One Career, Both Sides of the Checkpoint: Kevin McAleenan

This is the second entry in the One Career, Both Sides of the Checkpoint series. The first entry examined Lee Kair.

Moving from government service to the private sector is legal, common, and no evidence of wrongdoing. The individual described here has a substantial and genuine record in national security. This piece does not allege that he acted improperly or influenced any outcome. It documents a career from public sources and lets the reader consider what it illustrates.

Against Giants has documented the Gold+ program, the remote screening technology behind it, and the companies positioned around it. This is the second entry in a series examining the individual careers that trace the path between government service at the top of homeland security and the private companies now positioned around the privatization and technological transformation of airport screening.

The Government Side

Kevin McAleenan held some of the most senior positions in the Department of Homeland Security.

He served as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency's largest law-enforcement component, and then as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration. As Acting Secretary, he sat atop the entire department, including the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the cybersecurity agency, an organization of roughly a quarter-million employees.

The Government Record

Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The agency's largest law-enforcement component.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. Oversight of TSA, CBP, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the cybersecurity agency, approximately a quarter-million employees.

The Private Side

After leaving government, McAleenan founded Pangiam in 2020, a company focused on vision-based artificial intelligence and biometric identity technology for the travel, trade, and security markets. He served as its chief executive and board chair.

In 2024, Pangiam was acquired by BigBear.ai, an artificial intelligence company. McAleenan became President of BigBear.ai following the acquisition and, as of January 2025, its Chief Executive Officer. BigBear.ai's business includes AI capabilities aimed at the aviation and identity-verification markets, the same biometric and vision-AI technology domain at the center of the screening modernization that programs like Gold+ advance.

Why This Matters

The transformation of the checkpoint is, in large part, a technology story: biometric identity verification, AI-driven image analysis, and the systems that connect them. The companies building that technology are positioning for a screening market that privatization would expand.

McAleenan's crossing sits at the top of that picture. The former Acting Secretary of the department that oversees TSA now leads an artificial-intelligence company whose business targets the aviation and identity markets that screening modernization reshapes. As documented elsewhere in this series and in Against Giants' prior reporting, that same company, Pangiam and then BigBear.ai, is also where the current acting head of TSA worked before returning to government, and where a prominent public advocate for TSA privatization served as investment chief. The concentration of homeland-security leadership, past and present, around a single aviation-AI company is a documented fact drawn from the companies' own announcements.

What the Record Shows

Every fact here is drawn from public sources: the public record of McAleenan's government service and the companies' own press releases and filings. The record establishes a career that moved from the top of the Department of Homeland Security to the leadership of an artificial-intelligence company operating in the aviation and identity markets that screening modernization affects.

The record does not establish, and this piece does not claim, that this movement was improper or that it has influenced any particular decision. It shows one thing clearly: a former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security now leads a company in the technology market that the privatization of screening would expand, and that company's recent history overlaps with the current leadership of TSA. Whether that overlap has been examined, by anyone, is a question the public record does not answer.

Against Giants documents the record. The conclusions belong to the reader.

Scott Robinson is the Co-Founder and Principal Advocate of Against Giants Labor Advocates, LLC. Against Giants is an independent, nonpartisan workplace advocacy firm serving federal transportation security employees. Contact: info@againstgiantsllc.com | againstgiantsllc.com