Can you guess what would be even worse than the private militaries that are gaining power all over the world? If they also had an airforce.
Can you guess what would be even worse than private airforce? If Erik "Blackwater" Prince built himself a private airforce. Which he is doing.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-drive-to-build-private-air-force/The article is very extensive and explains how he built a new company to replace Blackwater, after he lost it partially due to all the horrible things he and the company did, and how the company also created different front companies so that it could turn civilian planes into ground attack planes.
The company also installed pods for mounting two high-powered 23 mm machine guns. By this point, the engineers and mechanics were concerned that they had broken several Austrian laws but were advised that everything would be fine as long as they all kept the secret.
When your boss tells you that it's ok to break the law "as long as no one finds out" it is time to call the police immediately.
Prince bought 25% of the Austrian company which he had hired to modify the planes owned by his other company. This way it was easier to keep his doings a secret from outsiders AS WELL AS from people the PMC who might not have approved of this kind of deals. (Also, since much of the stuff he was doing was either illegal or at least against the agreements he had done with USA using front companies would allow him to claim that his PMC didn't break the deals since it was the other companies that were doing the shadier stuff.)
I'm just amazed that the real world seems to insist on becoming a cyberpunk dystopia...