Latest / Core Memory / The Man Who Changed Policing In America - EP 33 Rick Smith

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The Man Who Changed Policing In America - EP 33 Rick Smith · Core Memory

0:00
SPEAKER_00: How much electricity does it take to incapacitate someone?
0:03
And I'll tell you,
0:03
nobody knew the answer because who,
0:05
like,
0:06
why would somebody ever do that?
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: And so we went,
0:08
SPEAKER_00: we did the basic science work,
0:10
SPEAKER_00: got a bunch of patents around it and then launched,
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SPEAKER_00: well,
0:13
SPEAKER_00: when I say a bunch,
0:14
SPEAKER_00: one initially.
0:15
and then launched the M26 Taser with zero money left in the
0:19
bank in December of 1999.
0:20
And its whole promise was simply that we could lock up the
0:25
musculature of even the
0:27
SPEAKER_00: toughest,
0:27
SPEAKER_00: most focused people,
0:28
SPEAKER_00: even if they're on methamphetamines or PCP,
0:31
SPEAKER_00: and it worked.
0:32
And just the fact that we delivered on the core problem that we
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promised to solve
0:38
SPEAKER_00: ultimately made the company quite successful.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Rick Smith, co-founder and CEO of Axon.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me here.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Appreciate having you here.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, obviously we're going to get into your life and, and
1:08
SPEAKER_01: all that Axon does,
1:09
SPEAKER_01: but I was going to start this in a slightly different place than usual,
1:12
SPEAKER_01: which is that there's a guy named Glenn Kelman.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: He is the CEO of Redfin, although I guess I think they got acquired.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, he started Redfin.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: He's a longtime friend of mine.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: He is unique,
1:27
SPEAKER_01: I would say,
1:28
SPEAKER_01: among execs that I know in the sense that he has really good journalistic
1:33
SPEAKER_01: instincts,
1:33
SPEAKER_01: and he sends me story ideas from time to time.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to disparage tech execs and CEOs,
1:42
SPEAKER_01: but they don't always have a sense for like what appeals to a journalist,
1:45
SPEAKER_01: but he really,
1:46
SPEAKER_01: he has a good nose for what journalists are into and what I'm into.
1:50
And a couple of years ago,
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he sent me this note and he's like,
1:54
you gotta talk to Rick Smith.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: He's your kind of story.
1:58
I'm going to embarrass him and possibly you,
2:01
I don't think so,
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but I'll read the description.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: If you embarrass me, you win the stuffed animal.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: I'll read the description that he said.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: He said,
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SPEAKER_01: Rick,
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SPEAKER_01: someone who's a little bit crazy and totally sane at the same time,
2:12
SPEAKER_01: um,
2:13
and compulsively interesting and unapologetically himself and
2:17
important to our
2:18
SPEAKER_01: society.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: So that's, that was all pretty good.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Um,
2:21
And then I thought I'd read some of this because it gives a
2:23
little bit of your background.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: He said,
2:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:25
SPEAKER_01: you've been working on this company,
2:26
done nothing else in your professional life since graduating
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from Harvard 30 plus
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SPEAKER_01: years ago.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: Your goal is to replace the gun with the taser in order to save lives.
2:37
He's the one who put body cameras on just about every police
2:40
officer in America,
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SPEAKER_01: which we'll get into.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: He's been tasered himself eight times.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Eight?
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Eight times now, yeah.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Eight times, okay.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: And he noted,
2:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:51
SPEAKER_01: you guys have some critics,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: but he said you've done seven AMAs on Reddit to,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: try to...
2:57
SPEAKER_01: address things head on.
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SPEAKER_01: I was reading a couple of those last night.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And then I won't believe her.
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SPEAKER_01: There's too much more, but he said, it's a miracle.
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SPEAKER_01: His company even exists.
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The maker of a taser is always going to get sued early in the
3:11
company's history
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SPEAKER_01: when his insurer wanted him to settle a claim.
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SPEAKER_01: for $1.5 million.
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He got the insurer to pay him $1.45 million and then fought the
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plaintiffs all the
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SPEAKER_01: way through the trial and won.
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SPEAKER_01: And anyway,
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SPEAKER_01: he paints this picture of you as,
3:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
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this man possessed by this quest and who's kind of gone to
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great lengths to see all
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SPEAKER_01: this through.
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SPEAKER_01: And I feel like from my reading last night, that checks out.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Well...
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: That's kind.
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SPEAKER_00: And I do have to say,
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SPEAKER_00: the thing that stands out to me about Glenn,
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SPEAKER_00: I only met him on that one trip.
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SPEAKER_00: He is one of the kindest human beings I've ever met.
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And there's this sort of image that to be a successful CEO,
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you have to be a bit of an asshole.
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And he is the proof that that theorem is wrong because he's
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been successful and
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SPEAKER_00: just a super,
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SPEAKER_00: super nice human.
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SPEAKER_01: He really is.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: He really is.
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SPEAKER_01: He's always been good to me.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't know how he is to his employees, but he's nice to me.
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SPEAKER_01: I think he's probably a good guy.
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He may have fooled me,
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but as far as I can tell,
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he's an amazingly nice guy.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a lot to get into.
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I mean,
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like I mentioned in the intro,
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obviously people know the Taser product.
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I think you guys have,
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that's where you started,
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but you've expanded your product line.
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SPEAKER_01: I think people certainly know body cams.
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SPEAKER_01: They must have seen these.
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SPEAKER_01: And then you guys have gotten into drones.
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SPEAKER_01: You've gotten...
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SPEAKER_01: now into kind of merging AI into some of this stuff,
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and then you also do all these services to manage all this data
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coming into the
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SPEAKER_01: police departments.
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SPEAKER_01: You're a massive company that,
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SPEAKER_01: again,
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SPEAKER_01: I don't mean this offensive,
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not like a household name that would come right to the top of
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people's minds,
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SPEAKER_01: but they know all your products,
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SPEAKER_01: and then you're a massive,
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SPEAKER_01: massive company on top of that.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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it's been a wild ride people would know us had we kept our name
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taser uh but that
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we we changed the name of the company we started doing other
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things because that is
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such a sledgehammer of a brand when you say taser it
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immediately brings out strong
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emotions and people think about electrified weapons yeah cops
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think of it very
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positively and people that have negative views of policing do
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it very negatively
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and it it just was something we finally said you know what
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let's let that be the
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product people associated with it we need a broader umbrella
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brand where we can do
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SPEAKER_00: more things
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SPEAKER_01: Then you got to Axon.
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I didn't know until last night researching this that I can't
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tell if I should be ashamed or not.
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SPEAKER_01: TASER is an acronym.
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SPEAKER_00: That is, you shouldn't be ashamed.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of trivia, but yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: And so, so, and it goes, you guys were there at the beginning.
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SPEAKER_01: So there's this, there's a NASA scientist that comes up with this idea.
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SPEAKER_01: And then,
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SPEAKER_01: and then it seemed like he,
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SPEAKER_01: you and your,
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SPEAKER_01: your dad co-founded the company along,
5:43
SPEAKER_01: alongside him.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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So,
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uh,
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so if we roll back,
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Taser actually came from Tom Swift and his electric rifle.
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SPEAKER_00: It was from, apparently there was this famous science fiction series.
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SPEAKER_00: I saw Tom Swift from the 1940s.
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SPEAKER_00: Early 1900s.
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SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm a huge futurist fan of Ray Kurzweil.
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SPEAKER_00: And he, I guess, as well grew up a fan of the Tom Swift series.
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SPEAKER_00: So science fiction from the early part of the century.
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And Jack Cover would go on to be one of the chief scientists at
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North American
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SPEAKER_00: Aerospace on the Apollo project.
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SPEAKER_00: And in the 1960s,
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SPEAKER_00: he was reading in a newspaper that,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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amidst all the turmoil and the National Guard actually opening
6:23
fire on Americans
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SPEAKER_00: and all that,
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the president had a blue ribbon commission that said we need
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non-lethal weapons.
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SPEAKER_00: And so he quit and he said, I'm gonna go make Tom Swift's electric rifle.
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SPEAKER_00: And he originally named the company TSER Systems.
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And it was funny when he was showing me his files,
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I had always assumed Taser's like Coca-Cola.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, you probably hired some big branding company to figure this out.
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SPEAKER_00: Totally random circumstance.
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SPEAKER_00: They got tired of saying I'm from TSER systems.
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SPEAKER_00: They threw an A and hence Taser was born.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't even stand for some weird technology, your usual acronym.
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SPEAKER_00: But my co-founder actually was my brother, Tom Smith.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: And so some people will jokingly say it's Tom Smith's electric rifle.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: All right, what do we do at Core Memory?
7:05
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7:08
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7:54
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8:00
the future core memory and Brex.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: So you guys kind of start there.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: You see he's working on this invention.
8:07
Um,
8:08
and I read in the early days,
8:10
I mean,
8:11
it seemed like it relied on company.
8:12
It had some kinks and in order to turn this into an actual
8:15
product,
8:16
it was a journey.
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, it sure was.
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SPEAKER_00: So Jack was a brilliant inventor.
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SPEAKER_00: But look, technology sometimes takes a while to mature.
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SPEAKER_00: The early generation tasers,
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they didn't realize they would be classified as a firearm
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because they used a small
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SPEAKER_00: gunpowder propellant to launch the dart.
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Under federal law,
8:32
if you use an explosive to launch something,
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you're a firearm.
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SPEAKER_00: They didn't even know that.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: And so they had shipped thousands of units in the mid 70s when the beer,
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SPEAKER_00: alcohol,
8:41
SPEAKER_00: tobacco and firearms came knocking and said,
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SPEAKER_00: you guys are selling unserialized,
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SPEAKER_00: unmarked,
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SPEAKER_00: illegal firearms.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And that effectively shut the company down.
