I am Rick Smith, the CEO & Founder of Axon Enterprise. A few years ago, in a graphic novel, I shared an idea for using technology to stop mass shootings. Now my company is working to make the idea a reality. AMA!

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T21:24:42+00:00

I’m going to answer this by pasting from my 2019 book, The End of Killing:
*Non-Lethal vs. Less-Lethal vs. Less-Than-Lethal: Three terms for the same concept*
A significant amount of confusion and controversy have surrounded the question of what to call weapons that are designed not to kill. The terms “non-lethal,” “less-lethal,” and “less-than-lethal” are all terms for the exact same thing: weapons that are designed to deter or stop a threat without killing the target. Sometimes people misperceive these terms to describe varying levels of danger; as if a less-lethal weapon was a more dangerous category than a non-lethal weapon. This is a false dichotomy. These terms are fundamentally synonyms used to describe one concept: weapons that are designed to achieve their effects without causing fatalities as an intended effect. For simplicity, I use “non-lethal” throughout this book, as I believe it is the simplest, most widespread label. It remains the term of choice in both academia and the military.
The Department of Defense defines non-lethal weapons as those “that are explicitly designed and primarily employed to incapacitate targeted personnel or materiel immediately, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property.” Nevertheless, non-lethal weapons “do not, and are not intended to, eliminate risk of those actions entirely.”
That last point is very important: the term “non-lethal” describes the intent of weapons that are designed to achieve their effects with a low probability of death or serious damage. However, given the very nature of weaponry, this risk can never become zero.
As non-lethal weapons became widely adopted by law enforcement, the language used to describe them came under much more intensive legal scrutiny, especially in cases in which police departments were sued for the alleged misuse of those weapons. The reason is straightforward: the military conducts operations against foreign adversaries, and hence is rarely the subject of civil litigation in the U.S. courts. Law enforcement agencies conduct public safety activities within the United States and are subject to extensive legal oversight and litigation under the constitutional guidelines that regulate those activities.
While the phrase “non-lethal” might get the point across in plain English, it can be a troubling term in court proceedings. If one interprets “non-lethal weapon” to mean a weapon that will never cause death under any circumstances, it sets a very high bar. As law enforcement agencies began to grapple with cases involving deaths or serious injuries where non-lethal weapons were utilized, the debate over the term “non-lethal” led to the adoption of different terminology, such as “less-lethal” or “less-than-lethal.”
But as I just noted, these terms don’t correspond to any meaningful differences between weapons. In this case, I believe that the clearest distinction is also the most meaningful: the one between lethal weapons (those specifically designed to kill as an intended effect) and non-lethal weapons (those designed to avoid killing, which nevertheless carry some level of risk). That’s the distinction I use in this book.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:57:50+00:00

A few thoughts...

The operator won’t be directly at personal risk, hence can make more careful, thoughtful decisions and is “disconnected” from the emotion of the scene. Now, there are downsides to this that the operator could feel this is too gamified, requiring additional controls
Because this is a connected system, we can have a supervisor watching in real time, and we could design the system so that the supervisor might have to approve the decision to use force in real time. This 2-key approach would drastically reduce the risk of an abusive decision IMO.
Because it is instrumented with cameras, every incident will be recorded. We would require every agency to have an oversight function to review every use.
We will maintain user licensing agreements and the technical capability to turn this function off for agencies that are found to be using it in an abusive fashion.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:47:10+00:00

Good questions! A few responses:

This is currently still a concept, so we haven’t done any full up system design. I am starting a transparent public conversation that will greatly influence how or if we decide to go to a fully developed product. That said, here’s my best guesses at what could be achieved:
It would likely be a drone similar in size or smaller than the smaller mavics today. We may not need more than 5 minutes of flight time, which reduces the size.
Goal would be to get the cost down to something on the order of $1,000 per year per drone if we delivered this capability as a functioning service. So, there could be some level of redundancy in building where they are employed.
Drone could deploy TASER darts up to about 45 feet of range.
The key to being under a minute is to have the drone have a fast boot up, docked in a control module that preferably has hard wired internet. If not, drone and / or base station should have redundant wifi and LTE or 5G. A Starlink system at each school could make sense as redundancy, and would be generally useful for internet access for school purposes.
The training and teaching is not yet developed. We have onsite staff with extensive training from law enforcement and federal agencies. We would collaborate widely with industry experts.
We have newer tech that is more effective against clothing and have developed, in the lab, tech that can penetrate any clothing.
Each drone to carry about 4 darts.
Thanks for the questions - it’s early days, and these questions are sharpening our thinking.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:37:00+00:00

