Political assassination attempts, like the one against President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, are rightly condemned from every political corner. So is the rising tide of political violence. But that’s not been true of some malicious acts of domestic terrorism impacting a wider group of people. Instead of righteous indignation there’s been relative silence, or even worse, endorsement. Why?
I’m speaking of the string of attacks and related threats against people who lead and work for corporations.
The latest attack to make the headlines was the arrest of a 20-year-old man for throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home in San Francisco, and then threatening to burn down OpenAI headquarters. The perpetrator carried a list of names and addresses of other AI company officials, and a manifesto “warning” other tech company leaders that he planned to target with violence for their support of AI technology. He was apparently inspired by the December 2024 assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson.
There have been other attacks copying the Thompson murder. Someone else shot at Altman’s house just a few days after the firebombing. A 29-year old man who burned down a Kimberly-Clark warehouse in California just days before the attack on Altman also compared himself to Thompson’s killer. The July 2025 killing of four employees of Blackstone in New York City who had been mistaken for NFL executives bore similarities to the Thompson killing, for which it was widely celebrated online.
The missing outrage against this trend and failure to appreciate the true nature of those who support it is a great cause for concern.
While the copycat crimes have been reported in the Wall Street Journal, editorial commentary on them has been sparse. The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, understandably raised the alarm about it in a staff editorial. But editors at both the New York Times and the Journal have failed to comment on it. And while the Times editorial board did comment on the (failed) assassination attempt against Trump in July of 2024, they had nothing to say about the killing of Brian Thompson months later, to say nothing of the recent Altman attack.
The Times did run an op-ed by tech commentator Aaron Zamost calling the Altman attack “disturbing” and (finally getting around to it in the final sentence of the piece) “wrong.” But the rest of the piece focuses on rationalizing popular fear of and anger toward the tech industry, arguing that “tech has faced little to no accountability for its failures.” Zamost suggests that violence against the tech industry is an “indictment” of the sort of failures that any fallible business suffers.
Zamost’s article was titled “An Attack on Sam Altman Sends a Terrifying Message.” Shockingly, this is what he makes of that terrifying message: “the whole thing is disturbing and jarring, but I’m hopeful it will change how some tech leaders deal with the societal consequences of their success.” But the “whole thing” he’s referring to includes the violence. So while he says violence is the wrong way to send this message, in hoping business leaders change in response to it, he’sstill hoping that terrorism will work.
Some are hoping even more explicitly that the terrorists will win. This was the theme of the recent New York Times podcast interview by Nadja Spiegelman of Hasan Piker and Jia Tolentino. Though the podcast was widely panned for its endorsement of shoplifting goodies from Whole Foods, few have paid attention to Piker and Tolentino’s overt endorsement of violence to terrorize corporate America into submission.
In the podcast, Tolentino actually objects to shoplifting from corporate stores if it’s secretive. Only if it’s made known as part of direct, collective action is it justifiable. Much better than “microlooting,” she says, was the macrolooting of the 2020 George Floyd protests. Piker too says that this violence could be justified if it were part of a campaign of “organized disruption that would be infinitely more effective.”
Doubling down on this, they both argue that the firebombing of the Kimberly-Clark warehouse, causing nearly $500 million in damage, would have been justified if it were part of a similar collective campaign. Here’s Tolentino: “do I think some sort of fire could hypothetically be framed within a collective action that is tactically useful? Yes.”
Likewise, Tolentino expresses frustration that the Democrats didn’t immediately use the issue of Brian Thompson’s murder” to push “unified message toward universal health care.” Piker says they are “feckless” for failing to exploit the terrorist threat for political gain.
Revealingly, no one on this obscene podcast is actually willing to morally condemn the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Instead they perversely rationalize it as a response to the “social murder” allegedly perpetrated by health insurance companies.
All of this is actually much more evil than the petty pilfering that the podcast has otherwise been lampooned for advocating. These podcasters were apologizing for and even endorsing terrorism, pure and simple. Terrorism is not just any political violence, but violence specifically directed at frightening the wider public into acquiescing into the terrorist’s political goals.
The effects of Brian Thompson’s murder already show evidence of terrorism at work. After the murder, health insurance companies responded by closing their headquarters and hiding the identities of their executives out of fear of such attacks. They beefed up private security measures, not just for executives but for all their employees. And it’s not just health insurance companies. Similar security measures have been adopted by airlines, tech companies, and major retail outlets. And a third of S&P companies have doubled their security spending since 2020.
Because of the abstract, hypothetical nature of their formulations, Tolentino and Piker’s statements are likely protected by the First Amendment. That shouldn’t exempt them from our censure, and definitely not from financial consequences. If the New York Times had any self-esteem, especially as a corporation that itself needs to be free from violence to do its business, it would fire Nadja Spiegelman for her ill-chosen podcast and foreswear any further collaboration with Piker and Tolentino. It’s far from censorship to refuse to provide a platform for voices advocating terrorism against peaceful businesspeople.
And, it’s imperative to refuse that platform. A podcast by the New York Times does far more to normalize this endorsement of terrorism — and encourage more of it — than anything coming from a Twitch gamer’s channel.
But there’s also cause for soul searching here even among those who think of themselves as critics of the Marxist posturing of the Pikers of the world. Why indeed has there been so little attention to and outrage about the terrorizing of corporate America?
Could it be that there’s less outrage towards terrorism directed against businesspeople, because the dominant moral dogma of our culture still sees profit-driven activity as less than noble? I for one reject that dogma. They are innocent victims of terrorism. Not only that: contrary to the Marxist smear of “exploiters,” their productivity, industriousness and ingenuity create valuable products and services we choose to buy.
If you find it strange that I’d suggest there’s an unjust prejudice against businesspeople, surely the heightening violence against them should now be a reason to question whether you yourself have that prejudice.
Ben Bayer, Ph.D. in philosophy and formerly a professor, is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality: The Rational Alternative to Altruism (Ayn Rand Institute Press, 2026). He writes and edits for ARI’s online publication, New Ideal. Twitter: @BenBayer.