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SPEAKER_00: He tried to redo it again in the 80s.
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uh it failed again and then in 1993 when i was 23 and he was 73
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i found him through
8:58
411 which yeah some of your viewers may not know what that is
9:01
before google was a
9:02
thing i got his phone number called him and uh showed up on his
9:05
doorstep and
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SPEAKER_00: there's this sort of magic moment where the 73 year old you know colorful
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brilliance at times difficult inventor like the stereotype of
9:16
the mad scientist uh
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SPEAKER_00: i meet a 23 year old kid fresh out of college
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SPEAKER_00: Like, hey man, let's give this another shot.
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And I said,
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I know a couple of weeks later we're building stuff in his
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garage.
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SPEAKER_01: And you, I read it.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: At Harvard, you studied, was it computer science or?
9:30
SPEAKER_00: It was neurobiology.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Neurobiology, right.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Although they don't have a specific categorization for that.
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SPEAKER_00: So it was biology in general.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: And then I did coursework focusing on neuro bio.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: And were you thinking of heading in a more medical science direction?
9:45
SPEAKER_00: So I actually showed my son my Harvard application.
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SPEAKER_00: We found it when my parents passed away.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: It was in their house.
9:53
And I wrote my college entrance essay that I wanted to build
9:57
robotic limbs.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: So like I wanted to build Luke Skywalker's robotic.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: I was fascinated.
10:03
So I wanted to study neurobiology because I was just fascinated
10:06
by this idea of the
10:06
SPEAKER_00: human machine interface.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And it turned out to be surprisingly useful.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: I had no idea I would end up here.
10:13
Um,
10:13
but once I did,
10:14
it is actually really useful because we're a nerve stimulator.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Like we,
10:18
SPEAKER_00: we are a machine that interfaces to the human body,
10:20
but for a different reason to temporarily swamp your
10:24
communication system with
10:25
electrical overload so that we can paralyze your muscles and
10:28
put you down as safely
10:29
SPEAKER_00: as possible.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: And because I mean, it is a thing for, uh, to Glenn's point.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: There's this element where this is always going to be a journey.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: You've got the whole firearm thing.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: You've got the liability thing.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: You've got just the nature of what you're trying to do,
10:45
SPEAKER_01: whether people see this as helpful or harmful.
10:48
It seems like a thing that it would take a 23-year-old to want
10:52
to go to because if
10:53
SPEAKER_01: you knew what you know now,
10:56
SPEAKER_01: you might not have gone on to try to tackle this.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, boy.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the first seven years were brutal.
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SPEAKER_00: I had friends...
11:03
SPEAKER_00: who came out to visit me and mocked me incessantly.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: I've got a video of one of them.
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SPEAKER_00: He went on to be one of the senior guys at Uber and different tech.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: And there's a video of him when I was 23,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: they came to visit me and they would film me in my little office,
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SPEAKER_00: park office,
11:18
SPEAKER_00: excitedly telling about the taser.
11:19
And then when I'd leave the room,
11:21
they would film each other making fun of me.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: They're like, shocky, shocky gun.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: We tried to raise money from VCs.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Like nobody would touch us.
11:28
Over the first seven years,
11:29
we basically drained my parents completely financially.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: And I was...
11:35
SPEAKER_00: I was of the belief it was going to fail.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was,
11:37
SPEAKER_00: we were at the point of no return,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: told my dad stop putting money in,
11:40
SPEAKER_00: it's over.
11:41
And he pointed out,
11:42
well,
11:42
we owe Silicon Valley bank a million and a half bucks.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: If this fails, I'm getting wiped out.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And so we,
11:48
SPEAKER_00: okay, dad, he put the last of his money in.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Our other investor,
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Bruce Culver,
11:51
SPEAKER_00: matched him,
11:52
SPEAKER_00: and we had $1 million for our third attempt,
11:55
SPEAKER_00: and that was what finally hit.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: And you'd have this one product in the middle,
12:00
this steering wheel car anti-theft device that it sounded like
12:05
it gave people a
12:06
SPEAKER_01: shock if they tried to steal the car,
12:08
SPEAKER_01: and that one did not.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: That did not work.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: It was a great learning lesson.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: So we started with the taser for consumers.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: It never really took off.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Consumers were skeptical.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: They thought this thing seemed like a gimmick.
12:19
But we had a number of consumers say,
12:21
hey,
12:21
I'd like to read this up to protect my car.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: So as startups do,
12:26
SPEAKER_00: we rapidly put something together,
12:27
SPEAKER_00: like literally over Christmas holidays,
12:29
SPEAKER_00: 1996,
12:32
we built a prototype and took it to the Consumer Electronics
12:34
Show of a steering
12:35
wheel lock that would shock you if you didn't turn it off with
12:37
the remote.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And we had the auto taser challenge in our booth.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: We'd have people grab it and challenge them how long they could hold on.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: And it would shock them and they would scream and let go.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And there was this circus-like energy.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: We had the busiest booth at CES.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: We were convinced we were going to make a ton of money.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: None of us were really passionate about it.
12:56
And one of the things I share with people when you think about
12:58
doing a startup,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: do something you're really passionate about.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: If it's authentic, you'll stick with it.
13:04
When we finally realized what we'd built was kind of a freak
13:06
show product that made
13:07
SPEAKER_00: for great demos,
13:08
SPEAKER_00: but nobody was actually buying it.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: That took us two years.
13:12
And again,
13:12
had drained the company to the point I didn't think we'd make
13:15
it.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: And what saved us ultimately was we pivoted back to,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: okay,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: what's the problem we're really trying to solve?
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Like we're passionate about creating an alternative to guns.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And if we're gonna succeed,
13:24
SPEAKER_00: We had seen some of the warts of the early tech.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: It was underpowered.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Rodney King was shot with an LAPD taser.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: I remember that, yeah.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Didn't work.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: So they went to their batons with catastrophic consequence.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And so,
13:35
SPEAKER_00: because I had this neuro bio background,
13:37
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
13:37
SPEAKER_00: okay,
13:37
SPEAKER_00: let's go design a lab experiment.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's start back at the basics.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: How much electricity does it take to incapacitate someone?
13:45
And I'll tell you,
13:45
nobody knew the answer because who,
13:47
like,
13:48
why would somebody ever do that?
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And so we went,
13:50
SPEAKER_00: we did the basic science work,
13:52
SPEAKER_00: got a bunch of patents around it,
13:53
SPEAKER_00: and then launched,
13:55
SPEAKER_00: well,
13:55
SPEAKER_00: when I say a bunch,
13:56
SPEAKER_00: one initially,
13:57
and then launched the M26 taser with zero money left in the
14:01
bank in December of
14:02
SPEAKER_00: 1999.
14:02
And its whole promise was simply that we could lock up the
14:07
musculature of even the
14:09
SPEAKER_00: toughest,
14:09
SPEAKER_00: most focused people,
14:10
SPEAKER_00: even if they're on methamphetamines or PCP,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
14:14
And just the fact that we delivered on the core problem that we
14:17
promised to solve
14:19
SPEAKER_00: ultimately made the company quite successful.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: When you're a startup, who tests that product for the first time?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Man.
14:27
So again,
14:27
this is one where it's a good thing we were a startup that
14:31
didn't know too much.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Because had you approached this like a medical device,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: you would have been stuck in testing land for a decade.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: So I knew enough to be, quote unquote, dangerous.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: So when we first determined our first product,
14:45
we built using the same electrical output as the original taser
14:48
from the 1970s.
14:50
And they had done a fair amount of medical testing and Jack
14:52
used some like NASA related doctors.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: And so there's enough foundational stuff.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: We're like, look, we're just gonna stay with that.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: Then when we saw people fighting through and it wasn't working,
15:00
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: oh boy,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: we gotta start over.
15:03
So we teamed up with one electrophysiologist,
15:06
a doctor named Dr.
15:07
Stratbuck around Nebraska.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Now,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: before we did that,
15:10
we actually did some safety testing on ourselves or
15:14
effectiveness testing.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: It was literally like the Pepsi challenge.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: you wouldn't,
15:18
there'd be two circuits behind a box and we would change a
15:20
variable between them
15:21
SPEAKER_00: and we'd hook it up to our forearms.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh,
15:24
SPEAKER_00: because basically you can't shock yourself into a fibrillation,
15:29
SPEAKER_00: ventricular fibrillation from your arm.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And so we would shock ourselves.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: We were drinking Jack Daniels,
15:36
SPEAKER_00: listening to Guns N' Roses,
15:37
SPEAKER_00: and it'd be like,
15:37
SPEAKER_00: okay,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: which was worse,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: A or B?
15:39
SPEAKER_00: We did that for about one afternoon, and like, this is not scalable.
15:43
So then we realized we had to pivot,
15:45
and we started doing some animal testing with pigs.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: So anesthetized pigs, it wouldn't feel anything.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: And really the test that put the company on the map cost us $2,500.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: It was one pig.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Dr. Stratbacher also happened to be
15:59
SPEAKER_00: a pig farmer.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: His family lived on a farm.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: It's such coincidences.
16:05
And so he hired a veterinarian and we did this one test where
16:08
we built a test rig.
16:10
And the one thing about like foundational science in some cases
16:13
is the answer is so
16:14
SPEAKER_00: glaringly obvious.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: From that one pig,
16:16
SPEAKER_00: we could see,
16:16
SPEAKER_00: well,
16:17
if we just tune up the capacitance basically to about four
16:21
times the output,
16:22
we could see these massive contractions of the muscles on a pig
16:26
that's anesthetized
16:27
so you could perform surgery it wouldn't feel anything so once
16:30
we realized okay
16:31
that's the effect we're going for we tuned it up and down a bit
16:34
we then went to
16:34
university of missouri to repeat it animal cardiac safety
16:37
studies uh we paid dr
16:39
strafbacher to compare the output to published electrical
16:42
safety standards then we
16:43
SPEAKER_00: went into human testing i was one of the first along with others uh
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And today we're far more rigorous.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: We have a lot more resources.
