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'Uber for Armed Guards' Rushes to Market Following the Assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO | Are you scared to walk down the streets of NYC and also have too much money? There's an app for that (gizmodo.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Protector, an app that lets you book armed goons the same way you’d call for an Uber, is having a viral moment.

Protector lets the user book armed guards on demand. Right now it’s only available in NYC and LA. According to its marketing, every guard is either “active duty or retired law enforcement and military.” Every booking comes with a motorcade and users get to select the number of Escalades that’ll be joining them as well as the uniforms their hired goons will wear.

Protector is currently “#7 in Travel” on Apple’s App Store. It’s not available for people who use Android devices. Sorry Google phone fans, if you want your own armed goons you’ll have to resort to more traditional methods of goon employment.

The marketing for Protector, which lives on its X account, is surreal. A series of robust and barrel-chested men in ill-fitting black suits deliver their credentials to the camera while sitting in front of a black background. They’re all operators. They describe careers in SWAT teams and being deployed to war zones. They show vanity shots of themselves kitted out in operator gear. All of them have a red lapel pin bearing the symbol of Protector.

Who is this for, you might ask? A video posted on January 6, 2025, that runs just over two minutes gives the game away. It opens with a photo of assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “We’re going to run through a scenario to demonstrate, where if a Protector had been present, crisis could have been averted,” the Protector says in the video. He then runs through several fantasy versions of the assassination where a Protector is on hand to prevent the assassin from killing the CEO.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

Or the delusional. Anyone with a serious security concern has mitigation plans in place. This is for people who think they need security because reasons, mainly to satiate their ego.

I remember right after the UHC assassination I was in getting a haircut, and there was another guy getting cut that was loudly spouting off about how he was afraid for his life because he's a CEO. Like dude, you're a CEO of a small local financial services firm, not the CEO of a massive conglomerate. I'm technically the CEO of my small contracting company that's incorporated. We are not targets (unless you're a massive prick, which by the way he was talking was quite possible), but if one of us got popped it wouldn't make the news, nor are we likely to be targeted, calm down lol.