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Erik Dean Prince is an American businessman, former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, and the founder of the private military company (PMC) Blackwater USA. He served as Blackwater's CEO until 2009 and its chairman until its sale to a group of investors in 2010.

Prince heads the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group and served as chairman of the Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group until 2021. Prince is the son of an engineer and businessman Edgar Prince, and the brother of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

Executive Outcomes is regarded as the leading proponent that effectively established Private Military Companies (PMCs) as an industry. Executive Outcomes was founded in 1989 by veterans of the South African Defense Force and registered in Britain in 1993. Executive Outcomes was nothing less than the world’s greatest corporate army that conducted direct combat operations on a sustained basis. On 01 January 1999, Executive Outcomes abruptly ceased operations after an extraordinary decade of diverse and controversial military actions across the African continent.

Civilian contractors have frequently played an important role in American military operations. George Washington hired civilians to haul the Continental Army's equipment; supply vendors followed the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

Indeed, today's military recognizes the use of civilian contractors as a force multiplier in stabilization efforts. Although sometimes expensive, contractors are capable of supplying immediate expertise and manpower much more rapidly than the military can grow subject matter experts.

The company has undergone a series of rebranding efforts over the years as an apparent means of distancing itself from overtly toxic connotations.

Prince’s Financial Times bio discreetly identifies him as simply “a former US Navy SEAL and executive chairman of Frontier Services Group,” a Hong Kong-headquartered entity. According to its website, FSG offers “security and logistics services in frontier markets”.

In an investigation by The Intercept, Prince’s activities at FSG were reported to include endeavouring to sell weaponised crop dusters in Africa as part of “what one colleague called his ‘obsession’ with building his own private air force”. As with many of Prince’s operations, a facade of legality has often proved elusive.

Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince told Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that according to one of his “well-placed sources” in the New York Police Department, “The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making” in the Anthony Weiner investigation, but received “huge pushback” from the Justice Department.

Prince began by saying he had no problem believing reports that the FBI was highly confident multiple foreign agencies hacked Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

In a major new exposé, The Intercept has revealed that the Justice Department is investigating Blackwater founder Erik Prince for possible money laundering, ties to Chinese intelligence, and attempts to broker military services to foreign governments. Prince is currently the chairman of Frontier Services Group, an aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa. But documents obtained by The Intercept show that Prince has also set up shell companies to offer paramilitary services to at least a half-dozen African nations, including Libya.

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A year after Prince proposed private troops for Nigeria, the West African nation is now using mercenaries. Prince’s old firm, Blackwater, used to contract with the U.S. to protect convoys and officials, and train foreign armies — but caused controversy when its employees killed Iraqi civilians.

Nigeria’s government is deploying South African mercenaries in its effort to battle the Islamist Boko Haram militia that’s wreaking havoc in the northern part of the country, the New York Times reported last week.

We all know, Blackwater is no more but, Blackwater’s descendants are still scoring big jobs, providing training and embassy security around the world. With fewer contracts coming from Iraq and Afghanistan, consolidation across the security business means that the State Department — which remains heavily dependent on private-sector guards for its embassies and consulates — has a smaller and smaller number of companies from which to choose. That, in turn, means big profits for the remaining heavyweights.

Work on the last major Defense Department contract in Iraq was suppose to be Dec. 15, 2014 when the Iraqi government took over a U.S. facility at Umm Qasr Naval Base. The United States built a ship repair facility there for the Iraqi military back in 2011. U.S. military has continued to try and disentangle itself from Iraq even as a recent surge in ISIS sectarian violence threatens to undo years of hard-won gains.

By the time four former Blackwater security guards were sentenced this week to long prison terms for the 2007 fatal shooting of 14 civilians in Iraq, the man who sent the contractors there had long since moved on from the country and the company he made notorious.

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, a former member of the Navy SEALs and heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, has spent the last few years searching for new missions, new fields of fire and new customers.

According to RT America, Statistics released last week reveal that the rebranded private security firm, known since 2011 as Academi, reaped over a quarter billion dollars from the futile Defense Department push to eradicate Afghan narcotics, some 21% of the $1.5 bn in contracting money the Pentagon has devoted to the job since 2002.

The company is the second biggest beneficiary of counternarcotics largesse in Afghanistan. Only the defense giant Northrop Grumman edged it out, with $325m.

Erik Prince has a message for ISIS: You’re lucky Blackwater is gone...

Last week, the controversial founder of the private military company had plenty to say about what the organization he once ran could be doing in the fight against the so-called Islamic State—and also why Republicans need to stop being such losers.

“It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don’t have the argument of U.S. active duty going back in there,”

Frontier Services Group (FSG), a Nairobi-based company associated with former Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, has announced it is expanding to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Seven years ago, Blackwater Worldwide founder Erik Prince was on Capitol Hill, defending the company he founded as it faced allegations that his employees had shot up a square in Baghdad a few weeks prior on Sept. 16, 2007, killing 14 civilians and wounding 17 others.

Prince insisted that day that all of his employees had acted appropriately, and that a series of baseless allegations of wrongdoing” had been made against his business, which he’d built from the ground up in the 1990s. He bristled at the notion that his firm was a band of hired mercenaries, saying he and his employees “are Americans, working for Americans, protecting Americans.”