Gavin de Becker built a career teaching people to spot danger. His support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raises a harder question about how smart people come to believe things.
The Smartest Man in the Room Can Still Be Wrong
The Man Who Taught Us to Spot Danger
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,086: Friday, November 13th, 2026
Gavin de Becker wrote one of the most useful books I have ever read. The Gift of Fear has probably saved lives. His firm protects some of the most threatened people on earth. He is brilliant, disciplined and extremely well read.
He is also one of the biggest financial backers of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That troubles me. It disappoints me. And…it should concern you, for a reason that has nothing to do with de Becker personally.
Here it is: if a mind like his can buy this, yours can too. So can mine.
This is not a hit piece. Nobody has charged de Becker with anything. What follows is the public record, then the uncomfortable lesson inside it.
First, Follow the Money
In 2023, de Becker gave $10 million to American Values 2024, the super PAC behind Kennedy’s presidential run.
The PAC sent $9.65 million of it back.
In February 2024 he gave $4 million more. In April, $2 million came back.
Do the math. About $14 million in the headlines. Roughly $2.35 million that stayed.
De Becker and the PAC called it “bridge funding.” His position: money moves this way in business all the time.
Critics saw something else. A PAC that reports a big haul looks viable, and viability attracts other donors. In 2023 the PAC spent more refunding de Becker than promoting Kennedy. Campaign finance experts told Politico they had never seen anything like it.
The Democratic National Committee filed FEC complaints. The legal theory is simple. Money given with an understanding that it may come back is a loan…and loans must be reported as loans. Calling it a contribution…they argued…misled the public about how much real support Kennedy had.
Two caveats, because facts matter. The DNC had its own motive: Kennedy threatened its nominee. And I could find no public record of the FEC ruling against anyone.
One more wrinkle. De Becker’s firm was also the campaign’s biggest vendor…paid nearly $3 million for security through April 2024.
Donor. Lender. Vendor. Friend. All at once.
Then Came the Gifts
Kennedy now runs the Department of Health and Human Services.
In September the Wall Street Journal reported what his ethics filing showed for 2025, all from de Becker:
$126,000 of lodging at de Becker’s Washington home
$97,000 in flights to Fiji
$45,000 in flights to Greece
This week the Journal added a week aboard de Becker’s 151-foot yacht in the Greek islands. That one was not on the form.
On November 10, Senators Ron Wyden and Angela Alsobrooks wrote to Kennedy and asked for answers by November 30. De Becker…got a letter of his own.
Here is the legal question in plain English.
Federal officials may accept gifts from real personal friends. They may not accept them from a “prohibited source”: anyone their agency regulates, or anyone whose interests their decisions could substantially affect.
The senators say de Becker is one. He has written about ketamine therapy, which HHS is reviewing. He published a 2025 book alleging vaccine harm. His publisher, Skyhorse, has paid Kennedy too.
De Becker says the families vacationed together long before Kennedy took office…the friendship has nothing to do with the job…and he wants nothing from the department. HHS says ethics officials reviewed and certified the filing.
Nobody has ruled. These are allegations in a letter from two Democrats, not findings.
Why Smart People Fall the Hardest
Most people assume intelligence protects you from bad ideas. It doesn’t. Often it works like an accelerant.
I can’t read de Becker’s mind. But…the research on brilliant people…and bad beliefs is clear…and six pieces of it fit.
1. Intelligence is horsepower, not steering.
Psychologist Keith Stanovich spent decades showing that IQ and rational thinking are separate skills. He named the gap dysrationalia. IQ tells you how fast the engine runs. It says nothing about where the car is pointed.
2. Smart people are better lawyers for their own beliefs.
Yale’s Dan Kahan found that the most numerate people…were often the most polarized on charged topics. They used their skill to defend their side…not to find the truth.
3. Expertise does not travel.
De Becker is a world authority on predicting violence. That is not immunology. Linus Pauling won two Nobel Prizes…then spent years insisting vitamin C megadoses could beat cancer.
4. The pattern detector never shuts off.
De Becker’s career is built on spotting hidden threats…and trusting intuition over official reassurance. That instinct catches stalkers. Aimed at a vaccine schedule…it finds threats in coincidence.
5. Grief and loyalty outrank logic.
De Becker has said his son died at 31 after pandemic travel restrictions delayed his leukemia treatment. I can’t imagine that pain. I doubt it leaves any man’s view of public health authorities untouched. Add a friend he calls his closest in the world. We believe the people we love.
6. Nobody sees their own blind spot.
Researchers who study the “bias blind spot” found that cognitive sophistication offers no protection from it. In some tests…the sharpest thinkers…were slightly worse at seeing their own bias. The smarter you are…the more you trust your own verdict. That is exactly when nobody is checking your work.
What the Nonsense Costs
This would be a parlor game if the stakes were small. They aren’t.
Samoa, 2019.
Vaccination rates collapsed. Measles killed 83 people, most of them small children. Kennedy had visited months earlier and denies any role. Samoa’s health ministry says his visit coincided with rising anti-vaccine sentiment, though it found no conclusive proof the visit caused the drop.
America, now.
The CDC counted 2,289 measles cases in 2025. This year: 5,412 and climbing. That is the most in 35 years. More than nine in ten were unvaccinated…or of unknown status. Kindergarten coverage has slid from 95.2% to 92.4%. People have died both years.
Falsehoods about vaccines lower vaccination. Lower vaccination kills children. That chain is not complicated.
The Takeaway
De Becker taught millions of us to trust our fear. Great advice in a parking garage. Terrible advice in epidemiology.
So do the hard thing:
Judge the claim…not the résumé of the person making it.
Ask what evidence would change your mind. If the answer is “nothing,” you have a faith…not a position.
Be most suspicious when a belief flatters you…your friends…or your grief.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. The most dangerous sentence in the English language is “I’m too smart to fall for that.” Gavin de Becker is smarter than most of us. Remember that…the next time you feel certain.
Sources
Campaign money and the FEC complaints
Politico (via Yahoo): The mystery behind the $10 million bridge
NBC News: Gavin de Becker, RFK Jr.’s bodyguard, bank and fellow vaccine critic
CBS News: DNC files third complaint against RFK Jr. super PAC
CNN: DNC accuses pro-RFK Jr. super PAC of campaign finance violations
Gifts and the Senate inquiry
Wyden–Alsobrooks letter to Secretary Kennedy, November 10, 2026 (PDF)
The Hill: Democrats investigate RFK Jr, donor over expensive gifts
Forbes (via Yahoo): Democrats probe private security consultant Gavin de Becker
Mediaite: Senate Democrats launch probe into RFK Jr.’s gifts
MSNBC (via Yahoo): Democrats take a keen interest in the gifts and trips RFK Jr. received
The Daily Beast: RFK Jr. discloses $250K in gifts from top donor
Measles and Samoa
The psychology of smart people and bad beliefs
Keith Stanovich, “Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss,” Scientific American
Kahan, Peters, Dawson and Slovic, “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” Behavioural Public Policy (2017)
West, Meserve and Stanovich, “Cognitive Sophistication Does Not Attenuate the Bias Blind Spot,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2012)
Justin Stebbing, “Vitamin C and cancer: was Linus Pauling on to something?” Anglia Ruskin University
When my children were young I avidly consumed The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift, DeBecker's second book. I even gave copies to friends because the lessons were so valuable. To hear that he supports that kook is disappointing, to say the least. I guess it's akin to believing that intelligent people's characters are commensurately stellar. Not necessarily.
Wow 😮