16:51
So everything we do now,
16:53
we have extensive medical testing across all the key variables.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Early on, I think history has proven we were right.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Based on the scientific literature,
17:03
we have a pretty big safety margin below the level that'd be
17:07
dangerous for the
17:07
SPEAKER_00: heart.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: But,
17:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:09
the New York Times came after us pretty hard saying we didn't
17:11
do a large quantity
17:13
SPEAKER_00: of medical testing.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
17:16
Although over time,
17:17
I think it's borne out that in fact,
17:19
the theory was right.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: We had a pretty big safety margin.
17:21
You mentioned you have more resources,
17:23
I think about 2 billion in revenue per year,
17:27
or is it?
17:27
SPEAKER_00: We are heading towards 3.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: We're between 2 and 3 billion now.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: And then I didn't check the market cap this morning.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: It was somewhere around 40 billion when I was
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah, I think we're around, we, we peaked up around 60.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: I think we might be around 50.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: We're a bit volatile.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: And, and so it, what, like what, how have tasers changed over?
17:49
SPEAKER_01: What, what is the state of the art?
17:51
SPEAKER_01: Like what are the knobs that we're still turning on tasers these days?
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:55
So the thing that is kind of magical,
17:57
the thing that we developed in 1999 is
18:00
SPEAKER_00: is the core sort of operating system for less lethal weapon.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: That is,
18:04
SPEAKER_00: if I can hook up two points connected to your body 12 inches apart,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: we have a 99.9% effectiveness rate.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: It is immediately effective and down you go.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Now,
18:15
the problem we have is people out in the real world don't stand
18:18
still and let you
18:18
SPEAKER_00: put electrodes on them.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And so the first two generations of the taser,
18:23
SPEAKER_00: so between 2000 and 2010,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: were all a single shock device.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of like a muzzle loader.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: So our big Achilles heel,
18:30
and we got hit with two projectiles and they would come out at
18:33
an angle and spread.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: So a little complex to get two darts on somebody,
18:36
SPEAKER_00: get it through the clothing,
18:37
SPEAKER_00: make sure they both hit,
18:38
SPEAKER_00: make sure you're not too close where the darts are too close together,
18:41
SPEAKER_00: you're too far where the bottom one misses.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of the state of the art.
18:45
Then around the 2010,
18:47
we started getting up to a three,
18:49
two and three shot weapon.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: The three shot was so big, customers refused to carry it.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Literally, we had to cancel and shut that platform down.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: It's called the X3.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And then we get through the 2010s.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And then most recently in 2023, we pivoted.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: So the original taser I told you was a firearm.
19:11
To avoid that,
19:12
in all the modern era,
19:13
we engineered in a compressed air cylinder.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: So instead of gunpowder, you had nitrogen.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, we had gunpowder and nitrogen.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: So we literally took the same explosive that could launch the darts,
19:23
SPEAKER_00: and we inserted a gas cylinder in front of it,
19:26
SPEAKER_00: and then that was filled with compressed air.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And when you fired the explosive,
19:29
SPEAKER_00: it would push the cylinder onto a pin,
19:31
SPEAKER_00: release the air,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: and the air for CO2,
19:33
SPEAKER_00: or actually nitrogen in our case,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: would launch the darts.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: So we were engineering around the federal firearm laws.
19:40
And we tried to make a three shot,
19:42
but just the physics of everything was too big.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember going to our board saying,
19:46
SPEAKER_00: look,
19:49
SPEAKER_00: if we are going to begin to become a true alternative,
19:51
SPEAKER_00: we need more shots.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Cops don't carry Derringer two shot devices.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: They carry Glock with a spare magazine with like 30 rounds or more.
20:00
And we had devised a plan that said,
20:02
look,
20:02
we get rid of all the extra compressed air stuff.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And if we lower the voltage down below a thousand volts,
20:07
we can reduce the size of all the components and we could get
20:10
to a 10 shot system,
20:12
SPEAKER_00: but it would require that we accept becoming a firearm.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: And because of the long history, that was anathema.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: It was the, like one of these sacred cow issues.
20:20
And I remember saying,
20:21
well,
20:21
look,
20:21
like cops buy guns,
20:23
police agencies buy guns.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: If we have to be regulated as a firearm company, so be it.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Now you can imagine by then,
20:30
SPEAKER_00: we were already a,
20:31
SPEAKER_00: let's see in 2023,
20:32
SPEAKER_00: like a probably 10,
20:33
SPEAKER_00: $20 billion company.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: A lot of our valuation comes from tech.
20:37
We run huge software platforms in the cloud and sensors and all
20:40
this other stuff.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And so our board was rightfully concerned,
20:44
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:44
SPEAKER_00: hey,
20:44
SPEAKER_00: are we gonna be valued like Smith & Wesson instead of a tech company?
20:50
But this is where I think kind of having a North Star for us,
20:53
it was like,
20:53
look,
20:54
SPEAKER_00: This is what it takes.
20:55
We have no other path to actually start to challenge the
21:00
effectiveness of a firearm.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to have to become one.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: And so we did.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: And so our newest weapon, Taser 10, so long-winded answer your question.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: So it's now 10 shots.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: You have to get two out of 10 on target.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: So it fires 10 at once, or you can pull the trigger 10 times?
21:17
SPEAKER_00: You pull the trigger 10 times.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: OK.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Now, another thing, this was really interesting.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: And you have to connect two.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: You have to hit two.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: OK.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: And we have,
21:25
so the big thing we have to train police officers is you always
21:29
have to fire at
21:30
SPEAKER_00: least two.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Once it's go time, it's one, two, but you pick your locations.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Whereas historically we'd shoot two darts at once.
21:36
It turns out that's sort of like trying to,
21:39
you know,
21:39
shoot two free throws at once.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: It's hard because he's moving, I'm moving.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got an angle between these darts.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of complexity.
21:47
And when we asked our customers what they thought about the
21:49
idea of one dart per
21:50
SPEAKER_00: trigger pull,
21:51
SPEAKER_00: actually they hated the idea.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: They said, no, no, no, it's gotta be two.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: It's always been two.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: but we built a prototype to test.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And this was one of the really interesting things I've seen in my career.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: You can ask people about an idea.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: They'll tell you to a terrible idea,
22:02
SPEAKER_00: but until they experience it,
22:04
SPEAKER_00: you can't really believe because they just don't know.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And so we put,
22:08
I remember we put 10 cops through a training session and they
22:11
all got to fire this
22:13
SPEAKER_00: prototype.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: And they said, wow.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: this is so much easier to use.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing angles and trying to figure out what the person is.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: I can just pick my two locations and I go pop, pop, and it works.
22:25
And now we train them in VR where we can put them through a
22:28
bunch of repetitive training skills.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: And so with 10 shots, with good training and a 45-foot range,
22:36
We believe we have the potential to be up in the 99% plus
22:39
effectiveness rate.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: We have one remaining hurdle,
22:41
SPEAKER_00: and that's heavy clothing,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: because we have to get a contact to the body.
22:46
And so this winter,
22:47
we are beginning testing what we're calling the Apollo dart.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: We ourselves pay homage to the moon landing.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Our moon shots to cut none, that's in policing in half.
22:56
And so the Apollo Dart is our new Dart system that is designed
23:01
to penetrate through
23:02
SPEAKER_00: heavy clothing very reliably.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: It's actually easy to get through clothing.
23:06
The hard thing is to get through heavy clothing and stop before
23:09
it penetrates too deep.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Like you said, you still have to hit the scale.
23:12
I feel like,
23:13
you know,
23:13
I don't pay attention when I'm watching these videos.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: I just,
23:16
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I always see,
23:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm like on Instagram or something and somebody's getting tased.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I seem to find myself.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what this says about me, but, and I've never paid attention.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're talking about heavy clothing.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Can it hit like a t-shirt and still work or?
23:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so,
23:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk about the older tech.
23:34
So historically we would use high voltage,
23:36
like 50,000 volts,
23:38
but low current.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And the reason we use the high voltage is high voltage,
23:42
SPEAKER_00: like when you walk across the carpet in some parts of the country,
23:45
SPEAKER_00: you get a static shock.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: That can be 40, 50,000 volts itself.
23:48
The voltage allows you to get electrons to get a lot of like
23:52
electromotive force behind them.
23:53
It's like the pressure pushing the electric flow and it'll jump
23:57
across an air gap.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: And so that was originally done back in the 70s.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: We did it as well.
24:01
And it would allow you to get the darts close and then the
24:05
electricity could jump an air gap.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: It could jump into the body.
24:10
But it turns out it's not super reliable because the dart has
24:13
to be pretty close.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: If it hangs more than like three quarters of an inch away,
24:16
SPEAKER_00: the circuit breaks and it can be just sort of not super reliable.
24:21
And so when we designed this new weapon,
24:23
we said,
24:23
look,
24:24
we gotta be reliable.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: We can't rely on this, like sometimes works if it arcs through clothing.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: So we're just gonna punch through and just get a direct connection.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: And even with our previous systems,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: so we have this small,
24:34
SPEAKER_00: it looks like a fish hook on the front and about 65,
24:37
SPEAKER_00: 70% of the time it already penetrates.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: And then about 35% of the time it gets stuck in the clothing.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: The new dart that we're launching, that's going to the field now,
24:47
SPEAKER_00: has a tungsten core,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: which is something they use in,
24:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:50
SPEAKER_00: like armor penetrating rounds because it's very dense.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: And that tungsten core can just slice right through clothing.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: It'll go through, we have about a seven inch leash.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: It'll go through seven inches of clothing, which is a lot.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: The key is,
25:06
and what we've spent years working on is how do we get it to
25:09
stop once it punctures
25:10
SPEAKER_00: in the skin?
