The day before Elon Musk spoke at a celebration for Tesla’s futuristic Cybertruck pickup in November, a Florida man, Paul Overeem, was arrested near the company’s Austin, Texas, factory and accused by the authorities of planning a “mass casualty event” there.
The incident later made headlines. What went less noticed is what happened at Tesla’s event, which went ahead at the Austin factory.
Security had been alerted to Mr. Overeem’s threats and was fully activated, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangements and documents viewed by The New York Times. The list of invitees was carefully curated, with each person screened well ahead of time. More than three dozen Tesla security officials were then stationed throughout the room when Mr. Musk, who runs the carmaker, took the stage. He also had bodyguards from his private security firm, Foundation Security, on hand.
Mr. Musk, 53, has long cultivated a devil-may-care persona, traveling the world, hanging out with moguls, world leaders and celebrities, and smoking weed in public. But in private, he has increasingly barricaded himself behind a growing phalanx of armed bodyguards as he has become more wealthy, more famous and more outspoken — and as the threats against him have evolved.
The world’s richest man, with a net worth of more than $240 billion, he once fielded largely harmless calls and messages from ardent fans but now regularly deals with stalkers and death threats, according to police documents and internal Tesla records. While many high-profile people face threats, Mr. Musk has transformed his own protection in recent years to deal with the change, expanding an already robust personal security beyond that of other billionaires.
Mr. Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX have paid millions of dollars a year for his security, including to the security company Gavin de Becker & Associates and others, according to internal Tesla documents. To control his protection further, Mr. Musk started Foundation Security, according to the documents and security experts.
His security team now operates like a mini-Secret Service, and he is guarded more like a head of state than a business executive, security experts said. Mr. Musk, who was once flanked by two bodyguards, travels with as many as 20 security professionals who show up to research escape routes or to clear a room before he enters. They often carry guns and have a medical professional in tow for Mr. Musk, who has been code-named “Voyager” by his security team.
The threats to his safety have led Mr. Musk to become more fearful and his lifestyle more isolated, three people close to him said. He is rarely without bodyguards — even when he went to the bathroom at X, his social media company — according to a 2023 lawsuit filed by former employees over severance pay. At times, he has overstated the severity of threats, including once inaccurately saying two people indicted in separate incidents had carried guns.
At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Mr. Musk said he thought the threats against him were getting crazier.
“The probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name,” he said. “So they hear my name a lot — I’m like, ‘OK, I’m on the list,’ you know.” He added that this had forced him to be more standoffish to the public.
The way Mr. Musk lives now is different from others who are ultrawealthy. Warren E. Buffett, who is worth more than $145 billion, employed just one personal bodyguard for many years. (It is unclear how many bodyguards he has now; his spokeswoman said Berkshire Hathaway, Mr. Buffett’s company, used several security firms.) Mr. Musk’s predecessor at X, Jack Dorsey, often walked miles across San Francisco with no bodyguard.
This year, Tesla disclosed in filings for the first time that it paid $2.4 million for a portion of Mr. Musk’s protection in 2023. It paid $500,000 in the first two months of 2024, more than five times the average spent every two months in 2019, according to Tesla documents. From 2015 to 2018, Mr. Musk spent an average $145,000 a month on security, according to invoices and receipts viewed by The Times.
In contrast, Apple spent $820,000 last year to protect its chief executive, Tim Cook, while Amazon shells out $1.6 million a year to guard its founder, Jeff Bezos. One of the few companies to spend more is Meta, which allocated $23.4 million last year to the security of its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, filings show.
The Times compiled details of Mr. Musk’s security, which have not previously been reported, from hundreds of pages of Tesla documents, police and local government documents obtained through public records requests, state records of Mr. Musk’s security company, audio recordings, court documents, and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The Times did not include details of Mr. Musk’s locations.
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 Mr. Musk spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to risk their jobs or relationships with him and Tesla.
Mr. Musk, his lawyer and representatives for Tesla and SpaceX did not return requests for comment.
Running Musk’s Errands
Mr. Musk once operated informally, leaving his keys in his car and walking away, and did not want bodyguards, people close to him said. But as his profile rose, Tesla’s board required him to take on personal security, according to some of the people and documents viewed by The Times.
By 2014, Mr. Musk had bodyguards from Gavin de Becker & Associates, a company run by Gavin de Becker, who parlayed a job as Elizabeth Taylor’s assistant and work for the Department of Justice into a career protecting celebrities and investigating targets for high-end clients. The firm’s customers have included Mr. Bezos and Cher.
When Mr. Musk traveled for work, a rotating cast of bodyguards from GDBA, most of whom had military experience, accompanied him wherever he went.
The price for such services often reached six figures a month. In January 2016, when Mr. Musk visited Mexico, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Israel and Texas, Mr. de Becker’s bill was $163,674.59, according to the documents. The cost was split among SpaceX, Tesla and Mr. Musk.
Bodyguards often ran errands for Mr. 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 paid a hotel bill of $22,445.72 for Mr. Musk’s family and staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong in January 2016.
GDBA’s staff also helped Mr. Musk with “threat assessments” at a cost of more than $400 an hour for a senior consultant, as well as researching people classified as “inappropriate pursuers,” according to the documents.
