requiring sale or ban of TikTok in the U.S.
Is a California EV rebate the answer if federal support ends?
Home for the holidays? Show relatives you care with some tech support
As data centers proliferate, conflict with local communities follows
Magid: Using online photo apps to walk down memory lane
Members of a security detail typically scout out locations before the person they protect arrives, Gonzalez said.
Defenses at home can involve “concentric rings of protection,” possibly including dogs, cameras connected to artificial-intelligence, threat-detection software, patrolling guards and even “security shrubs” chosen for their spikiness to prevent people from hiding in them, Gonzalez said. Windows may have bullet-resistant films. Doors should be fortified, and homes may have safe rooms designed to be impenetrable. In case of an attack, the main objective is to buy time for police to arrive, Gonzalez said.
In offices, most companies rely on the security staff and systems they have on the premises, Gonzalez said.
Heavy security is intrusive and requires CEOs to constantly adjust arrangements with their security details, experts said. Sometimes company leaders don’t want security, but their firm’s board of directors gives them no choice, Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said he expected other corporate leaders to start worrying about their own safety after Thompson’s killing. Since then, UnitedHealthcare and other insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Elevance Health (formerly Anthem) have removed some information about their executives from their websites, health industry news site STAT reported.
But Gonzalez did not anticipate a big boost in demand for executive protection in Silicon Valley.
“Everybody’s going to go back to business as usual,” he said.