25:11
SPEAKER_00: And the trick we figured out is when you go from sort of this fibrous,
25:16
SPEAKER_00: relatively dry clothing into the body,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: the thing that changes is you're now in this thick,
25:20
SPEAKER_00: wet fluid environment.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: And we can use that as soon as it punches through the skin.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: We can force fluid to go certain places.
25:27
It goes up the nose of this projectile,
25:30
and it creates pressure that deploys a brake.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And so it stops when it gets through the skin.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: It's really cool stuff.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: And you do all this R&D in Arizona?
25:38
SPEAKER_01: We do.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: OK.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, this sounds serious, man.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many people work on this?
25:44
SPEAKER_00: So all in, we've got about 1,500 people in engineering.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, most of those are software engineering.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: I actually have the greatest job on earth.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: So as the founder CEO, I have one direct report.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: He runs the company and I work with our customers.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Like today I was out meeting major police chiefs here in California.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: And then I work with our engineers.
26:07
So actually there's a team of about four people that were
26:10
working on this DART system.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: I was one of them.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: And at least for parts of how the design works,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: I've got the prototype in my home office made from a toilet,
26:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry,
26:20
a paper towel tube that I sliced up with a razor because I
26:24
actually don't know how
26:25
SPEAKER_00: to use CAD software.
26:26
So I'll sit with an engineer and I'll try to sketch it or
26:28
literally again,
26:29
SPEAKER_00: cutting up cardboard and stuff.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of cool.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it is.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And okay, so that's the state of the art on the taser.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: like the vast majority of police departments in the U.S.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: use that product.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what is it, like four out of five or something like that?
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, for example, there's, I think, 66 major cities.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: All of MapTaser except one.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Can you guess which city?
26:55
SPEAKER_01: My head immediately goes to some California city,
26:57
SPEAKER_01: but I don't...
26:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
26:58
SPEAKER_00: yep,
26:58
SPEAKER_00: you're getting warmer.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Keep going.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: San Francisco.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Yep, that's right.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: So, look, I went to Palo Alto High School.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: I've lived out here.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: you know, just San Francisco.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: What do we do?
27:11
SPEAKER_01: We just have like a... We hand you drugs when you're getting arrested.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: Frankly, they kill a lot of people they could avoid.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's sad.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And look,
27:21
it'll be something like a homeless man with a razor blade who
27:24
is approaching an
27:24
SPEAKER_00: officer and the police officer
27:28
You know,
27:30
if you come at them with an edged weapon,
27:31
they're trained to defend themselves.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And then the police chief will go to the city council and others and say,
27:37
SPEAKER_00: look,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: can we please look at tasers?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Because it could have made a difference in this scenario.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: And San Francisco sees it as, I mean, there is controversy around this.
27:47
San Francisco's objection is that it's encouraging the officers
27:50
to use excessive
27:52
SPEAKER_01: force or something like that?
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that becomes it.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: It ends up, I'll try to articulate.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: I obviously don't agree with this position,
27:58
but they'll say cops will be more abusive because it doesn't
28:01
kill somebody and it
28:02
SPEAKER_00: doesn't leave a mark.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna like torture people with it.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: And these things are way more dangerous than the manufacturer will admit.
28:08
And look,
28:08
there are cases where people have died after being shot with a
28:11
taser,
28:11
for sure.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: There were about 28 where the taser caused a death
28:15
SPEAKER_00: And so people will say, oh, we deny that there's any danger.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: No, we don't.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: The deaths that are clearly attributed relate to falls,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: about 20 of them,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: and about eight where a flammable fluid was ignited,
28:27
SPEAKER_00: like a gasoline.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: By the way, our newest taser actually won't ignite flammable liquids.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: That's something we've designed out of it with this new design.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: But the ones that tend to be quite controversial usually involve drugs.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And look, like I've had the methamphetamine, it's, you know, uh,
28:44
Epidemic has hit my family,
28:45
so I don't say this from a position of judgmentalism.
28:49
But when you have people who have overdosed on stimulants,
28:53
it is not a gentle process.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: You become,
28:57
SPEAKER_00: in many cases,
28:58
SPEAKER_00: quite psychotic in your behavior,
29:00
SPEAKER_00: really stimulated,
29:01
SPEAKER_00: like their clothes are coming off because their body's heating up.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: They can become quite violent.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: People tend to call the police.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And look,
29:09
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you,
29:09
SPEAKER_00: looking at this over the last 25 years,
29:10
the easiest thing in the world would be for us to put out
29:13
something that says,
29:13
SPEAKER_00: hey,
29:14
SPEAKER_00: please don't use this on people that are under the influence of drugs.
29:17
Because when you do it,
29:19
we're both gonna get sued if something goes wrong.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: However,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: from like my worldview,
29:26
the taser is the only non-lethal weapon that will actually work
29:28
on somebody who's
29:29
SPEAKER_00: not feeling pain.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Because you can pepper spray them all day long.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Their eyes burn.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to care.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: They'll fight right through it.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Other than that,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: you can try to beat them to submission,
29:36
SPEAKER_00: which is an incredibly brutal,
29:38
SPEAKER_00: far higher injury rate,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: or you shoot them with a gun.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: And so in that limited group of options,
29:43
SPEAKER_00: the taser is the best,
29:45
SPEAKER_00: but some of those people are in the midst of a fatal overdose.
29:49
And those are the ones that tend to be in the news because we
29:52
do stand our ground.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: We say,
29:53
SPEAKER_00: look,
29:53
SPEAKER_00: we,
29:54
SPEAKER_00: and we've studied this and we have experts who look at this and look,
29:56
SPEAKER_00: you can find experts that will take a contraposition.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: But of the available options, like,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: We are the best one.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: And we,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: in those cases,
30:07
SPEAKER_00: in the vast majority of cases,
30:09
SPEAKER_00: I think it's pretty clear the taser didn't play a role,
30:12
but it's much more newsworthy to have a controversy around
30:15
whether the taser did.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately,
30:17
I think that leads to people die when police don't have the
30:21
right equipment and
30:22
SPEAKER_00: they have to go to their gun.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
30:24
SPEAKER_01: since day one,
30:25
the Core Memory podcast has been supported by the fine people
30:28
at E1 Ventures.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: They are a young and ambitious VC firm in Silicon Valley,
30:34
SPEAKER_01: investing in young and ambitious companies and people.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much to E1 Ventures for all your support.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: How do other countries treat this?
30:43
SPEAKER_01: Are tasers prevalent in Europe and Asia?
30:45
Yeah,
30:46
so every constabulary,
30:48
which is a police department in the UK,
30:49
has taser weapons.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: We're about 20% of officers in the UK have them.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: So we have a higher penetration.
30:57
Most police departments in the US give a taser to every officer
30:59
now because,
31:02
They figured,
31:03
look,
31:03
if you've got a gun,
31:04
we've already given you the power to take a life.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: We want to give you all the tools to avoid it.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: In Europe, like in the UK, their officers don't have guns.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: So we are currently used by more specialty officers.
31:16
And I think that's because up until now,
31:18
with the taser with one or two shots,
31:19
what the
31:20
SPEAKER_00: what the police have told us there,
31:22
SPEAKER_00: the police leaders,
31:23
SPEAKER_00: they say,
31:23
SPEAKER_00: well,
31:24
it's not really reliable enough that we would use it as a
31:27
self-defense tool.
31:28
We'll use it as a tool to help assist in capturing somebody
31:32
who's violent and dangerous.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: I think this new device, the new Taser 10,
31:36
SPEAKER_00: We have the Nordic countries are now saying,
31:39
SPEAKER_00: we actually think this is a suitable replacement for a firearm,
31:44
SPEAKER_00: or they are not yet armed with firearms,
31:46
SPEAKER_00: they're considering it.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: We believe in the next, they're testing this winter.
31:50
If the testing goes well,
31:51
we will become the standard weapon for many of the Nordic
31:54
countries.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: And I actually think this new weapon now positions us
31:59
SPEAKER_00: for everywhere but the United States.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: The US is unique because of our gun prevalence in society.
32:03
I think in the rest of the world,
32:04
we could become their primary self-defense weapon.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: In the US,
32:09
SPEAKER_01: for police departments that have a taser,
32:11
SPEAKER_01: what percent are Axon branded tasers versus a competitor?
32:16
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: So taser is a trademark.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: So if you notice, I keep saying a taser device or a taser weapon.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: So it is like Kleenex.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: And we have really good patent protection.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: So through all of Europe, through basically countries that respect patent
32:32
law we have 100 market share and then like in china we do have
32:35
some copycats they
32:36
have not yet copied the current product but um they don't sell
32:41
in markets because
32:42
we are aggressive in protecting our ip but we also can't sell
32:45
in china under u.s
32:46
law and so it's actually one of these things where it's like a
32:49
parallel universe we
32:50
have people who copy us there they sell it but it doesn't
32:52
really impact us because
32:54
SPEAKER_00: we just have these separate worlds
32:56
SPEAKER_01: And for the body cam, are the numbers, are you 100% there?
33:02
SPEAKER_01: No, we're not.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: So Motorola is our biggest competitor.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: They're actually, today, a bigger company than we are.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: We're catching them slowly.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And then Panasonic, and then there's some smaller companies.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: So the body camera space has a lot of competitors.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: But we do have, I would say we have a majority of market share.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's because we
33:22
SPEAKER_00: we really execute well.
33:23
We're very,
33:23
we're sort of maniacally mission driven,
33:25
uh,
33:27
and,
33:27
uh,
33:27
that ends up paying off.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Um,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: you do well in the market when we're,
33:32
SPEAKER_00: we're very focused on,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: uh,
33:34
SPEAKER_00: I learned from that auto taser when we make products with the,
33:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:37
SPEAKER_00: to try and go make a buck,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: the universe slaps me and says,
33:39
SPEAKER_00: don't do that.