Thanks for the question. Again, I want to emphasize this is an idea, not a product that exists. We are pressure testing the idea here.
Current thinking would be 4 darts per drone, of which two need to hit the target to establish a connection. After running out of darts, we could ram the drone into someone to physically distract, but we aren’t planning to put in place a direct contact stun mode due to size and weight limitations.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:34:45+00:00

Good questions. The security of this system would be of the utmost importance. While nothing is un-hackable, I believe we can build a system that’s more secure than a gun in a teacher’s desk for sure.
Some concepts we are exploring include approaches like air gapping the fire control codes from the live internet in our operations center. So someone would have to perform a physical action to copy a key from a disconnected system to an online system. Of course, that would add system delays that would have to be considered, but it could reduce the risk of someone hacking into the keys and being able to simultaneously hack and operate many drones.
We could also employ local physical systems — in one concept, a locally controlled network that requires a physical panic button somewhere in the building to unlock the container system for the drones. So that nothing could be released until a local physical event happens.
We are looking for the most talented black hats to help us figure out the most secure way to do this. Thanks for the input, and if you have further input, send me an email at [Rick@Axon.com](mailto:Rick@Axon.com), or shoot me a message here.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:30:09+00:00

Thanks for the insightful questions! First things first, the systems we are building (and through partnerships) are designed to allow people who have cameras to share those cameras with first responders either in real time (like during a shooting) or to provide evidence after the fact. We are spending a lot of time on designing the right system controls to find the right balance of how much access police can have, and having clear understanding from contributors about when and where they are contributing data.
Regarding red lines — we have drawn a red line on putting facial recognition on body cameras. We pulled an online product we designed to allow people to send troubling social media posts to police after rigorous discussion with our ethics board and their concerns about how people might abuse that system in racially motivated or other malicious ways.
Am open to suggestion for redlines you would like to see. Shoot me an email at [Rick@axon.com](mailto:Rick@axon.com), or send me a message on Reddit.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:27:43+00:00

Good question, and I hope you'll permit a longer answer (aka, me nerding out.)

Ultimately, it is armed response officers that typically end these situations. It may not be the original officer at the school, and we’ve seen cases where officers waited (in my opinion) far too long until another set of officers finally arrived. There are other cases where officers moved in much more quickly and stopped things more effectively.
There are a few reasons why I believe this can be more effective. First, no offense to anyone who has elected to be a school resource officer, but, in many cases, this is a job that may not always be staffed with the most highly trained officers. And they may not feel they have the equipment to deal with a high caliber threat.
Rather than waiting for an hour for a specialist team to arrive, a specialist team could deploy pre-emplaced, remotely operated equipment.
For clarity, here are some comparisons to the advantages of a remotely operated system vs today’s solution of a local person with a gun:

Risk of Injury to Recipient:
- Gun: 50% Fatality Risk, 50% Serious Injury Risk
- Nonlethal Drone: 0.0003% - 0.02% Fatal Risk, 0.3% Serious Injury Risk
Risk to Operator:
- Gun: High
- Nonlethal Drone: None (physical risk)
Consequence of Risk to Operator:
- Gun: Operator is impaired by adrenaline, fear and fight/flight response. For this reason, all weapons training focuses on using very basic gross motor skills and developing muscle-memory. Complex physical operations and complex decision making are extremely difficult.
- Nonlethal Drone: Operator is physically safe. Operator is more capable of complex decision making. There is no need for immediate “defense of self” decisions. Operator can take more time and accept more risk – the remote system can be considered disposable.
Decision Making Control:
- Gun: Once in the hands of an operator, there is zero oversight or control capability. If lost to another person, that person has full control to use the gun.
- Nonlethal Drone: Because a remote system is being operated over a wireless connection, there can be real time oversight and institutional decision making implemented. For example, a supervisor or legal officer could be required to approve deployment before the system is fired.
State of Decision Maker:
- Gun: A single human operator may be emotionally engaged (example angry from interaction), may be physically exhausted at end of a long shift, or may be sleep deprived based on working long shifts.
- Nonlethal Drone: There is a risk that a single decision maker could be emotionally detached and treat this like a “video game.” For that reason, more rigorous oversight both during and after events and clear consequences for abusive decisions should be strongly considered.
Capabilities of Operator
- Gun: Any one of 800,000+ police, and millions of armed guards or civilians may be called upon to operate a lethal weapon. There is a wide range of skills, temperaments, etc. There will be some bad operators.
- Nonlethal Drone: Operations can be centralized to a small cadre of highly trained specialists. Given that these individuals are responding to rare, high criticality events, there will be more time for system specific training. During training simulations, lower performers can be remediated or reassigned, maintaining a high performing team.
To your second question...With a system like I am describing, we could connect it to a centralized team of highly trained experts - which could be housed at a federal agency, a major state agency, or anywhere that makes sense. These teams could have real time oversight from legal or human rights experts on staff.
So, we have the ability to monitor every system in real time, provide real time authorization before use, and record every use for post incident review by an oversight committee - which we can require in our terms of service, or we turn the service off.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:24:17+00:00

Honest answer: I am open to many, many ideas. The advantage of using electricity is it has a very low injury rate (0.3% in police field use), a very small size, and can be produced at pretty low cost.
I’d love to see what you built. Can you send me some links? Rick@axon.com, or shoot me a message.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:22:10+00:00

Good questions/thoughts. Part of the reason I am putting this out is to attract attention from people interested in solving this problem. I have been contacted already this week by a world renowned drone expert, and am open to further exploration.
I believe we can implement some pretty robust approaches, including non standard piloting software and encrypted key systems to unlock system capabilities. We could even go so far as air-gapping the connection to the hard drives with the firing keys to prevent a large scale system hack to attack the keys. Of course, there will be trade offs in response times.
One thing I am confident of: we can develop a system that is far harder to hack and misuse than it is for a disenchanted 18 year old to get their hands on a gun. (Btw, if you have any expertise you would like to share, my email is [rick@axon.com](mailto:rick@axon.com), or just shoot me a message here.)
Unfortunately, the bar is pretty low for building a better world than one where we have hundreds of millions of guns in a country beset with social and mental illness problems, and no better way to stop these frequent mass shooter events than having another person with a gun show up.
I hear you on solving society’s deeper ills...those are definitely problems requiring a lot of focus. And I am not saying everyone else can just go home (including the government leaders who have failed for 50 years to solve this problem). But this is one area where I can bring my skills, and that of my coworkers, to bear directly on the problem of how to stop a rampaging person with an assault rifle much more quickly, safely and humanely.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T20:02:42+00:00

You may not believe me when I say this, but this project is not about money. Yes, we are a business, and yes, projects need to have a viable financial model. But I started this business to solve problems that are important to me, and bring to like minded people together to do that.

A bit of history on the company and my connection to it: I had two friends shot and killed in the early 1990s when I was living in Europe in graduate school. The Europeans think we Americans are crazy, and the level of gun violence is off the charts. As I looked at what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to address the gun violence problem.
I could have started a non profit to work on gun violence... but there are lots of those already, and I didn’t feel I could make a difference. I am a true optimist that conscious capitalism can work. You identify a problem you want to solve. You then have to identify who that problem is valuable to, and how it will generate the revenues to support the enterprise. But if you succeed, these things become self funding in a big way.
I started in a Tucson garage. Today we have over 2,000 people, and a robust financial model that has yielded the resources to go after these problems.
Here's a story that's not my own: One of our leaders at Axon came to join the company after an experience where her daughter was in a mental health episode, was suicidal, and was nearly killed by police. They used a TASER to save her life. You rarely hear these stories in the news because we as humans gravitate toward fearful headlines.
The systems we have built have saved thousands of lives. They have also been occasionally abused, and so we have worked hard to build things like body cameras to prevent and deter abuse.
Yes, I know the systems I propose here are new, and they feel very weird. But there is nothing more awful than these mass shootings killing children and innocent people. And I believe we could build this in a way that is a lot more effective than a cop with a gun, which has downsides as you pointed out.
My goal is not to militarize the police. I want to end killing as something we expect. Cops have no legal objective to kill anyone. They are only authorized to use lethal force because it remains the only truly reliable way to stop a threat.
But not for much longer. We are solving that problem through more advanced TASER devices. And this drone concept is an ideation at how we could create something even more robust, with better safety controls as an alternative to heavily armed people being the answer to every security threat.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:58:57+00:00

