Shadowing Practice: Why Corporate America Is Spending More On Security - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Violent crime fell more than 9% in 2025, but public concern remains widespread.
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Nearly 7 in 10 Americans say they worry at least a fair amount about crime and violence.
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An October 2025 Gallup poll found that nearly half of Americans believed national crime had increased in the past year.
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At the same time, a series of high-profile attacks has kept corporate security concerns front and center.
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Luigi Mangione just pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges and admitted in open court to killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
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In 2024, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in Midtown Manhattan.
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In 2025, four people were killed after a gunman opened fire in a New York office tower housing the NFL
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and several major financial companies.
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The following year, a man was arrested for for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home
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and threatening the company's headquarters.
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When the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down in the street in New York City,
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I think all of a sudden corporations realized that the need to protect high-value personnel is important.
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And so that's a growth area.
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Security back when we started was a budget item that you wanted to get rid of.
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Today, it's never coming out of our budget.
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How do we reduce that budget?
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Upwards of two-thirds of security guards are earning a pay that classifies them as low-wage workers.
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The training and pay
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and labor standards of the job have not kept up with the increasing responsibilities and riskiness of the job.
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The private security industry saw revenue top $50 billion in 2025.
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It's seen a 17% increase over the last decade.
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Half of the security professionals surveyed said their budgets increased to year over year, with the average increase being 12%.
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A separate analysis found that high-profile incidents and increased public threats against executives were major drivers of that shift.
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So has this increased need for private security created a new opportunity for the industry?
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So obviously the police handle violent crime, but a private security industry has been growing that operates parallel to the police in a lot of ways.
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About 40% of S&P 500 firms are spending on executive protection, including Walmart and TJ Maxx's parent company.
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Those companies' median spend has more than doubled since 2019.
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At the center of that market is Allied Universal, a company many Americans encounter without realizing its scale.
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Allied Universal is by far the largest guarding company in the world, right?
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800,000 employees, we're everywhere.
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provided hundreds of security personnel to this year's World Cup.
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Even though it's not publicly traded, Allied Universal operates in more than 100 countries.
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It provides security services to a wide range of businesses, including data centers, airports, the New York Theater District,
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and public transportation such as the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.
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When the guarding has a client, they need something a little bit more aggressive.
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Maybe it's a visual deterrent, maybe they want an armed presence, maybe they want an and off duty officer, that's where we fit in.
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Alongside the two of us, Allied has the technology services business, surveillance, cameras, drone detection, counter drone detection.
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So they are the technology piece.
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Allied Universal has grown to the third largest private employer in
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North America with a reported annual revenue of $16 billion in the region.
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Its canine program is one specialized part of a much larger security operation, which also includes guard services,
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executive protection, and technology-enabled surveillance.
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To see how those capabilities are deployed in the field, I went to the Staten Island Ferry in New York City.
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Allied Universal gave us a controlled demonstration of how one of its canine teams screens a bag.
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Hey, good morning.
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Just need to do a bag screening.
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Yep.
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See.
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See.
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If a dog alerts, now we have to figure out what's in
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that bag and then we will bring the NYPD in to try to determine what's in that bag.
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There's cameras all over this facility.
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It is our employees that are monitoring all those cameras.
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And then we have a large guard presence, as you'll see, and they work in tandem.
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Stay.
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Good girl.
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I visited Allied Universal's canine training facility in Windsor, Connecticut to see how one part of its much larger security operation works.
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Good girl.
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This is basically a really a crawl, walk, run stage, because like I said, the dog is new to this environment, right?
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So it does go through a bit of an acclimation process, and we really introduce the first stages of training to them.
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Seek.
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good girl.
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Overall crime is going down, but you get these high profile kind of incidents and catalysts.
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What that really did, it kind of transformed the legal definition of commercial foreseeability.
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With social media and the media coverage of some of these events that we've had, not only domestically, but globally,
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that's in people's faces 24 seven now and they understand security is something that is required.
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For many companies, that perceived risk becomes urgent once they are directly affected.
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Usually they call us up after they've been a victim of a crime and then say, oh, with all this stuff going on, we finally got hit.
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They say, we already know that story that you read about three weeks ago.
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But companies can face pressure even before an attack reaches their own doorstep.
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You know, incidents that have happened, it is without a doubt foreseeable.
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And once something is foreseeable, that kind of creates a standard of care.
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There's liability, right?
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There's what it takes to get and maintain insurance cover.
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Part of what's so awful about violence is that the costs associated with violence are off the charts.
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So there are estimates from the social science community that say things like the social cost of a homicide,
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A single homicide will be upwards of $15 million.
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Those types of high profile incidents,
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it raises the kind of duty of care of organizations and venues to increase security.
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And so it's really, it's a prerequisite in a lot of situations in order to be able to have insurance.