33:40
When we focus on problems that we're really passionate about,
33:43
then the money follows.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:44
Not to be a jerk,
33:45
but isn't that,
33:46
wouldn't that patent be kind of old by now?
33:48
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: That's a good, I love the way you're looking.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you could.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: So the original patent was 1999.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: It's expired.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh,
33:54
SPEAKER_01: but I,
33:54
SPEAKER_01: cause I didn't know if I went back to Jack and the NASA,
33:57
SPEAKER_01: the NASA's coming out of NASA stuff.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: No, so he had some patents.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Those have expired.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Our 1999 patent expired.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Our next product was the X26.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: We made it much smaller.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: There's a host of patents in that.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: Those have all expired.
34:10
But the new Taser 10,
34:11
we've got a whole tranche of new patents that just hit.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: This new Apollo Dart has some patents on it.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'm actually pretty proud of this,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: that we have continued with this idea that we have to disrupt ourselves.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: We've got to make sure we have new things that are so good,
34:23
SPEAKER_00: people wouldn't want to buy the old ones.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: And so I started this at 23 and our current patents,
34:28
SPEAKER_00: which I think our new products are so much better than the last version.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm 55 now, we just filed.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: So I'll be,
34:34
SPEAKER_00: we'll make it through my career,
34:36
SPEAKER_00: having had continuous patent coverage the whole time.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: And so that makes it almost,
34:44
SPEAKER_01: I know you're saying Taser is a trademark,
34:46
SPEAKER_01: a similar device,
34:47
SPEAKER_01: it makes it almost impossible for somebody,
34:50
SPEAKER_01: there must be other companies if this market is this valuable,
34:53
SPEAKER_01: at least taking a crack at this,
34:54
SPEAKER_00: right?
34:54
SPEAKER_00: We've had a few.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: We have successfully enforced our patents on a few.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:57
Um,
34:58
but look,
34:58
they could come and make the old taser weapons like we made in
35:02
99 up to 2003.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's just the newer stuff or somebody could out invent us.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: You could come out with some totally new technology, come take us out.
35:09
But you know,
35:10
the thing about patent law,
35:10
it rewards research and development.
35:12
If you develop something new and it's describably new so you
35:15
can get a patent,
35:16
SPEAKER_00: the government says,
35:16
SPEAKER_00: okay,
35:17
SPEAKER_00: we protect you for 20 years.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:18
And we have invented continuously enough that the new stuff is
35:23
so much better than
35:23
SPEAKER_00: the 20 year old stuff we had that,
35:25
SPEAKER_00: that
35:25
SPEAKER_00: hasn't enabled somebody to come compete with us.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: We compete with ourselves.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know this until I was doing the research for talking to you.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: I guess it should have been obvious in some ways.
35:34
It looks to me like from the body cam footage that you guys are
35:38
selling a service
35:39
SPEAKER_01: that is...
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Please correct me if I'm wrong,
35:42
SPEAKER_01: but it looked to me like...
35:44
that all that footage gets ingested somewhere and it has to be
35:47
managed and that you
35:48
SPEAKER_01: guys have a service that actually does this.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: I guess I assumed in my head,
35:52
SPEAKER_01: I just pictured it would be an IT technology nightmare,
35:56
but that the individual police departments were all doing this
35:59
themselves.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: But these things have become centralized?
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we do it all in the cloud.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: We have a service called evidence.com.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: So funny story, like my life story starts with no.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: The Taser was a hard no.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Cops didn't want to carry it at first.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was a gimmick.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: Body cameras, cops were like, I don't want to wear that.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: It's big brother.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: But when I was standing,
36:21
SPEAKER_00: when we were investing in the camera business,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: and by the way,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: we created body cameras.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: It was no big strategic insight.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: When tasers became controversial, we were getting sued.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Our customers were getting sued.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: The news media had all these negative stories.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: We said, look, we gotta protect ourselves and our customers.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: They need to record what they're doing.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: And if they're doing the right thing, it'll protect them.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: The insight turned out to be right.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: The path to convince people was really hard.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: But as we were getting ready to roll it out,
36:48
You know,
36:49
with the Taser,
36:50
we actually also had a little bit of technology.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: We would ship it with like a CD, with a small utility app on it.
36:58
And you could download,
36:59
every time you squeeze the trigger,
37:00
it would have a log,
37:02
simple logging.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Yet most of our customers,
37:04
or a large part of our customers would FedEx the Taser weapon
37:07
to us and have us
37:08
SPEAKER_00: download it.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: And we'd say, why?
37:11
SPEAKER_00: You've got the disc, you've got a USB cable, just do it yourself.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: And they would say, well, you know,
37:17
SPEAKER_00: IT won't let us install any software.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: And so that insight turned out to be really useful.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: Well,
37:22
SPEAKER_00: wow,
37:22
SPEAKER_00: if they can't install the simple download app,
37:24
SPEAKER_00: there's no way they're gonna be able to manage video.
37:26
And so a lot of things,
37:28
it's just the simple insights are the important ones.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: As we were looking at it and having conversations,
37:34
SPEAKER_00: somebody on our team pointed out,
37:35
SPEAKER_00: hey,
37:35
SPEAKER_00: look what Apple did with the iPod,
37:37
SPEAKER_00: iPod,
37:37
SPEAKER_00: iTunes.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: The last thing the world needed was another MP3 player in the late 90s.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: It's that sort of magic.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: And then iTunes moved to the cloud.
37:45
I didn't even know what the cloud was when we were first
37:46
talking about this.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: And it just made so much sense.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, you're right, we should do this in the cloud.
37:51
And it was a double,
37:52
because when we launched the body camera,
37:55
police were not using the cloud.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: And so they were like, no, we don't want our cameras.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: And hell no, we're not putting our evidence in some cloud thing.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was thinking about, yeah.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's total resistance to it.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: They would tell us it's illegal.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: But as an entrepreneur,
38:09
SPEAKER_00: you have to get past no,
38:11
SPEAKER_00: and then scratch out,
38:12
SPEAKER_00: okay,
38:12
SPEAKER_00: what's the real,
38:13
SPEAKER_00: oh,
38:13
SPEAKER_00: the real issue you're worried about is data security.
38:16
And then I would go talk to the more technical people because I
38:19
was not yet a software CEO.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning about this.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: But it became glaringly obvious.
38:22
Like,
38:23
dude,
38:23
your average police department in the United States has less
38:25
than 50 people.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: They have zero full-time IT people.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: There's some IT guy over in the city who supports them.
38:31
They for sure back then had nobody with a title that had the
38:34
words information security in it.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: And so looking at that,
38:37
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
38:37
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
38:37
SPEAKER_00: this is glaringly obvious from a just sort of physics standpoint,
38:42
SPEAKER_00: doing this in the cloud with an Amazon or a Microsoft,
38:45
SPEAKER_00: it has large InfoSec teams,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: we would build a team.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that turned out to be right.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: So over the past 15 years,
38:52
SPEAKER_00: many agencies who did this themselves have been hacked,
38:54
SPEAKER_00: have had ransomware and data leaks,
38:56
SPEAKER_00: and at least knock on wood,
38:57
SPEAKER_00: the cloud's proven to be much more resilient.
39:00
so anyway the first like 2009 through 2013 it was a miserable
39:05
failing business we
39:07
many people in the business wanted to shut it down uh and then
39:10
ferguson missouri
39:11
happened yeah and that was the the moment where the world
39:14
changed yeah and and
39:15
we're not this is not a trivial amount of data i mean you guys
39:19
don't you i read
39:20
SPEAKER_01: somewhere it's like as much as it flows through netflix maybe on uh
39:24
SPEAKER_00: I think our video library is significantly larger than Netflix.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: And I think we're comparable now to YouTube.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: They have a lot more viewers than we do,
39:31
but we have around a million cops worldwide that are uploading
39:36
and they're
39:37
SPEAKER_00: uploading two hours of video.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like little snippets.
39:39
It's a whole,
39:40
you know,
39:40
all the incidents from a shift plus hundreds of thousands of
39:44
in-car
39:45
SPEAKER_00: video cameras and a growing number of drones.
39:48
And now we also acquired,
39:49
we're in both the drone and the counter drone space.
39:52
So we have hundreds of drone detection sensors on all the major
39:56
sports stadiums in
39:57
SPEAKER_00: the US and hundreds of them spread across the front lines of Ukraine.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to try to find a way to ask this eloquently.
40:04
I don't know if I'll succeed,
40:05
but your business strikes me,
40:07
it's interesting because it's,
40:10
SPEAKER_01: something like the body cams,
40:12
SPEAKER_01: you're keeping the cops in check,
40:15
SPEAKER_01: and that's what they were originally worried about,
40:17
SPEAKER_01: but then I read enough to see it goes both ways,
40:21
because then they're also getting cleared in cases where people
40:26
had filed lawsuits
40:27
SPEAKER_01: before,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: and it's like,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: oh,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: no,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: well,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: it turns out
40:29
SPEAKER_01: We didn't use too much force or anything there.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of both sides.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: Taser, similar.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: We've put some cops in jail.
40:37
You know,
40:38
bad cops who did bad things and they thought...
40:40
Right,
40:40
that's what I mean.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: This cuts both ways in very nuanced... It's complicated.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: And then the taser, similar thing, right?
40:48
SPEAKER_01: Like far better to be...
40:50
be tased and shot,
40:51
but like,
40:52
are the cops sometimes using the taser when they shouldn't?
40:54
SPEAKER_01: How do you...
40:55
SPEAKER_01: Now you have so much of your business,
40:58
SPEAKER_01: you're this...