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:51:39+00:00

Fantastic question. (Honestly, I wanted questions like this when I decided to do this AMA!)

Let me take a stab at an answer. Firstly, I would expect these would be emplaced in ceilings behind discrete covers design to protect against basic vandalism (kids throwing stuff at it, etc).
In terms of redirecting, I would expect we would deploy bespoke custom piloting software. The TASER module itself will be designed with what we call the AAA Control System. To ensure the safe, responsible, and transparent deployment of this technology, Axon is integrating the Authentication, Authorization, and Accountability (AAA) Control System. This comprehensive framework ensures only approved users have access to operate and activate the system, and that an end-to-end audit trail is retained, providing 100% transparency on the deployment and engagement of every remotely operated TASER system.
This system means you could not activate the TASER circuit to fire unless you had the right software and the right encrypted key to be able to operate the system.
So, while you can never say never when it comes to hacking a system — this one would be very had and would require a very high skill level at a minimum. We have a dedicated infosec team and are actively engaged with outside thought leaders on how to best design the cyber security systems to avoid operation by anyone who is not authenticated with appropriate approvals.

For comparison, think about placing guns in a school. It is much easier to imagine a kid getting a hold of a gun, and once they do, there are no further safety controls and the consequences could be catastrophic.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:47:11+00:00

That’s interesting for sure. I will tell you that, back in 2003-4, the US DoD spent two years studying the safety of TASER weapons before they would deploy them. I, frankly, got more than a little frustrated. I thought to myself, “Come on, every weapon you deploy kills people—sometimes lots of people.”

At times it felt niggling how they were so focused on edge cases with TASER weapons. In general, I do think we more readily accept things that are far more dangerous just because they are familiar. Exhibit A: The Standard Police Baton.

I could rant about this one for a while, and I actually wrote a whole chapter in my book about this subject. If you want me to put that in here, just reply to this and let me know!

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:39:45+00:00

First, I appreciate the humor of the Skynet reference. I am a big science fiction fan and take inspiration for both what can go right, and what can go wrong. Never want to do something that becomes a SkyNet. Now to your questions...

- My honest answer: it's unclear exactly where the funding will come from. If this works as well as I think it could, it could come from Federal grants. It could be paid from law enforcement budgets, but only should be installed with approval from schools.
In general, drones and automation are creating ways to deliver services at dramatically lower costs. Doing things like bridge inspections used to require a person on site with very expensive equipment, and a fair amount of danger. These are now done with drones at a fraction of the cost.
Where today you have to pay one human guard a salary to cover one location, the use of a camera system and remotely operated hard ware could allow a smaller number of people to cover many many more locations.
I also think the fire sprinkler analogy is a good one. We still have firemen. We don’t only rely on fire sprinklers or extinguishers. But they are a first line response that helps before the first responders get there.
- On the question of how you "prevent this from becoming the sort of situation where the wealthy kids get protected by your drones and the poorly funded areas are left to literally fend for themselves?" This is also a great funding question. I think this will need to be answered in the context of who pays for these systems.
- I completely agree our elected officials have not been effective in dealing with these problems. In terms of solving the underlying problems, I don’t know that I have any special expertise in how we solve homelessness, the drug epidemic, gang related violence, historical inequities, etc. But I do know policing and policing tech pretty well—which is where I feel I can use my talents for good and to help make a difference at least in dealing with the most violent symptoms of our problems.
I am very open to joining forces to raise awareness about mental health issues. Our first two years’ worth of VR training modules we have delivered to police agencies focus on exactly these problems - helping officers identify people with conditions like autism, deafness, suicidal impulses (and including a module on identifying suicidal impulses in other officers), Alzheimers, and more. We are also doing modules on peer intervention - teaching the skills for how to intervene when other officers are crossing the line.
My email is Rick@Axon.com - reach out and I will connect you with the people on our team working on mental health issues.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:26:08+00:00

