Billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk recently beefed up his security detail, and they reportedly have a designated codename for him now while on duty.
According to a New York Times article titled “Inside Elon Musk’s Mushrooming Security Apparatus,” the outlet reported that the billionaire’s security refers to him by the codename “Voyager,” a moniker most likely chosen to hark back to the famous NASA mission as well as the name of one of the fictional spaceships on Star Trek.
The outlet investigated Musk’s security team and found that it now includes at least 20 personnel who travel with him everywhere, including to the bathroom. Some of them are armed and one is a medical professional in case of an emergency. Musk now spends millions on security annually.
Some may find that amount of security to be overkill, but it makes sense that a man worth over $250 billion would face serious risks in the outside world. It also makes sense in the wake of two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, who Musk officially endorsed for the 2024 election after the first attempt in Butler County, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13. The second attempt happened two months later, on Sunday, Sept. 15.
The billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX, who now also owns the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), was not always so wealthy or in danger. He used to travel around without security, which changed in 2014. Since then, his security measures have only increased as his notoriety increased and with it new threats. In a recent shareholder meeting at Tesla, Musk said that things were becoming “a little crazy these days.”
In 2022, Musk secretly purchased a new home after his previous address started to circulate as public knowledge. The same year, he also changed then-Twitter’s rules to ban doxing, which is the practice of revealing personal details about someone’s location, after a user started posting publicly available data about Musk’s private jet travels and a “crazy stalker” accosted him in Los Angeles while he was in his car with his son.
As recently as June of this year, Musk reported that he was threatened by “two homicidal maniacs.”
