Security Journal Americas hears exclusively from Fred Burton, Jonathan Wackrow and Chuck Randolph about the importance of executive protection.
Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking at a Utah university in September. Just months earlier, Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in their home, while State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were gravely wounded.
These weren’t random explosions of violence but the culmination of a pipeline where online grievances mutate into ideology and how ideology escalates into targeted attacks.
Forty years ago, most threats against public leaders never made it that far. In 1981, US officials were briefed on a Libyan plot to kill President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz.
The FBI even circulated identi-kit sketches of alleged hitmen, one of which resembled the infamous “Jackal.” Threats of that era were alarming but almost always ‘aspirational, loud rhetoric with little chance of execution’.
That distinction is collapsing. Today’s digital ecosystem allows lone actors to exploit open-source data, extremist narratives and low-cost tools to move from aspiration to action with speed.
The result: elected officials, corporate leaders and civic figures now face a risk environment where grievances don’t just simmer online—they spill into deadly operations in the physical world.
The Network Contagion Research Institute has found that nearly one-third of Americans believe violence against public figures is sometimes justified .
That sentiment doesn’t stay confined to message boards it radicalizes, mobilizes and informs targeting. We saw this with Vance Boelter, who allegedly used open-source data to identify home addresses to track routines before carrying out his rampage in Minnesota.
We saw it in April, when a man armed with Molotov cocktails set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while his family was inside, later admitting he planned to assault the governor if confronted.
We saw this again with the Charlie Kirk incident that occurred in broad daylight. Judges, are also increasingly in the crosshairs with swatting attempts, bomb threats and direct death threats following on from politically charged rulings, creating a climate where judicial independence itself is under siege.
Yet our protective posture remains dangerously outdated. State and local officials receive episodic coverage, such as escorts at public events, but little to shield them at home or in daily life.
Corporate executives face similar exposure, even as grievance-driven targeting increases. The protective model is still built for yesterday, not for an era where data trails, livestreams and extremist narratives are the weapons of choice.
The private sector has begun to adapt. After the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in 2024, companies reframed executive protection as a board-level priority.
Real-time threat monitoring, behavioral analysis and digital hygiene audits are becoming standard. A recent Security Journal Americas feature, it described how “assassination culture” is spreading online, where grievance narratives normalize targeting public and corporate figures.
The shift wasn’t driven by fear, it was driven by resilience.
Public leaders deserve the same rigor.
If shareholder value justifies enterprise-grade protection, then so does democratic continuity. This requires digital security training supported by regular audits, access to real-time threat intelligence and early behavioral threat assessments, that are all coordinated by cross-functional teams that bring together law enforcement, digital analysts and protection professionals.
Succession planning must also be treated as essential infrastructure. Leadership gaps (whether in a governor’s mansion or a corporate boardroom) invite uncertainty, instability and the perception of weakness.
The Minnesota manhunt, largest in state history, showed how quickly agencies can mobilize under crisis. That same energy must be applied to prevention.
Protection is not a courtesy, it is continuity. Like cybersecurity, it safeguards systems. Like public health, it protects the whole by defending the vulnerable few.
Treating protection as a perk misrepresents its role. It is not about fortifying individuals—it is about ensuring that institutions can govern, lead, and respond under pressure.
We must also confront the uncomfortable reality: the threat is expanding, the targets are multiplying, and the data trails – home addresses, family photos and ideological manifestos – are hiding in plain sight.
This is not about building fortresses, its about building foresight. The time for fragmented, fear-based reactions is over and the time for strategic, converged protection, bridging physical, digital and reputational domains… is now.
