Starbucks’s move to expand security for its CEO underscores how an increasingly anti-corporate environment is posing mounting challenges for high-profile figures.
Starbucks ratcheted up security spending by roughly 760% last year and disclosed in January that CEO Brian Niccol can use the company’s private jet for all travel, ending a $250,000 cap on personal use. The move came in response to an independent security review that cited rising “credible” threats to Niccol, heightened media attention on the CEO, and the broader threat environment.
Starbucks isn’t alone. Seth Krummrich, a vice president of an international security firm that services Fortune 500 companies, told the Washington Examiner that he saw a 55% surge in demand for executive protection in 2025 and a 150% spike in North America operations. Last year marked an “inflection point” in the corporate security world, the Global Guardian vice president said, pointing to industry safety concerns that spiked following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson the previous December. By April 2025, at least a dozen S&P 500 companies had flagged an increase in security risks, according to a Reuters analysis, with Walmart, General Motors, and American Express among companies that disclosed new or increased security expenses over previous years.
In places such as Minnesota, where corporate leaders from Hilton hotels, Target, and other major companies are facing tense protests on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement front, Krummrich said they must be prepared “at the highest and the lowest level– geofence at all of those sites” because of “very dynamic, fluid and turbulent” conditions.
“It starts with digital awareness, online threat monitoring, so that they know what people are saying about them, and they can see a rise in threat language,” he said. “We’re also putting in cameras, whether it’s at the CEO’s home or at properties. We’re putting cameras in an entire school district. Think of all your stores, your hotels, and then we’re wiring it backwards, actively being monitored. It’s not roll back the tape after something’s happened. We’re warning you before somebody comes out of the problem.”
Krummrich, a retired army colonel, emphasized social media as a pivotal factor in escalating security concerns. Bad actors are increasingly utilizing platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, and gaming systems to plan harm, a problem he said has “metastasized.” Many radicalized groups are using encrypted platforms to organize violence, adding another layer to the efforts to thwart such threats, he added. And the popularization of artificial intelligence has only compounded threats, making it easier to find personal data to weaponize, according to Krummrich.
“I can get all that information immediately. I can have AI build me your pattern of life,” he said. “With crypto. I can figure out extortion. I can figure out how to hide money. I can figure out how to attack and do ransomware and steal from you. And so you’re in this new landscape where corporate executives have a real threat, and it has become a lot easier for that threat to target them.”
Executives are moving away from Uber and professionalizing security due to the changing landscape, he said, though warning that “most corporates are coming up short.” There remains hesitation from many to deviate from norms by investing in personal security, but boardrooms are increasingly intervening and pressuring CEOs to do so, Krummrich said.
In 2025, 25% of S&P 500 companies received personal and home security benefits, up from 18% in 2024, according to data from the Conference Board, a figure that doubled since 2018. In 2025, 7.2% of Russell 3000 CEOs received security benefits, up from 4.9% in 2024, the think tank found. In 2024, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Palantir all increased their security budget for chief executives by more than 10% year-on-year, according to an analysis by Financial Review. In one example, Meta spent over $27 million on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal security in 2024, up from $24 million the previous year.
Last fall, Tesla CEO Elon Musk became the latest to jump on the bandwagon, agreeing he needed to “dramatically” increase security spending in the wake of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and often violent acts against his EV dealerships due to his work for the Trump administration. His comments came after numerous Tesla retail investors called on the company’s Board of Directors to bolster Musk’s security budget, which appears to stand at $3.3 million annually.
“What we’re seeing is this sort of pendulum swinging because of this change, which is really set in over 2025 in the political, corporate and frankly, high-profile people’s space. There is now this very large push on the corporate executive security side, number one, reduce your digital signature,” Krummrich said. “Pull that open source data down, anything that shouldn’t be out there. We need to make you really disappear. We need to take away any sort of attackable information that’s out there.”
Krummrich warned that the nature of the threat has fundamentally shifted over the past decade or so, as societal attitudes toward violence change. Gradual but key realignment occurred in the years leading up to Luigi Mangione being “treated like a rockstar in certain areas” after being accused of murdering Thompson, he said, noting that Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber” domestic terrorist arrested in the late 1990s, was “reviled as a monster” for targeting tech leaders. Even over two decades later, the Occupy Wall Street Movement anti-corporate movement in 2011 was conducted in a comparatively peaceful manner compared to threats made against high-profile individuals, he noted.
“The question I always ask is why?” Krummrich said. “Besides, for example, the hit that we saw at UnitedHealthcare, there’s more there. There’s the other side of the coin. And really, it comes down to a change in our culture. We’re seeing the normalization of violence across a number of different sectors in the United States.”
“I don’t think it was an overnight thing. I think Mr. Thompson’s assassination was definitely a watershed question point, but it really was a spotlight that looked at, ‘Hey, we have slipped as a culture,’” he said. “It’s not just a fringe thing anymore, f*****g some weird compound. It’s happening at a Utah campus against Charlie Kirk, or against President [Donald] Trump, or against Mr. Thompson and the Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota who were gunned down in their homes. It’s affecting everybody.”
Corporate leaders have increasingly been vilified by both political parties, as Republicans and Democrats seek to win the affordability messaging war, particularly ahead of the midterm elections. Tucker Carlson is one key GOP-aligned figure who has expressed hostile views toward major executives, while voices such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a socialist, have gained influence on the Left.
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Ahead of November, Krummrich noted his security firm is “absolutely factoring” in how clients “are being presented by political parties on the Left and the Right,” calling it a “true threat vector.”
“There needs to be bipartisan rebuke, and that needs to start at the top of both parties, and it needs to be consistent,” he said. “But then, for the rest of us, we all play a part in it. We’re not bystanders, eating popcorn here, watching this play. We all have to participate and trying to buy down or just bring down the temperature in the room a little bit.”