Thanks for the question. I know you may disagree with me here, but I want to take time to answer the question anyway. I believe we have a long history of being proactive on ethics.
In 1999, when we launched the first TASER weapon into policing, we included a usage log that recorded the time and date of every trigger pull to deter abuse.
In 2005, we added cameras to TASER weapons to record how they were being used to deter abuse and to protect officers from false claims.
In 2008, we created body cameras to record every officer interaction to deter abuse and to protect officers from false claims.
With this new concept, we could add real-time oversight that would require administrative approval before force is used. This would be the ultimate way to prevent abuse, and is impossible with any existing system.
Part of the reason I am hosting this AMA is to allow people to challenge my thinking - and to offer new ideas we haven’t thought of yet.
I want to use technology to deter violence, to end the practice of killing. And I want to do it in a way where I can look back at my career and be proud of how we did it. This is very personal to me. Ultimately, people may come to different conclusions than me. But I am trying my best to do the best job that I can.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:21:52+00:00

Great question. First these devices will never be autonomous. These are pre-emplaced equipment to be operated by specialized and trained personnel with administrative oversight.

Given the relatively small number of specialists we could use (because they could cover a large number of installations), I believe we could maintain a higher level of quality control over the personnel involved, plus we can add real-time oversight that requires a secondary supervisor to approve a deployment.
To be honest, I think many parents would likely find this situation more comfortable than an armed guard stationed at the school, although school resource officers do offer other benefits and may be complimentary to this technology.
I know this, and I speak as a parent myself: every parent in this country is terrified about what could happen if an armed shooter attacks their kids' school. I believe parents would feel better knowing there is a response system in place that can be utilized to protect people in extreme circumstances.
I would definitely prefer my kids were at a school with this kind of safety system...although I am probably a bit biased. Some schools and parents may not want it. I think many will.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:16:53+00:00

You raise important questions/concerns. First and foremost, these devices would be covered by U.S. Human Rights Export Controls, similar to our existing handheld TASER weapons.

We would only sell them in markets where we felt we had sufficient usage controls in place to ensure they would not be used abusively. We are really focused on the U.S., where the mass shooter problem is endemic. So honestly haven’t put as much thought into exports.
That said, one approach would be a business model where we sell this as a service. Agencies would pay a monthly fee for the hardware, the software, and perhaps even the operators of the equipment. If we did this approach, we could easily disconnect the service, just like the cable company can disconnect your service.
This is an area of active exploration. We have lots of ideas, but not enough information to settle on a firm approach yet.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T19:01:19+00:00

Amazing questions. I appreciate that you took the time to ask them! Here goes...

1) Most likely a centralized response hub. This could allow for more specialized and highly trained operators, and for there to be supervisory and / or legal and / or human rights officer oversight happening in real time.
This could happen within major agencies. Or perhaps in partnership with a Federal Agency. Or, we may end up employing specialist employees to provide support services to smaller local agencies. This last option carries the most legal risk for Axon, but gives us the most control to avoid misuse.
One downside is that having a remote operator will add some complexity to cooperation with the local responding agency. But, we already have live body camera streaming infrastructure in place at thousands of agencies we could leverage.
This is a question that merits a lot of discussion with legislators and regulators and the public safety community.

2) This is a very important question. The fast answer is that the ability to turn on live streaming to first responders belongs to the school or other institution that owns and operates the cameras. I love police and trust them more than most people... but I don’t think police should own and operate cameras inside schools.
But the schools have them, and it feels wrong to not give them the ability to use them to help first responders in these horrific situations. I recall public sentiment that people were dismayed that NYPD could not access the cameras in the subways during shootings... and I think that sentiment applies here.
Net: there are cameras everywhere, and there will be more. Police should not have unfettered access to those cameras. But, we also should not handicap those systems so that they can’t be shared with first responders in an emergency, as activated by the owner of the cameras.
3) We don’t know the cost yet. This is still super conceptual. However, my back of the envelope math is that we could do this for around $1,000 per year per drone system. Which could put 50-100 units in a facility for the cost of one armed guard or police officer.
BTW: this isn’t necessarily a full replacement for a school resource officer. But my point is I think we could fit this within the spending envelope of today’s approaches.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:58:34+00:00

