Cairo: Hani Kamal El-Din
As threats to Elon Musk’s personal safety have escalated, the world’s richest man has surrounded himself with a team of bodyguards that operate much like a mini-Secret Service, safeguarding him from potential dangers. According to a report by The New York Times published on September 13, 2024, by Kirsten Grind and Jack Ewing, Musk has taken extensive steps to protect himself as his public profile and wealth have soared.
The situation intensified in November 2024, when Florida resident Paul Overeem was arrested near Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas, and charged with planning a mass casualty event. While this event grabbed headlines, little attention was paid to the security measures enacted at Tesla’s event at the Austin factory.
According to sources familiar with the arrangements, Musk’s security team was alerted to the threat posed by Overeem and immediately went into full activation. The guest list for the event was carefully curated, and each person underwent a security screening well before the event began. More than 30 Tesla security personnel were stationed around the venue as Musk, CEO of the automaker, took the stage. In addition, Musk was accompanied by bodyguards from his private security firm, Foundation Security.
For years, Musk, 53, cultivated an image of a daring, carefree entrepreneur, mingling with global leaders, billionaires, and celebrities, and even publicly smoking marijuana. However, in private, Musk has increasingly retreated behind an expanding phalanx of armed bodyguards as he has grown richer, more famous, and more outspoken—facing ever-more serious threats to his safety.
With a net worth exceeding $240 billion, Musk once responded to harmless calls and messages from eager fans, but now he regularly faces stalkers and death threats, according to police records and Tesla’s internal reports. While many public figures deal with threats, Musk has radically transformed his security to deal with them, building a defense system that goes beyond what other billionaires typically use.
Musk and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have spent millions of dollars annually on his security, including payments to private security firm Gavin de Becker & Associates, according to internal Tesla documents. To have more direct control over his protection, Musk established his own private security company, Foundation Security, which plays a key role in overseeing his safety, according to security experts and documents.
Musk’s personal security detail now functions like a mini-Secret Service, with experts comparing his level of protection to that of a head of state rather than a corporate executive. Once accompanied by only two bodyguards, Musk now travels with 20 security specialists, who frequently sweep routes or clear rooms before his arrival. His security team often carries firearms, and they refer to Musk by his code name, “Voyager.”
The increasing threats have left Musk more cautious, and his lifestyle more isolated, according to three people close to him. He is rarely seen without bodyguards—even when visiting the restroom at his social media company, X—according to a 2023 lawsuit filed by former employees over severance pay. At times, Musk has exaggerated the severity of threats, once incorrectly claiming that two individuals involved in separate incidents were carrying weapons.
At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June 2024, Musk said he believed the threats against him were growing more “insane.”
“The likelihood of a maniac trying to kill you is proportional to how many maniacs know your name,” he said. “So, they hear my name a lot—I’m like, okay, I’m on the list, you know?” He added that the threats have made him more cautious about interacting with the public.
Musk’s lifestyle now stands in stark contrast to other ultra-wealthy individuals. Warren E. Buffett, whose fortune exceeds $145 billion, has long employed only a single personal bodyguard. (It’s unclear how many bodyguards Buffett now has, though a spokesperson for his company, Berkshire Hathaway, said they work with several security firms.) Musk’s predecessor at X, Jack Dorsey, often walked the streets of San Francisco without a security detail.
As Musk’s security concerns have intensified, he has distanced himself from the public, reducing his physical presence at public events. What once was an entrepreneur engaging with fans has become a figure keen to protect himself from potential harm, whether in business or in public life.
This shift illustrates how Musk’s rise to unprecedented wealth and fame has dramatically reshaped his daily existence. He is now more reliant than ever on a security detail that mirrors the level of protection afforded to political leaders rather than business executives.
This year, Tesla disclosed for the first time in documents that it had paid $2.4 million for part of Musk’s security in 2023. Tesla’s documents show it has paid $500,000 for the first two months of 2024, five times the average amount spent every two months in 2019. From 2015 to 2018, Musk spent an average of $145,000 a month on security, according to invoices and receipts reviewed by The Times.
Apple spent $820,000 last year to protect its CEO, Tim Cook, while Amazon shells out $1.6 million a year to guard its founder, Jeff Bezos. One of the few companies that spends more is Meta, which shelled out $23.4 million last year for the security of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the documents show.
The Times compiled previously unpublished details about Musk’s security from hundreds of pages of Tesla documents, police and local government documents obtained through public records requests, government records from Musk’s security company, audio recordings, court documents and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The Times did not include details about Musk’s whereabouts.
The Tesla documents were from a trove of records and data obtained by Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, from Lukasz Krupski, a former Tesla employee. The people close to Musk spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their jobs or relationships with him and Tesla.
Musk, his lawyer, and representatives for Tesla and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
Doing Musk’s bidding
Musk once operated informally, leaving his keys in his car as he walked away, and did not want bodyguards, people close to him say. But as his profile grew, Tesla’s board of directors pressed him to take on personal security, according to several people and documents reviewed by The Times.
By 2014, Musk had bodyguards from Gavin de Becker & Associates, a firm run by Gavin de Becker, who juggled his work as an assistant to Elizabeth Taylor and a stint at the Justice Department with a career defending celebrities and investigating cases for high-profile clients. The firm’s clients included Bezos and Cher.
When Musk traveled on business, he was accompanied by a rotating team of GDBA bodyguards, most of whom had military experience.
The cost of such services often reached six figures a month. In January 2016, when Musk visited Mexico, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Israel, and Texas, de Becker’s bill was $163,674.59, according to the documents. The cost was split between SpaceX, Tesla, and Musk.