The firm also targeted someone who avoided Mr. Musk: Stu Grossman, who owned the tesla.com internet address years ago. Mr. Grossman, a senior engineer at a networking company, had acquired the domain name before Tesla was founded. Mr. Musk wanted to buy it, but Mr. Grossman was in no hurry to sell.
In 2015, Mr. Grossman said, he was visited twice at his San Francisco home and once outside a restaurant by private investigators who said they worked for Mr. Musk.
“Elon would like you to know that he would like to hear from you,” the investigator outside the restaurant said, according to Mr. Grossman. He eventually agreed to sell tesla.com to the company for an undisclosed price.
‘Nice Knowin Ya’
Many people trying to reach Mr. Musk were innocuous, documents and recordings of phone calls obtained by The Times show. One woman left a two-minute voice mail several years ago at one of Mr. Musk’s companies, referring to him as “Daddy Musk” and claiming they had spoken telepathically for the last year.
“I can’t wait for you to propose to me in outer space on our station,” she said.
By 2022, Mr. Musk was worth over $200 billion. His fame had soared as Tesla dominated the market for electric vehicles and SpaceX ferried astronauts into space for NASA. That fueled his security concerns, three people close to him said.
He received international threats, including one he posted on X that spring from Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian government official. Mr. Rogozin warned Mr. Musk that “you will be held accountable” for helping Ukraine’s military with his Starlink satellite internet service in the war with Russia, according to Mr. Musk’s posts.
“If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya,” Mr. Musk later posted.
In October 2022, Mr. Musk bought Twitter — later renamed X — thrusting him further into the spotlight. That December, he suspended the account of a university student who tracked his private jet, along with more than 24 other accounts, claiming they were “basically assassination coordinates.” He later reinstated some of the accounts.
Mr. Musk moved to take security operations into his own hands. In 2016, Jared Birchall, who manages Mr. Musk’s family office, registered Foundation Security in California. The company appeared to be a clearinghouse for Mr. Musk’s security payments, with Mr. de Becker’s firm running operations, documents show. It was dissolved in February 2022.
Mr. Musk’s private foundation also registered a Foundation Security in Texas, though it is unclear when the registration happened. The company was described as a “private business with internal security staff,” according to documents filed with the state. (Mr. Musk is a fan of the “Foundation” science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov.)
Foundation Security is run partly by Justin Riblet, a former Army special forces weapons sergeant, who previously worked for GDBA, according to the documents and Mr. Riblet’s LinkedIn page. He declined to comment.
Tesla this year reported for the first time that it had entered into an agreement with a security company owned by Mr. Musk “to provide security services concerning him.” It did not name the company. It is unclear why Tesla did not report the expenditures earlier, since public companies are required to disclose most business relationships with entities owned by their top executives.
Tesla has its own security operations, including an intelligence unit for investigations and the ability to fly drones over facilities and events, two people familiar with the company said.
The growing security has limited Mr. Musk’s movements. At Burning Man, the annual outdoor Nevada art and music festival, he mostly stays close to his camp, two people with knowledge of the event said. At parties, bodyguards sweep the area ahead of time and look for anyone not on an approved list.
Danger Level
Threats against Mr. Musk appear to be rising. Since Tesla opened its Austin factory in early 2022, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office has responded to eight “terroristic threat” incidents there, with at least two aimed directly at Mr. Musk, records show.
In contrast, the police responded to five terroristic threat incidents over the last decade at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif., according to police records.
Mr. Overeem, who was arrested in Austin in November before reaching Tesla’s factory, had posted threatening messages in an Instagram group chat about the Cybertruck event where Mr. Musk would speak, according to Travis County court documents.
“If I’m saying I’m gonna kill people then you should take this seriously,” he wrote in one message, according to the documents.
Mr. Musk’s and Tesla’s security took the threat seriously and addressed it when planning the Cybertruck event, two people said. Tesla also alerted law enforcement, the court documents show.
A grand jury has indicted Mr. Overeem on a felony charge of making a terroristic threat. He is out on $200,000 bill, with his bail conditions requiring him to stay 200 yards away from Mr. Musk and Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, one of Mr. Musk’s companies. Ms. Zilis is also the mother of some of Mr. Musk’s children.
In a separate incident in January, Justin McCauley, 32, a former Tesla employee, posted on X: “@JoeBiden @X @Tesla @Elonmusk, I am planning to Kill all of you.”
Mr. McCauley’s wife, who was in Minnesota, called the police after he told her that he was going to Texas and never returning, records show. The Travis County Sheriff’s Office tracked Mr. McCauley’s truck and arrested him in January near Tesla’s Austin factory. He was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of making a terroristic threat and released on bail.
Rick Cofer, a lawyer who represents Mr. Overeem and Mr. McCauley, said that he wasn’t authorized to speak about the cases but that behavior that is typically categorized as criminal or threatening “can often be traced back to untreated mental health symptoms.”
In an apparent reference to these incidents, Mr. Musk posted on X in July, after the assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump.
“Dangerous times ahead,” he wrote. “Two people (separate occasions) have already tried to kill me in the past 8 months.” He said both had guns, though court documents show that neither Mr. Overeem nor Mr. McCauley was arrested with any weapons.
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