40:59
SPEAKER_01: When we think about the taser,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: the body cam,
41:02
SPEAKER_01: this data service,
41:03
SPEAKER_01: you're so inextricably tied in with law enforcement at this point.
41:09
I would feel like from where you started to where it is today,
41:12
it's come very far.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: You're like almost...
41:15
SPEAKER_01: you are this part of the police force.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: How do you not just get totally co-opted into whatever they want?
41:25
SPEAKER_00: I hear you 100%.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:28
So look,
41:29
for example,
41:29
we actually just got flamed at a major law enforcement
41:32
conference.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: We had a viewer stand up, an attendee stand up and say,
41:36
He was really mad at us because we have our EEAC,
41:38
which are Equity and Ethics Advisory Council.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: And he was reading off the names of the people we have on this council.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: And look, they're critics of police.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: They say some pretty harsh things about police.
41:48
And this guy would say,
41:49
well,
41:49
you know,
41:50
why are you aligning with these people?
41:52
SPEAKER_00: And our point was like,
41:54
SPEAKER_00: look,
41:54
SPEAKER_00: we need to hear the other voices,
41:56
SPEAKER_00: especially I think we have,
41:58
SPEAKER_00: because we do have very large market share.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: Agencies really rely on our platform.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: There's a big responsibility for us to get it right.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: And,
42:07
SPEAKER_00: um,
42:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:08
SPEAKER_00: this might sound a little cheesy or naive,
42:11
SPEAKER_00: but it's like,
42:12
SPEAKER_00: look,
42:12
SPEAKER_00: if you take the time to try to do things the right way,
42:15
SPEAKER_00: you want to do things in a way you're going to be proud of.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Like now I'm thinking about,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to back half of my career and throughout the organization,
42:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:23
SPEAKER_00: when you,
42:23
SPEAKER_00: when you attract really smart,
42:25
SPEAKER_00: talented people,
42:27
SPEAKER_00: um,
42:28
SPEAKER_00: we really pride ourselves on authenticity.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, we do the best we can.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: We are imperfect.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: People are imperfect.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Organizations are imperfect.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do our best.
42:37
And that also means,
42:39
and look,
42:40
our software development office is in Seattle.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:44
SPEAKER_00: pretty far on the liberal end of the US spectrum that,
42:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:49
SPEAKER_00: and not to like tie people's views on policing,
42:51
SPEAKER_00: but they do fall differently on the spectrum of different cities,
42:55
SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: And so,
42:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:57
SPEAKER_00: our employees look at us too,
42:58
SPEAKER_00: say,
42:58
SPEAKER_00: okay,
42:59
SPEAKER_00: they're asking me a lot of critical questions.
43:01
How do we not become co-opted into negative influences or one
43:07
side of a political argument?
43:09
SPEAKER_00: You just have to be open to listening.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, we don't shy away from controversy.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: I actually think one of the things for us has become a superpower.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: We will step right into it.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to do it in a way we'll be proud of.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean we're going to win the argument with everybody,
43:25
SPEAKER_00: and we're going to get some negative news stories.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: We're going to take some arrows.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: I've certainly gotten used to it.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: I do have to remind myself when we have new employees,
43:33
SPEAKER_00: and you get a negative news story,
43:34
SPEAKER_00: and your stock drops 30%.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: I have to remind myself to have empathy.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: Some of our employees, this is their first rodeo.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody don't freak out.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: We feel confident.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, John Oliver, who I'm a fan of, did a 30 minute show on us.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: You guys got it.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: He spanked us pretty hard.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: I actually, I started my own podcast to tell sort of the stories of Axon.
43:59
SPEAKER_00: And we did two sessions.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Can we get into this for a second?
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: I really want to get into the drones in where
44:10
SPEAKER_01: You know,
44:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm super into technology in the future,
44:12
SPEAKER_01: so I want to get...
44:14
SPEAKER_01: We're going to do the mean part of the podcast for a second.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: And then we'll get there.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: So John Oliver, yeah, he spent 30 minutes going at you guys.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: I would say he raises this question of...
44:26
SPEAKER_01: Are the tasers really harming people?
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Are the police using them, um, excessively?
44:32
SPEAKER_01: It was interesting.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: You didn't get into like the body cam, the rest of your business at all.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: It was very taser focused.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, he gave you a very hard time on that stuff.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: Um,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: so,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: and then,
44:44
SPEAKER_01: and then I,
44:45
SPEAKER_01: I,
44:47
SPEAKER_01: I didn't watch the whole thing straight through it unless I'm wrong.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: You guys didn't really get to reply in the,
44:55
SPEAKER_01: in the show or did you guys send a statement or?
44:57
SPEAKER_01: We said a short statement.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: A statement.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: So what would be, okay.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: So just for people who haven't seen it, he gives you a really hard time.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: he's basically tasers are potentially at the very end in 30 seconds,
45:08
SPEAKER_01: he's like,
45:08
SPEAKER_01: he's like,
45:09
SPEAKER_01: oh,
45:09
SPEAKER_01: this is a useful tool,
45:11
SPEAKER_01: but we need to be much more cautious about how we use it.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: much, much more cautious about how we use it.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: Although in the previous 29 minutes,
45:18
SPEAKER_01: 30 seconds,
45:19
SPEAKER_01: he made it out to seem like you guys are just incarnate evil.
45:23
Give me like your,
45:25
what were the one or two things that bugged you the most?
45:27
SPEAKER_00: All right,
45:28
so first thing I'll tell you is I have a podcast called The
45:30
Boldly Go Podcast,
45:32
SPEAKER_00: and we're not even focused on viewership.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: It's just to tell our stories.
45:36
And I have six hours of podcast time dedicated to medical
45:39
safety and three hours
45:41
SPEAKER_00: for John Oliver.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: So it takes a lot to go deep.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: What I would tell you is it's very one-sided in a misleading way.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: Like he talks about people who've died in custody.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: There was an interview I did with Wyatt Andrews on CBS News in 2004.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: And I did like a four hour interview.
46:02
And what I learned is don't do long interviews with the news
46:04
because they'll take
46:05
SPEAKER_00: the snippet that's unfriendly.
46:07
And we actually,
46:07
that's why we didn't give,
46:08
we could,
46:09
his staff,
46:10
we knew it was a hit piece.
46:11
We're like,
46:11
look,
46:11
if we give you 60 pages,
46:13
you're going to pick the least flattering stuff.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to give you a short statement.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll now just respond on our own.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the samples I got from this interview from 20 years ago,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: Somebody died up in Colorado and I said,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: they said,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: oh,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: Rick,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: you're saying he would have died anyways.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: And I said, yes, I'm saying he would have died anyways.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: And when they edited it, I looked like a jerk.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: I didn't like myself when I saw that TV.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember this part.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: But let me give you the background.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: The guy who died, I think his name was Glenn Leyba.
46:42
He had more than 10 times the accepted lethal dose of cocaine
46:45
in his bloodstream.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: The medical examiner,
46:49
did not attribute any causality to the taser and said this was
46:52
multiples of the
46:53
lethal levels and the death happened sometime well after the
46:58
application of the
46:58
SPEAKER_00: taser.
46:59
SPEAKER_00: So when people say that the taser weapon killed somebody,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: the immediate thing is,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: oh,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: it electrocuted them,
47:05
SPEAKER_00: it stopped their heart.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: That's a very well understood phenomenon.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: If electricity stops your heart,
47:10
SPEAKER_00: it's immediate,
47:11
SPEAKER_00: you are unconscious in less than five to 10 seconds.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: That clearly didn't happen here.
47:16
SPEAKER_00: Now, I've since learned
47:19
SPEAKER_00: not my earlier, more pugnacious self, it came off wrong.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: But the fact I think still is true,
47:25
The taser,
47:26
there's no evidence that the taser weapon killed him in this
47:28
case.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: And we have a very glaringly obvious case.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: It was a cocaine overdose.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: And I could go through all of the different scenarios.
47:34
The other cases he mentioned there,
47:35
we were sued in them and we won in court.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: So the courts agreed with us.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: What's that condition he kept citing?
47:41
SPEAKER_01: It was two words.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: Excited delirium.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Excited delirium.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: And so he pulls up these clips where again and again and again,
47:49
SPEAKER_01: this is cited as the cause of death in a taser.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it paints it easily compelling.
47:56
If you watch this thing,
47:57
it's like,
47:57
oh,
47:58
well,
47:58
they're falling back on this one term every time.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: Well,
48:01
SPEAKER_00: let me,
48:02
so excited delirium is a name for a condition that you would
48:05
never take yourself to
48:06
SPEAKER_00: the hospital for.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: So yes,
48:08
SPEAKER_00: it is not recognized as like a normal medical condition,
48:12
SPEAKER_00: but it describes a condition where somebody is out of control,
48:17
SPEAKER_00: overexerting themselves,
48:19
SPEAKER_00: having experienced some sort of psychotic break.
48:22
And this happens,
48:23
it actually goes,
48:23
but there've been multiple names for it over time.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: It was called Bell's Mania back in the 1800s,
48:28
SPEAKER_00: where they had people in asylums that would exert themselves to death.
48:33
All right,
48:33
now it sounds a little strange,
48:34
but let me explain the core phenomenon.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: If you and I get in a wrestling match,
48:38
SPEAKER_00: or you even watch a professional boxer.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: After the first minute or two, they're slowing down.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: We get fatigued.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: I can't keep going.
48:47
So what's happening inside your physiology is your brain is
48:50
monitoring your blood chemistry.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: It's like, whoa, it's getting acidic.
48:54
SPEAKER_00: You're building up lactic acid and carbon dioxide.
