We entrust certain individuals across government, business, academia, and public service, with the authority to make consequential decisions. Judges who interpret the law, CEO’s who shape corporate strategy, university presidents navigating controversy, election officials safeguarding our democracy, and all types of public servants whose choices affect millions. Increasingly, it’s not the institution that becomes the focus of anger and grievance, but the individuals who make the decisions.

Recent testimony by members of the US Supreme Court, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s account of explaining to her young son why she now has to wear a bullet-proof vest, is a stark reminder that the threat landscape has fundamentally changed. People in positions of influence who make high-consequence decisions are increasingly at risk of harm.

The “Decision-Maker” Threat Approach

The security profession has traditionally categorized protectees by office, profession, or level of public visibility.  And while this continues to be useful, it can be argued that there is another way to think about risk through the role that these officials perform. A category of protectees who face elevated risk because of the authority they exercise, rather than because of who they are personally. That category includes, but is certainly not limited to:

  • Elected Officials
  • Supreme Court Justices
  • Corporate CEO’s
  • Federal and State Justices
  • University Presidents
  • Public Health Leaders
  • Corporate Board Members

People in these roles share common characteristics:

  • Their decisions affect large groups of people
  • Their personal information is widely available to the public
  • Their decisions can trigger emotional reactions
  • They often become symbols of broader political, social, or ideological grievances

Increasingly, these individuals become the human face of institutional decisions. Public frustration that was once directed toward an organization becomes focused on the person perceived to represent it. From a protective intelligence perspective, this makes officials like this less a collection of unrelated individuals, and more a distinct risk population, requiring proactive monitoring and coordinated protective planning.

The Personalization of Grievance

We’ve written previously about how grievance can metastasize into discernible threats, and this is particularly applicable when looking at risk to consequential deciders. For decades, public anger has been largely directed toward institutions, represented by people protesting, criticizing, and opposing, whether in public or online. But today, increasingly, the focus has shifted from institutions to individuals, where the judge, the CEO, the elected official becomes the target.  The institution remains, but the grievance becomes personal. 

This shift has profound implications for Protective Intelligence, because monitoring organizational sentiment alone is no longer sufficient. Security teams must understand how public grievances evolve into personal fixation on those perceived to be responsible for consequential decisions. Social media has dramatically accelerated this shift, collapsing the distance between public figures and the people who disagree with them. 

How Threats Against Deciders Evolve

Not everyone who disagrees becomes a threat, but nearly every targeted attack begins with grievance. Protective intelligence is not about predicting violence; it is about identifying the behavioral progression of indicators that lead to violence. This progression often follows a recognizable path:

  • Disagreement – Opposition to a decision or policy
  • Grievance – A belief that one has been wronged
  • Personalization – Blame shifts from the institution to the individual
  • Fixation – Persistent focus on a specific person
  • Leakage – Intent or planning begins to surface through words or behaviors
  • Mobilization – Movement from thought toward action

Protective intelligence seeks to identify this progression before mobilization occurs, when intervention remains most effective.

Fortunately, most people never progress beyond the earliest stages. The challenge for security professionals is recognizing the small percentage who do. Today’s attacks rarely begin with physical proximity; they often begin with observable digital behaviors that can take the form of:

  • Doxxing
  • Coordinated online harassment
  • Publication of personal information
  • Impersonation
  • Swatting
  • Threats to family members

By the time physical security measures become necessary, digital indicators have often existed for weeks or months. 

Reframing the Risk Moving Forward

Every organization, public and private, has deciders. The question isn’t whether your organization has people whose decisions could provoke intense public reaction; it is more about whether you’ve identified them before someone else has. So, instead of limiting the focus to who the person is (i.e., Presidents, Governors, CEO’s, etc.), we should be expanding the focus to understanding the risk around what decisions they are making or are expected to make.

Put another way, in addition to asking: “Who are the VIPs in our organization?” we should also be asking, “Who in our organization is about to make a decision that could generate significant grievance?” 

As the threat landscape evolves, the Protective Intelligence discipline must evolve with it. The challenge is not only in identifying emerging threats and threat actors, but in recognizing which decisions, and which decision-makers, are most likely to attract them.