Terrified Tech Execs Are Traveling With Armed Bodyguards as AI Backlash Grows

Tech executives at leading AI companies are traveling with armed bodyguards and beefing up security as anti-AI backlash escalates into threats and attempted violence, including a firebomb attempt on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home and a security breach at Anthropic's headquarters. The industry faces growing public fear over job losses, wealth concentration, and existential risks, prompting activists to target data centers and protest outside company offices.

Public backlash to AI is intensifying — and transforming into real-world attempts at physical violence. Industry leaders are fearing for their lives. Leading AI companies and their top executives are beefing up security, the Wall Street Journal reports https://www.wsj.com/us-news/the-ai-backlash-has-tech-executives-fearing-for-their-lives-30c43972 , as escalating anti-AI industry sentiment is culminating in threats and attempts of violence against the people and ventures building leading AI models. Some executives are even traveling with armed guards, while others have taken to keeping a lower public profile. “Tech CEOs, a few years ago, definitely did not have security,” Dakota Dominguez, an executive at the Silicon Valley-based security firm JPT Security, told the WSJ . “A lot of tech companies now are incorporating that into their budgets.” Earlier this year, the AI industry was shaken when a 20-year-old anti-AI activist named Daniel Moreno-Gama https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/altman-mansion-molotov , armed with a gun and a Molotov cocktail, unsuccessfully tried to firebomb the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. No one was injured, but the high-profile incident followed a string of violent threats and at least one OpenAI lockdown https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-lockdown-threat . OpenAI isn’t alone. Per the WSJ , around the time that Altman’s home was targeted, OpenAI rival Anthropic faced a close call when a man snuck into its headquarters behind an employee carrying an envelope with an executive’s name on it. The man reportedly then told a guard that the executive was “going to be killed.” The man was stopped before anyone got hurt. All in all, it’s easy to see why tech leaders are budgeting for beefed up security. Not all anti-AI sentiment has manifested in attempted physical violence. Activists have also shut down data centers https://futurism.com/future-society/residents-shut-down-google-data-center , taken down AI-powered surveillance cameras https://futurism.com/future-society/redditors-flock-surveillance-alpr-vandalism-memes , and protested outside AI company headquarters. As the fight over AI data centers https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/pollution-ai-data-centers-severe heats up, some polls have shown that AI is less popular https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/891724/nbc-news-march-2026-poll-ai-ice with Americans than Immigration and Customs Enforcement. People fear that AI will result in mass layoffs, a further consolidation of wealth and power, or even a catastrophic apocalypse — outcomes that many leaders https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic in the AI industry have issued warnings about https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ceo-ai-gen-z-unemployment . “That’s why people are setting warehouses on fire,” a former Pinterest employee named Bonnie Kate Wolf, who was laid off during an AI-focused restructuring, told the WSJ . “You can’t go back to serfdom. It really feels like the people in power want to be kings. Historically, that doesn’t work out for kings.” More on AI tensions: AI Billionaires Are Starting to Get Scared https://futurism.com/future-society/ai-billionaires-scared-labor-automation