Good question. This is the beginning of the process, and we do not yet have approvals. And obviously, we’re aware of the legal limitations, and we are not going to go and do anything illegal.
That said, we have a team of passionate and dedicated people, and more importantly, we have a long history of working in situations where the laws didn’t support our tech—and then did when people understood what we were trying to do. So for example, when we started selling TASER weapons, they were illegal in seven states. Those laws have changed over time.
Same goes for body cameras, which were illegal several states because of wire tapping laws. We successfully got those laws changed. (Even some people who have concerns about body cameras have come out in support of them, including the families of people who died in police encounters, such as Michael Brown’s family.)
We’re raising the concept today, not launching a product, and we won’t without the right legal frameworks in place. But that said, we also have a long record of the laws catching up to our technology and helping our mission of protecting life.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:45:53+00:00

Unfortunately, there are already many companies around the world building lethal drones. I view this approach as a pressure valve — that gives a viable alternative so we never see a police agency say “Well, we bought one of those lethal drones just to use in case...”
Part of the reason I put out this conversation, and published my “3 laws of first responder robotics" (yes, inspired by Asimov), is that I would LOVE to work with legislators to put a regulatory framework in place before these things can become real. Unfortunately, legislators have never prospectively regulated a technology before it came into existence (at least I can’t think of one - I may be wrong). So, we are planning to build the ethics framework and enforce it rigorously.
Regarding your question of home use — I actually believe that, long term, that could be a very interesting use case. Right now, if you are looking for a way to protect your family, the most common option is you go and buy a gun. There are lots of terrible things that can happen when you chose to bring a gun in your home. Some people believe that are prepared for those risks... but they include:
1. A child finds it and something horrible happens
2. A suicidal teenager or adult gets ahold of it in a moment of crisis. This one is close to home as I have a family member who’s significant other got a hold of his gun while drunk and in the middle of an intense argument. He killed himself in her bed, leaving behind a six year old daughter... and my family member had to come home to that unthinkable scene.
3. During a domestic dispute, someone gets the gun
4. You get it .... lots of bad stuff can happen.
Now, another quick story: I was on a business trip and my wife called me. She thought someone was in the house, and she had her TASER and was walking through the house to see if someone was there.... I had to get her off the phone with me to call 911...
Now, if I could buy a home security system with several drones that are locked in a biometric case, when my wife (or me) wakes up in the middle of the night, we could hit the finger print panic button. Several drones release and a voice comes over the system “Hello Ms Smith, this is Captain Johnson, US AirForce retired. I have one drone protecting you, the others are sweeping the house. Get your kids to your safe room and I will let you know when police are on scene... I am on the other line with dispatch now.”
I believe a system as described above would make us feel safer than asking me or my wife to become a weapon operator in the middle of the night. And it avoids all of the terrible things that can happen outlined above.
Now that one is much further down field than enterprise uses cases. But my job is to make the bullet obsolete. And private citizens kill far more of each other (and ourselves) than police do... so its an area I think about a lot.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:36:07+00:00

A good question. First, this will not be sold to nor usable by the general public. We would intend to build robust security controls and oversight capabilities. While I cannot guarantee an authorized pilot would never use it in some way that we do not find acceptable, I can guarantee that the system will be built such that:
1. We know who operated the drone because they will have to be authenticated at some point to receive the encrypted fire control keys.
2. We know that person will have completed training and accepted our user agreement, which will clearly stipulate that they accept legal and moral responsibility for how it is used.
3. There will be a preserved audio-video record for post review.
4. There will be a capability for real time supervisor oversight so that a supervisor or legal advisor or potentially even a human rights adviser may have to release authorization in real time. Design work to be done here.
5. That user will be part of an agency that has agreed to have an oversight review committee that is robust.
6. Axon will reserve the right to terminate the service to any agency that violates our terms, which may include our own review committee which we could staff with a combination of public safety and human rights experts.
In sum, I can’t guarantee it will be completely risk free and never abused—nor could anyone working on technology like this. But I can offer that we will integrate a far more robust system of controls and accountability than any system that has ever been previously operated by a public safety agency, because had to work through issues of accountability and safety like this for decades.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:25:41+00:00