The bodyguards often ran errands for Musk and paid his expenses to minimize the time he spent in public. They washed his car, picked up his dry cleaning, and once tipped a bartender $80 in London for keeping the bar open after hours. They also bought sombreros and fireworks for a 2015 New Year’s Eve celebration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and footed a $22,445.72 hotel bill for Musk’s family and staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong in January 2016.
The GDBA staff also helped Musk with “threat assessments,” which cost more than $400 an hour for a senior consultant, and investigated people classified as “improper stalkers,” according to the documents.
The firm also targeted someone who had avoided Musk: Stu Grossman, who had owned the Internet address tesla.com for years. Grossman, a senior engineer at a networking company, had acquired the domain name before Tesla was founded. Musk wanted to buy it, but Grossman was in no hurry to sell.
In 2015, Grossman said private investigators came to his San Francisco home twice and once outside a restaurant, claiming to be working for Musk.
“Elon would like you to know that he would like to hear from you,” the investigator said outside the restaurant, according to Grossman. He eventually agreed to sell tesla.com to the company for an undisclosed price.
“Nice to know you”
Many of the people who tried to contact Musk were harmless, according to documents and phone records obtained by The Times. A woman left a two-minute voicemail message a few years ago at one of Musk’s companies, calling him “Daddy Musk” and claiming they had been communicating telepathically for the past year.
“I’m looking forward to you proposing to me in outer space, on our space station,” she said.
By 2022, Musk’s net worth had surpassed $200 billion. His fame soared as Tesla dominated the electric car market and SpaceX flew astronauts into space for NASA. That fueled his security concerns, three people close to him say.
He had received international threats, including one he posted on X that spring from Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian government official. Rogozin warned Musk that “you will be held accountable”
“If I die under mysterious circumstances, it would be nice to meet you,” Musk later wrote.
In October 2022, Musk bought Twitter — later renamed X — which further attracted attention. That December, he suspended the account of a university student who was tracking his private jet, as well as more than 24 other accounts, saying they were “essentially assassination coordinates.” He later reinstated some of the accounts.
Musk decided to take his security operations into his own hands. In 2016, Jared Birchall, who runs Musk’s family office, registered Foundation Security in California. The company appeared to be a clearinghouse for Musk’s security payments, with de Becker’s firm managing the operations, records show. It was dissolved in February 2022.
Musk’s private foundation also registered Foundation Security in Texas, though it’s unclear exactly when the registration occurred. The company was described as a “private business with an in-house security staff,” according to documents filed with the state. (Musk is a fan of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” sci-fi novels.)
Foundation Security is run in part by Justin Riblett, a former Army Special Forces weapons sergeant who previously worked at GDBA, according to the documents and Riblett’s LinkedIn page. He declined to comment.
In 2024, Tesla first disclosed that it had entered into an agreement with a security company owned by Musk “to provide security services for him.” The company was not named. It’s unclear why Tesla didn’t disclose the expense sooner, since public companies are required to disclose most business relationships with entities owned by their top executives.
Tesla has its own security teams, including an intelligence unit to conduct investigations and the ability to fly drones over sites and events, according to two people familiar with the company’s operations.
The increased security has limited Musk’s travel. At Nevada’s annual outdoor arts and music festival Burning Man, he mostly stays close to his campsite, according to two people familiar with the event. At parties, bodyguards comb the area beforehand, looking for anyone not on an approved list.
The threat level
The threats against Musk appear to be growing. Since Tesla opened its Austin factory in early 2022, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office has responded to eight “terrorist threat” incidents, at least two of which were aimed directly at Musk, records show.
Police have responded to five terrorist threat incidents at Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory over the past decade, police records show.
According to Travis County court documents, Overeem, who was arrested in Austin in November 2023 before arriving at the Tesla factory, posted threatening messages in an Instagram group chat* about the Cybertruck event where Musk was scheduled to speak.
“If I say I’m going to kill people, you should take it seriously,” he wrote in one message, according to the documents.
Musk and Tesla’s security team took the threat seriously and factored it into their planning for the Cybertruck event, two of the people said. Tesla also alerted law enforcement, court documents show.
A grand jury indicted Overeem on a felony count of making a terrorist threat. He is free on $200,000 bond, and his bail conditions require him to stay 200 yards away from Musk and Shivona Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, one of Musk’s companies. Zilis is also the mother of some of Musk’s children.
In a separate incident in January, Justin McCauley, 32, a former Tesla employee, posted the following message on X: “@JoeBiden @X @Tesla @Elonmusk I plan on killing you all.”
McCauley’s wife, who was in Minnesota, called police after he told her he was driving to Texas and wouldn’t be returning, records show. The Travis County Sheriff’s Office tracked McCauley’s truck and arrested him in January 2024 near a Tesla plant in Austin. He was indicted by a grand jury on charges of making a terroristic threat and released on bail. Rick Cofer, an attorney representing Overeem and McCauley, said he was not authorized to speak about the cases, but behavior that would typically be classified as criminal or threatening “can often be traced back to untreated mental health symptoms.”
Apparently referencing these incidents, Musk posted on X in July 2024, following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
“Dangerous times are coming,” he wrote. “Two people have (at different points) tried to kill me in the last 8 months.” He said they both had guns, although court documents show that neither Overeem nor McCauley were arrested with guns.”
Strangely, the authors of the article in The Times see a threat to Musk only in psychopaths.
But this is hardly the main threat.
Musk has become quite close to Trump. Trump has already promised him a place in the future government if he wins the presidential election.
Of course, Musk’s authority and popularity add to Trump’s votes, especially among young people.
Trump’s political opponents are clearly wary of this friendship.
In America, few people believe that the assassination attempt on Trump in July of this year was a spontaneous act of a lone wolf – there have been too many “inexplicable” failures in the activities of the Secret Service.
Musk understands this very well. Therefore, the closer to the elections – the more he will worry about his safety!
