AI Company Executives Hire Armed Security After Wave of Threats and Attacks

Just a few years ago, tech executives moved around Silicon Valley without bodyguards. In 2026, armed security details, crisis budgets and safety protocols have become standard practice across the artificial intelligence industry, driven by a wave of real violence and threats against executives at OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies.

Attack on Altman's Home

The most serious incident occurred in April 2026. Daniel Moreno-Gama, a 20-year-old Texas resident, traveled to San Francisco and threw an incendiary device at the gate of Sam Altman's $27 million residence in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. No one was hurt, as the Molotov cocktail bounced off the building. Less than two hours later, the man showed up at OpenAI's headquarters in Mission Bay carrying a can of kerosene and tried to force open the entrance door with a chair before security stopped him.

Police found incendiary devices, kerosene and a three-part anti-AI manifesto on him, including a section titled "Your Final Warning" that listed targets: AI company CEOs, board members and investors. The FBI determined that Moreno-Gama had deliberately traveled from Texas to California intending to kill Altman. Days earlier, on April 12, police also arrested Amanda Tom and Muhamad Tarik Hussein after security footage showed shots fired from a moving Honda near another Altman residence on Russian Hill.

Threats Against Anthropic and Others

Five days after the attack on Altman's home, Anthropic's security team detained an intruder who entered the company's lobby carrying an envelope addressed to a member of the executive team and claimed that person "was going to be killed." Further incidents followed in the following months: in April, a man who had applied to Anthropic under a false identity threatened employees' children, which police classified as a terroristic threat. In June, an Oklahoma resident threatened to bring a gun to Anthropic's office over a dispute related to a refund.

When you tell people their jobs are going to disappear, they reach for pitchforks - Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies

Industry Responds With Security Budgets

The scale of the response is visible in the financial figures. Among S&P 500 tech companies, the share disclosing spending on executive personal security rose from 26.8 percent in 2021 to 38.1 percent in 2025. Palantir Technologies increased that spending by 150 percent, to nearly $3 million a year, while Oracle raised it by 85.5 percent. Silicon Valley security firms such as JPT Security describe this as a lasting shift in client budgets.

Tech executives definitely didn't have security a few years ago. Now a lot of tech companies are building it permanently into their budgets - Dakota Dominguez, JPT Security

Where the Anger Comes From

Experts link the wave of hostility to disappointment over promises made by industry leaders. Sam Altman once predicted the arrival of "universal access to compute" and a world with minimal need for work. The reality of 2026 looks different: persistent inflation, record-low consumer confidence, and a Gen Z workforce entering the job market without access to affordable housing or stable employment. According to data cited by US media, artificial intelligence was cited as a factor in more than 55,000 layoffs in the US in 2025, more than twelve times as many as two years earlier, while 43 percent of recent college graduates remain underemployed.

A Gallup survey shows a clear generational divide in attitudes toward AI. More than half of Gen Z regularly uses artificial intelligence, but less than 20 percent feel optimistic about it, roughly a third report feeling angry, and nearly half report feeling afraid. Gallup researcher Zach Hrynowski notes that older members of Gen Z are "painfully aware" of the scale of the technological shift in a way earlier generations were not, since they treated previous innovations as more of a curiosity.

Backlash Extends Beyond Executives

Hostility toward the industry is not limited to threats against specific individuals. The buildout of data centers powering AI models is running into mass opposition from local communities across the US: $18 billion worth of projects have been blocked, and another $46 billion delayed, over the past two years. There are now 142 activist groups opposing data center construction across 24 states, and 25 such projects were canceled in 2025, four times as many as the year before. Residents cite higher electricity bills, water use, noise and falling property values as the main reasons for their opposition.

AI researcher Alex Hanna notes that the anger isn't only about job losses but also about more personal harms, including cases where AI tools have been used in harassment situations, with the systems behaving in an "excessively agreeable" way that reinforces users' harmful beliefs. As she puts it, most people angry at AI are ordinary consumers who were promised one thing and got a completely different experience.

For Polish readers, the story remains geographically distant for now, but it signals a direction the public debate around AI could take in Europe as well, where protests against data centers are growing, including recent demonstrations near Warsaw and in Bielsko-Biala. The scale of the American phenomenon, armed security for CEOs, crisis budgets, manifestos with target lists, shows that the dispute over AI has stopped being just a debate about jobs or regulation and has started taking the form of direct physical threat.