Let Them Drive Less
Oil execs building corporate militias, fearing "Bastille" moment over gas prices
Gas prices are gouging the public, with oil companies like BP more than doubling their profits. They're also preparing for war, building up their own corporate militias to guard against an angry public.
“Security guards have become an integral part of America, and the butt of every joke,” a retired military officer working in corporate security tells me. “But this new era of ‘executive protection’? It’s completely different. From bodyguards to intelligence agents, corporate America is acting as if they are preventing a future storming of the Bastille.”
Energy companies have not traditionally been the biggest spenders on corporate security. That’s until the soaring gas prices caused by the Iran war reshuffled the threat picture. Now, “high net worth individual” bodyguards are in high demand — former special operators and SEALs — for the C-suite types fearing public backlash.
In April, Chevron executive Andy Walz told CBS that ordinary people worried about gas prices “should try to drive less; they should try to conserve energy.”
A commenter under a clip of the interview on YouTube put it well: “Drive halfway to work. Walk the rest of the way. Brilliant!”
And then there’s Jay Young, CEO of Texas oil company King Operating and author of The Upside of Oil and Gas Investing. He recently preached the Drive Less gospel on his own podcast, The Jay Young Show. “Instead of going to North Dakota for your summer vacation, you’re gonna go to New Mexico or something,” he offers.
But it's not all bad news.
“We’re not gonna be anywhere close to being done with this Iran war any, anytime soon,” Young goes on — and that’s the good part. “It’s gonna be great for the energy business, it’s gonna be great for jobs, and it’s gonna be great for oil and gas companies,” he adds.
The episode hosts Drew Mitchell, a 20-year law enforcement veteran, former SWAT leader, and founder of the corporate security firm Valence Global. The episode — “Executive Protection, Online Safety & Energy Security” — is less an interview than a sales pitch: today’s private security, Mitchell argues, is a long way from the mall cop.
“We are able, now, to deploy technology where if you wanna play a round of golf and we need to check bushes, you have thermal cameras, you have drones,” Mitchell says. “The technology now is so much better than it was even a decade ago.”
There are an estimated 1.2 million private security guards in the United States, roughly twice the number of sworn officers across all 18,000 local, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies combined — and nearly three times the U.S. Army’s active-duty soldiers.
Most of those are the laughing-stock variety — the ones who provide the illusion of security and counter-terrorism at everything from factories to movie theaters. But executive security is another animal entirely. According to Equilar, which tracks executive compensation, 37.8 percent of S&P 500 companies provided security perks to executives in 2025, up from 23.6 percent in 2021. The median disclosed value of those perks hit $130,468 — a 20 percent jump in a single year, and more than double what it was five years ago.
The general trend towards increased spending on executive security is revealed in corporate proxy filings. Blackstone, with more than $1.3 trillion in assets, tops the list. Meta spent over $24 million on Mark Zuckerberg’s personal and family home and travel security, according to its latest filing. Lockheed Martin, which has been the object of protests over its arms sales to Israel, disclosed over one million for CEO security and another million for mandatory personal use of corporate aircraft, citing “direct security threats.” Intel went from $3,000 to nearly $250,000, citing “the security climate.” Edison International, a public utility holding company that includes Southern California Edison, went from $94,276 on executive security in 2024 to over $4.5 million in 2025 — a 4,767 percent increase. Hewlett-Packard jumped 3,481 percent. The Chertoff Group, founded by the former DHS secretary, says its security business has more than doubled since late 2023.
Oil and gas long sat low on that spending list. The Iran war changed the calculus — overnight, the threat picture darkened for an industry that profits directly from people's pain at the pump.
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024 was the 9/11-type turning point for corporate America. Matthew Dumpert, a managing director at the risk firm Kroll, put it bluntly to Bloomberg Law: “Executives are at risk because of the product or service their company sells.”
Whether that profit is health insurance, arms, or gasoline, the executive security business is flourishing. In February, the Security Executive Council — an industry body that serves Fortune 500 corporate security shops — published a study of attacks on corporate executives from 2003 to 2025 finding that the rate is at its highest level on record. The report cited “activism” as a leading driver for the first time.
“Protests and activism-driven incidents have become more common, often accelerating alongside broader waves of global grievance expression,” the report notes, pointing to pro-Palestine demonstrations, climate change activism, and anti-billionaire sentiment as common threads. “These dynamics highlight how executives may emerge as focal points for symbolic opposition, particularly during periods of heightened geopolitical tension or social unrest.”
CEOs and billionaires are already operating in the stratosphere compared to us mortals back on earth. Ironically, the executive protection business serves to increase that distance, insulating executives from normal people and normal life. There hasn’t been a Luigi Mangione of the oil industry — yet. But you can see why they’re worried about it. Faced with a public crushed by their own price gouging, telling people to drive less sounds a lot like Marie Antoinette.
Let them drive less.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Maybe if we didn't feel raped by the industry they wouldn't need the bully guards?
More and more the near and lasting future might well be forms of "techno-feudalism" where the lords and ladies live ensconced in their castles, well-fed, well-served, surrounded by knights, venturing out past the serfs only in fine armed coaches when they visit other strongholds of an AI supported Epstein class.