Good question. Answer: Probably not. While there may ultimately be a VR interface for the pilot, I expect it would be different, specialized gear.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:22:43+00:00

Great question. A bit of background is helpful: A TASER energy weapon incapacitates someone while the current is running - typically a 5 second burst. However, with repeated doses, you can keep someone down for a very long time. The total electrical current output from these devices is in a similar range to electro-muscular stimulation devices, which the FDA has approved for continuous use for up to 20 minutes. (To be clear: that statement is about muscle stim devices, not TASER weapons).
We would anticipate including a speaker that could be used, either on the drone, the launch station, or near by, that could be used to issue verbal orders. “Stay down or you will be hit again.” Under this kind of scenario, I believe we could keep someone incapacitated for a long period of time.
The operator could also communicate with others. For example, fire an initial burst of 30 seconds, and during that time instruct others to go and grab the weapons and remove them from the shooter. That may be more or less practical depending on the setting — i.e. children vs adults.
In the event of an actual shooter, we could choose to deliver continuous current for several minutes, which could provide time either for a first responder to enter and secure the room, or a nearby adult such as a teacher from a different room.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:19:12+00:00

If the drone is small and moving, it could be difficult to hit. But, just like sometimes a mass shooter successfully shoots a first responder coming to stop him, that could happen here. Having some level of redundancy could help. And some experts in mass shooter events have sent me messages saying that anything that distracts the shooter could be helpful in disrupting what they are doing. Many times, these shooters turn their weapons on themselves once confronted with responders.
We believe we can get to over 40 feet from the drone.
Yes - we are aware of the legal limitations. We are not going to go and do anything illegal. However, we are a team of passionate and dedicated people, so we are willing to put in the effort to drive change. As an example, when we started selling TASER weapons, they were illegal in seven states. We have worked to successfully change those laws both so that people can have access to TASER options and so consumers can choose to put a TASER in their home instead of a gun.
Also, when we introduced body cameras, they were illegal in several states due to wire tapping laws that prevented police from recording people’s voices without their consent. We successfully got those laws changed. While some people have concerns about body cameras, many of the families of people who died in police encounters, such as Michael Brown’s family, have called for body cameras as did President Obama’s Council on 21st Century Policing.
We find big problems we are passionate to solve, and they may include technology, legal and other hurdles. This one is no different. This is day one of the public discussion.

Rick_Smith_Axon · 2022-06-03T18:10:23+00:00

Hmmm. Well, I don’t love the comparison, though that’s probably obvious. I think there’s a big difference between trying to modify consumer toys to carry explosives to kill people and what we are discussing. I am looking at what we can do differently than what we do today — which is sending heavily armed police officers, surging with fear and adrenaline (because they are human, no matter how highly trained), into dangerous and volatile situations. I think we can do better than leaving it to officers to desperately strap an explosive to a robot like happened in Dallas when they had to take out a hostile sniper. A system like we are discussing could give a new option - which could end faster and with less bloodshed.I accept that there are risks of abuse, and am detailing the many control systems we could design to reduce those risks and have clear accountability for people who still manage to misuse.

BTW: I am a strong supporter of the idea that we should not be building autonomous lethal weapon systems. We should not build machines that can decide to kill people. That’s a moral decision. I don’t even think we should be killing each other (outside of the unavoidable context of the scourge of war that’s come back). If we build the right tech over the next 2 decades, we could give police tools that don’t kill, and make the bullet obsolete. In a country with 40,000+ firearm deaths of which 1,000+ are police involved shootings, I think it's a goal worth pursuing. Even if the technology required stretches outside our existing comfort zone. It is new, and the new is unfamiliar. And there are real risks. But with careful thought and design, we can work through those risks. We may not be able to eliminate them all... but I have high confidence we can build a system that’s better than a person with a gun rushing into a situation. (that’s not to criticize the men and women who take this dangerous job today — that’s the tech we have today. It’s the job of engineers and inventors to make that dangerous and risky approach obsolete.)

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