Here’s something to consider. A person terrified about their own safety aspires to amass power and wealth. Why? Because they are terrified about their own safety. So they hoard, and the hoard grows without limit, because it exists to offset a fear of losing control or status.
And so they enter the AI market and tell everyone they are terrified about their own safety because of… AI.
Sure, sure, we believe it is AI that puts the executive in danger. We also believed it was the cans when Steve Martin, standing in front of the cans in 1979, yelled “He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!”
To put it another way, here’s the kind of reporting I run into.
Earlier this year, the AI industry was shaken when a 20-year-old anti-AI activist named Daniel Moreno-Gama, armed with a gun and a Molotov cocktail, unsuccessfully tried to firebomb the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. No one was injured…
Anti-AI activist. Or anti-can activist?
One man, armed with one gun and one bottle of alcohol, shook the industry.
Hold on, let me check the other headline for a minute.
Heat that hit Europe exceptionally early and hard this year appears to have led to a spike in deaths, with well over 10,000 more people dying at the height of the heat wave than would normally have been expected…
Well, suddenly, unexpectedly, over 10,000 people dead? Yeah, so, is anyone stirred by that? Anyway back to the shaken AI industry, because someone could get hurt or even die.
Years ago, when I was working with Yahoo executives, I couldn’t help but notice that Marissa Mayer came in as CEO with constant body guards. Was there a threat? She didn’t get body guards for other staff, because it seemed to be a perception that the threat was attached to only top success. In fact, she built a daycare for her child, and hers alone, in the Yahoo campus, and then told every employee they need to be on campus like her, all the time, while their children stay home. Always available onsite daycare, bodyguards, for her while others faced the world without them.
I guess my question is, instead of calling the people around an AI CEO their bodyguards and accept their framing, why don’t we call their entourage FUD-care.
One time I was invited to a closed invite only party in San Francisco, with bouncers and security at the door. Once inside I crossed paths with Marissa Mayer and her two, yes two, bodyguards. Inside the perimeter. The musician performing on stage next to us was infinitely more famous, more wealthy, and yet had no personal security.
I’m sure if Marissa Mayer were CEO of OpenAI she would blame the industry that she is in, her role at the top of it, for what makes her so fearful for her safety. She would sound like Sam Altman. Or Elon Musk. The opposite of Craig Newmark. We should be asking whether some people wear their FUD as a badge, hype it up to get the attention, and see the world as an “othering” game. Credible threat intelligence never seems to be part of their story. Because if it were, they would probably be working on, or at least openly talking about, their role in the death of those 10,000 people in June 2026.