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That kind of drives the market.
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There's also a labor story here.
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Federal labor data counted almost 1.3 million security guards in the U.S as of May 2025, which is nearly twice the number of police and sheriff's patrol officers.
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The number of security guards has surged more than 16% between 2016 and 2025.
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For comparison, the National Police Force has expanded by around 2% over the same period.
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They are acting as a force multiplier, I think, for public safety organizations.
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They are acting as really eyes and ears on the ground.
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We like to say that often private security officers are the first first responders.
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But the rise in labor may be misleading.
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The total security guard workforce is expected to stay roughly flat through 2034, according to a July 2026 report.
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The report also noted that employers are likely to keep hiring due to high turnover.
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Annual churn in 2024 hit 89% for security guards, above the 66% average seen across private payrolls.
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The report also found that the median salary for a security officer in the U.S is $18.70 an hour, or $36,282 a year.
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The workforce is really the first respondents because they're already on the scene when an event occurs.
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Yet the pay, training, and other labor standards of the job have not kept up with those responsibilities and riskiness of the job.
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This contributes to the high turnover that we're seeing in the industry,
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which means there's less and less experienced workers having to do more risky responsibilities
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in a job that is meant to protect the public.
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Allied Universal said its North American workforce turnover is about half the industry average.
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The company told CNBC it provides employees with onboarding, ongoing education, and specialized training.
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and that pay varies by market, assignment, skills, and union agreements.
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About 20% of its North American employees are union represented.
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Allied Universal says its investments in the workforce also includes AI, analytics, and remote monitoring designed to make security professionals more effective.
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But as those tools take on a larger role, the industry faces a broader question around what AI technology can handle and what still requires a person on site.
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The idea that AI is going to replace security officers just doesn't make sense.
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The fundamental premise in having security is dealing with incidents that are caused by people.
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That's not going to cut it.
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And AI is not going to be able to take the place of a security officer who's trained in de-escalation,
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who's trained about evacuation and what is necessary to best protect the employees and customers at a site.
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Obviously you're always going to need the human element.
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This is a human driven business.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Corporate America Is Spending More On Security”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: security, Allied, Universal, guard, crime. This video has 111 sentences and 1458 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:42. The speaker talks at a natural 150 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| workforce noun | /ˈwɝk.foɹs/ | All the workers employed by a specific organization or state, or on a specific project. |
| canine adjective | /ˈkeɪˌnaɪn/ | Of, or pertaining to, a dog or dogs. |
| turnover noun | /ˈtɝnoʊvɚ/ | The amount of money taken as sales transacted in a given period. |
| foreseeable adjective | /fɔɹˈsi.ə.bəl/ | Able to be foreseen or anticipated. |
| riskiness noun | The characteristic of being risky. | |
| specialize verb | /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/ | To narrow in scope. |
| upwards adverb | /ˈʌpwɚdz/ | Towards a (higher) position closer to the sky than the ground. |
| homicide noun | /ˈhɑ.məˌsaɪ̯d/ | The killing of one person by another, whether premeditated or unintentional. |
| drone noun | /dɹoʊn/ | A male hymenopteran (ant, bee, hornet, or wasp), whose sole primary function is to mate with the queen. |
| median noun | /ˈmiː.di.ən/ | A line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side. |
| detection noun | /dɪˈtɛk.ʃən/ | The act or process of detecting, uncovering, or finding out, the discovery of something new, hidden, or disguised. |
| surveillance noun | /sɚˈveɪ.ləns/ | Close observation of an individual or group; person or persons under suspicion. |
| acclimation noun | /æk.ləˈmeɪ.ʃən/ | The process of becoming, or the state of being, acclimated, or habituated to a new climate, surroundings, or situation; especially, acclimatization. |
| classify verb | /ˈklæs.əˌfaɪ/ | to identify by or divide into classes; to categorize |
| deterrent adjective | /dɪˈtɛɹənt/ | Serving to deter, preventing something from happening. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| keep up with verb | To manage to remain beside or just behind someone or something that is moving away from one. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Today, it's never coming out of our budget.
- How do we reduce that budget?
- Obviously you're always going to need the human element.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was fatally shot · were killed · was arrested |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has kept · have not kept · has grown |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 8 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, doesn't, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, detection /dɪˈtɛk.ʃən/, acclimation /æk.ləˈmeɪ.ʃən/, escalation /ˌɛs.kəˈleɪ.ʃən/, evacuation /ɪˌvækjuˈeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: foreseeable /fɔɹˈsi.ə.bəl/, acclimation /æk.ləˈmeɪ.ʃən/, escalation /ˌɛs.kəˈleɪ.ʃən/, prerequisite /pɹiˈɹɛkwəzət/, evacuation /ɪˌvækjuˈeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like workforce, canine, turnover.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.