48:57
That manifests as exhaustion and we slow down and we feel like
49:00
we just can't go on.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: That fatigue is saving your life because if you keep exerting yourself,
49:07
SPEAKER_00: your blood pH starts at 7.4.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: As it becomes acidic, it starts to drop and it's a logarithmic scale.
49:13
SPEAKER_00: Once you go below seven, it's quite dangerous.
49:16
If you get down to 6.8,
49:18
you will go into cardiac arrest and you will die with near
49:21
certainty.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing controversy about this last part I told you.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: Metabolic acidosis is well understood.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: And it is irreversible.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: So another thing that's important,
49:30
SPEAKER_00: if electricity,
49:31
SPEAKER_00: if you shock somebody's heart into fibrillation,
49:34
SPEAKER_00: you can shock them right back out.
49:35
SPEAKER_00: And we know because doctors do it hundreds of thousands of times a year.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: When they do a pacemaker, they shock your heart to stop it.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: They do a little procedure, they shock it back.
49:45
SPEAKER_00: But these,
49:46
SPEAKER_00: if your blood chemistry drops below 6.8,
49:49
SPEAKER_00: or I'm saying it like it's very precise,
49:51
SPEAKER_00: there's some shades of gray in there.
49:53
you cannot shock somebody back because the shock doesn't change
49:56
their blood chemistry.
49:57
And so how you get there,
50:00
and this has been the subject of many of the lawsuits that
50:02
we're in.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: And when you hear about these people in excited delirium,
50:06
the concept is these people are in a very agitated state and
50:10
they are exerting
50:11
SPEAKER_00: themselves beyond their body's capacity.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: and you wanna get them under control.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
50:17
SPEAKER_00: there's some medical centers,
50:19
they actually don't even like to be drawn into this because of
50:22
the controversy.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: Doctors have been threatened to be fired over this issue because it's so,
50:27
SPEAKER_00: especially post-George Floyd,
50:28
SPEAKER_00: it was so controversial.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta do something with these people.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: And some of the best protocols say, get them under control quickly.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: And frankly, the taser is the best way to do that.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: Sedate them, usually with ketamine.
50:40
and then actually administer a buffer into their bloodstream,
50:43
which will bring the pH back up.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: Agencies that do that have a higher survival rate.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: However,
50:49
SPEAKER_00: just an example of how the sensationalism can be counterproductive,
50:53
there was a newspaper that ran an expose on a police department
50:57
and a medical
50:57
SPEAKER_00: center that were doing this.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: And the headline was,
51:00
this local medical center is using a date rape drug on black
51:04
people when so that
51:05
the police can knock them out and arrest them i mean i'm
51:09
paraphrasing yeah but it
51:11
drew the it brought in the racial element and it called it a
51:13
date rape drug uh like
51:16
ketamine is actually it is chosen for this purpose because it
51:19
actually has a high
51:21
safety index meaning the ratio where it becomes lethal to
51:24
effective is high
51:26
SPEAKER_00: You can inject it intramuscularly.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: You can't go intravenous on somebody who's fighting with you.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: So there's actually a lot of good science we're doing about it.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: But yes, some people also use ketamine as a date rape drug.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: So anyways,
51:36
SPEAKER_00: it is complicated,
51:37
SPEAKER_00: but there's a downside to this sort of the simplistic,
51:41
SPEAKER_00: well,
51:42
SPEAKER_00: excited dilemma is just a cover up.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: It protects the police.
51:46
SPEAKER_01: He seemed to be...
51:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know,
51:48
SPEAKER_01: suggesting is the right word,
51:50
SPEAKER_01: that it was this catch-all,
51:51
SPEAKER_01: that when something went wrong,
51:53
then you guys would reach out to the police department and with
51:57
your PR team and
51:58
SPEAKER_01: say,
51:59
SPEAKER_01: tell them it's exciting delirium.
52:00
SPEAKER_00: We did far more than that.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: We actually,
52:03
it was included in our training and we supported a group called
52:05
the Institute for
52:06
the Prevention of Incustody Deaths that would train officers in
52:09
this phenomenon as
52:10
SPEAKER_00: well.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just like we would tell them at the end,
52:13
SPEAKER_00: when we're training to use a taste,
52:14
SPEAKER_00: we look out for these symptoms.
52:16
SPEAKER_00: And if you see these symptoms,
52:18
you should be very concerned that this is a person who's at
52:20
high risk of death.
52:22
SPEAKER_00: And we would give them safety procedures like call for medical,
52:25
SPEAKER_00: avoid using any force if you can,
52:27
SPEAKER_00: because even though they appear very violent,
52:30
SPEAKER_00: these people are fragile and you want medical there.
52:33
SPEAKER_00: So if you get them under control,
52:35
SPEAKER_00: You want them in medical care fast, frankly.
52:38
And look,
52:38
sometimes you have to come train police for their own
52:41
self-preservation.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: You don't want the,
52:43
SPEAKER_00: if this person is at high risk of dying,
52:45
SPEAKER_00: you don't want that happening in your patrol car.
52:47
SPEAKER_00: You want to hand them off the medical as fast as possible.
52:49
SPEAKER_00: It's best for them and it protects you.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: Now,
52:53
SPEAKER_00: because of all,
52:54
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:55
SPEAKER_00: California,
52:55
SPEAKER_00: he uses an example that California has banned the term excited delirium.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, great.
53:00
SPEAKER_00: That's actually not very productive.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
53:02
it's counterproductive because now we are forbidden from
53:05
training officers to
53:07
SPEAKER_00: recognize excited delirium.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: We cannot use the term in police training.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: It's now illegal.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those things where it sounds great at first blush,
53:13
SPEAKER_00: but like banning the words doesn't make the problem go away.
53:16
SPEAKER_00: We have a meth epidemic.
53:17
You still have people who have these issues and now police
53:21
can't talk about it in
53:22
SPEAKER_00: their training.
53:23
SPEAKER_00: And guess who was behind the bill in California?
53:26
SPEAKER_00: plaintiff's attorneys.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:28
Like the,
53:29
it was a family of somebody who died in police custody and
53:31
look,
53:32
I'm a father.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
53:34
SPEAKER_00: Like those people are in a lot of pain.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not,
53:39
But I would say the attorneys can be pretty brutal that come
53:43
after police departments.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: And we were winning.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: We've won, we've been sued like 400 times.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: We've won all but one or two cases.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: And yes, excited delirium was a part because that's part of the story.
53:53
And when you present it to juries and I can show you cases
53:56
where no taser was used
53:57
SPEAKER_00: and somebody died and a case where the taser was used and you'd be,
54:00
SPEAKER_00: wow,
54:01
SPEAKER_00: the symptom pattern is very similar.
54:04
SPEAKER_00: And so,
54:06
SPEAKER_00: I think this is where we can have a fair debate.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: People who disagree with me say, yes, police may overuse the term.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: But when you make the term go away,
54:15
Now you're ignoring something that is a real problem because
54:17
what the other side is
54:18
SPEAKER_00: saying that every time somebody dies in police custody,
54:20
SPEAKER_00: it's the cop's fault.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: That's equally, or I would say even more egregious.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: So again, there's a lot of complexity behind this.
54:27
Police deal with incredible complexity and they deal with all
54:32
these medical
54:32
situations that with the explosion of designer drugs are not
54:36
made by like Calvin
54:37
SPEAKER_00: Klein.
54:38
People are making toxic,
54:40
dangerous stuff and taking it and it's dangerous.
54:43
SPEAKER_00: So I'll end with this one simple analogy.
54:46
Last year,
54:47
probably a million people died after being transported in an
54:49
ambulance.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we don't blame the ambulance ride.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: It is coincident.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: That was part of the therapy.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Now,
54:55
SPEAKER_00: people may think this is a little outrageous,
54:57
SPEAKER_00: but I would say the taser,
54:58
SPEAKER_00: if you're dealing with somebody who's violent and has to be contained,
55:02
SPEAKER_00: we are part of the therapy protocol,
55:04
SPEAKER_00: because step one,
55:05
SPEAKER_00: you have to get them under control and restrained,
55:07
SPEAKER_00: and we're the best way of doing that,
55:08
SPEAKER_00: but it's not risk-free.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: So anyways, we can go on for hours.
55:12
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, again, but my sense is this bugs you, though, a bit, right?
55:19
SPEAKER_00: It's like taser technology is my baby.
55:23
SPEAKER_00: And when people say it's a murderer,
55:25
SPEAKER_00: I get emotional.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: No,
55:26
SPEAKER_00: it's not,
55:27
SPEAKER_00: especially when I...
55:28
SPEAKER_00: And look,
55:28
SPEAKER_00: we accept it has killed people,
55:31
SPEAKER_00: but those cases,
55:33
SPEAKER_00: what's amazing,
55:34
SPEAKER_00: we don't get sued.
55:35
When somebody has fallen or ignited in flames,
55:39
their families are just as sad.
55:40
SPEAKER_00: It's still as big a human tragedy.
55:41
Those don't make the newspaper though,
55:43
because it doesn't have this controversy element.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: It's easily understood.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like, yep, the fall caused a fatal wound.
55:49
It's this middle ground case where it's very murky and unclear
55:53
where controversy swirls.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's the one where all the debate lies.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like you, I enjoy John Oliver.
55:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he, he did, he did go out.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: He goes, I, I,
56:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't know enough about any of this to be super effective.
56:07
SPEAKER_01: I did find one,
56:08
the one frustrating thing to me on that episode was it really
56:11
was 29 minutes and 30
56:13
SPEAKER_01: seconds.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: And then in that last bit,
56:16
SPEAKER_01: he did say like,
56:17
SPEAKER_01: well,
56:17
SPEAKER_01: we,
56:18
SPEAKER_01: the tasers are,
56:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:19
SPEAKER_01: this is a useful technology,
56:21
SPEAKER_01: but he hadn't really spent much time on that.
56:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, all right.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: Look, I try to be open-minded.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the show was funny.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: Look, he's a funny guy in general.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: I still enjoy his show.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: And I actually aspire to be like,
56:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be the guy who tunes him out because he made fun of me.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: I look at this as, you know what?
56:34
I'm sorry.
56:35
SPEAKER_00: I work on these controversial things.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: He brought up legitimate positions.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: I disagree with him.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: And he's a funny guy.
56:43
But I don't want to go into this world where,
56:45
you know,
56:45
okay,
56:46
you disagree with me.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to just tune you out.
56:47
SPEAKER_00: I still watch your show.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: All right, I'm going to ask you one more nasty question.
56:50
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: All right.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: He brought this up.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: I remember this Reuters story from 2023.
56:56
So you have a founding story where you talk about a couple of
57:00
friends who were
57:02
SPEAKER_01: killed in high school and then...
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Um,
57:06
SPEAKER_01: and this helped spark your interest in,
57:08
SPEAKER_01: in getting into this,
57:09
this field Reuters and John Oliver was essentially re rehashing
57:14
what this Reuters
57:15
story had brought up was they went back to members of these
57:19
kids family and they
57:20
SPEAKER_01: said,
57:21
SPEAKER_01: well,
57:21
SPEAKER_01: we don't know.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: We don't know Rick and, and, um,
57:25
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know Rick,
57:26
SPEAKER_01: our kids didn't know Rick,
57:27
SPEAKER_01: and he didn't go to high school at the same time as these kids.
57:31
SPEAKER_01: There's no way this could have been like this founding origin story.
57:35
I remember reading the Reuters piece,
57:37
and I went back and checked last night.
57:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you guys gave a short statement in that.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: John Oliver didn't let you respond, or it wasn't in your statement.
57:47
So I don't know what the answer,
57:48
I actually don't know what your take is on this.
57:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, and I apologize if you've answered this before.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: I didn't see it anywhere.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: No, don't apologize.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: Look, if you offend me, you wouldn't have stuffed animals.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: It's the business I'm in.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is one, I'm just gonna tell you the story.
58:03
SPEAKER_00: So I moved to Arizona in 1986.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: My name is Patrick.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: In high school, I went by Pat Smith.
58:10
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I moved in 86, I played football.
58:13
SPEAKER_00: So I started in the summer football program.
58:18
Todd Bogers and Corey Holmes were two of the seniors who had
58:22
just graduated.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: So yes, it's true.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: We were not in school together.
58:25
However,
58:26
they were,
58:27
they went to the local community college and they were very
58:30
ingrained.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: These were like this,
58:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:32
SPEAKER_00: the guys who just graduated,
58:33
SPEAKER_00: like the heroes of previous football team.
58:35
SPEAKER_00: And, uh,
58:38
SPEAKER_00: Todd played the same position I did.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: He was the nose guard.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: So he was like the last guy before me.
58:43
And so I would see him,
58:44
they would still come to some of the high school parties.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: I met them.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: I never would have had occasion to meet their parents.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: We weren't like super close,
58:52
SPEAKER_00: but they were kind of like,
58:54
SPEAKER_00: okay,
58:54
SPEAKER_00: those are the seniors two years ahead.
58:56
SPEAKER_00: And then it was a few years later,
58:59
SPEAKER_00: They were shot and killed.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I've ever held this out as a deep personal tragedy.
59:04
SPEAKER_00: And I apologize to the family if it ever came across that way.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: But when they were shot and killed,
59:11
SPEAKER_00: It was impactful.
59:14
SPEAKER_00: Everybody was talking about it.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: Hey, everybody know Corrie Todd?
59:17
SPEAKER_00: They got shot and killed.
59:18
This happened in the parking lot of the Hyatt Regency Golf
59:21
Resort,
59:22
like where I went for prom.
59:24
SPEAKER_00: So this is like in my neighborhood.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: This isn't in some faraway crime-ridden city.
59:28
SPEAKER_00: This is Scottsdale.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't like in that moment per se,
59:32
SPEAKER_00: but a couple of years later,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm in grad school,
59:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm in Belgium,
59:36
SPEAKER_00: and I'm talking to Europeans who are saying things like,
59:39
SPEAKER_00: oh,
59:39
SPEAKER_00: I'd never go to America because of all the gun violence.
59:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, you know, it's not what you see on TV.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: I love America and Arizona.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: You should come to my hometown.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: And one of them asked me, do you know anybody who's been shot and killed?
59:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, shit, I do.
59:52
SPEAKER_00: In fact, by the time I add it up, I know about four or five people.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: And so when I've described it,
59:58
SPEAKER_00: I said,
59:59
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
59:59
SPEAKER_00: I had friends in high school who were shot and killed.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: If I could wind it back, I guess I should have babysat acquaintances.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: Like we can debate.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: I've never said they were my best friends.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_00: I still think like acquaintance is disrespectful in its own way.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the backstory.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: And yes, their parents don't know me.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: It adds more confusion that I switched to Rick later in life.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: This is a really weird story, but my grandmother had a stroke.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: And she lost her speech.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: And the only thing she could say was Ricky.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: Ricky and home were two words.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: Sentences would be like Ricky, Ricky, Ricky home, Ricky home.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, when I was very young, I was Ricky.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: And then my brother
1:00:40
used to call me rick the dick in elementary school seriously
1:00:43
and i was traumatic he
1:00:44
was older than me and so i switched to pat so he couldn't do
1:00:46
that and later my you
1:00:48
know i got out of college and the business was failing i was
1:00:51
going through a crisis
1:00:52
of identity personally i felt like i was two years into this
1:00:56
business i was feeling
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: like a real loser i didn't have any friends i was working all the time my
1:01:00
grandmother has a stroke she's calling me ricky and so i like
1:01:03
literally went
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: through this thing okay i've got to reinvent myself i've got to like
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so it was over the holidays.
1:01:08
Uh,
1:01:09
I,
1:01:10
I,
1:01:10
that,
1:01:10
that year I was like,
1:01:11
okay,
1:01:11
I'm going back to Rick,
1:01:12
the name I had as a kid.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, it's way too, way more detail than you need, but.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: And the story you've just told, John Oliver did rehash this thing.
1:01:21
And when I was digging around last night,
1:01:22
I mean,
1:01:22
I haven't seen what you just told me.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: Have you said that before?
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: Have you put that?
1:01:27
I did put it into,
1:01:29
uh,
1:01:29
my boldly go podcast,
1:01:31
which has a very low,
1:01:32
low viewership.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: It's again, targeted very specifically.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: People want to go deep on our company.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_00: I think this may be the first place that we have broad...
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: because people really were whacking you as like,
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: the guy made up his origin story.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: I think I may have covered it on Reddit or something.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_00: The one thing,
1:01:49
SPEAKER_00: I hate to say it like this,
1:01:51
SPEAKER_00: but one thing we've learned is when you know there's a hit piece coming,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: the more you give them,
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: the more it gets edited.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_00: And so you give...
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: We want to control what you're going to say,
1:02:02
so we're going to give you enough that you can't choose from an
1:02:04
encyclopedia of
1:02:06
SPEAKER_00: stuff.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_00: And so that was one again.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think how long it took me to explain that.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_00: It feels like a lot of hand-waving.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: I understand.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I was just curious.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_00: And look, I feel a bit like a jerk.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know their parents.
1:02:17
I think as a parent,
1:02:18
I can imagine,
1:02:20
especially because the way it gets built up.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_00: I could be really unlikable if they think I'm out standing under.
1:02:25
Well,
1:02:25
they're probably like,
1:02:26
oh,
1:02:26
there's some billionaire guy running around saying this stuff.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_01: But I pictured in my head that like you,
1:02:32
SPEAKER_01: on that friend's point,
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: it's like anybody would say that,
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: right?
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some kids from your school have this traumatic thing.
1:02:39
It's like exactly like you said,
1:02:41
you're not going to be like my acquaintances.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like, oh, these kids that I knew, this thing happened.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: And then I could totally picture you.
1:02:51
like the early days of your company you're trying to describe
1:02:53
while you got into
1:02:54
SPEAKER_01: this thing and then you know what i mean it's it's it's it's yeah life's
1:02:58
complicated yeah and um the whole point is actually the
1:03:03
opposite it's not that it
1:03:04
was a deeply personal tragedy that's unique to me it's more
1:03:08
like wow this gun
1:03:10
violence is a big thing like it affects all of us yeah
1:03:14
everybody i bet you know
1:03:15
SPEAKER_00: people who've been shot and killed
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: I do, and then I've had a gun pulled on me.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wasn't shot and killed, but I've had a gun pulled on me.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: I was arrested one time in my youth when I was 17 or 18.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: I think 17.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_01: We were drinking beers in a park.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: And this was in Houston.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_01: I ended up going to Harris County Jail, which is no joke.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: It's probably one of the biggest.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: It's all walks of life inside of there.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: And the cops were trying to teach us a lesson.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_01: They really were interested that we were all going to college.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: And they didn't seem to like that.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: They just kept reminding us, like, college boy and all this stuff.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_01: And I had long hair.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_00: And this was pre-body cameras.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, so this is why I have respect for what you guys do.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: I had long hair.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: There were 11 of us,
1:04:13
SPEAKER_01: but the two long hairs and our black friend,
1:04:16
SPEAKER_01: we went on a special adventure inside of Harris County Jail,
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: part of which included...
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: I got sort of thrown in the public intoxication tank,
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: which was amazing,
1:04:27
and then they would bring you out to get fingerprinted on this
1:04:30
digital fingerprint
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: machine,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: and...
1:04:34
SPEAKER_01: While I was standing there,
1:04:35
SPEAKER_01: they brought in this African-American guy that they had kind of like,
1:04:39
SPEAKER_01: I guess like hogtied with handcuffs.
1:04:40
He had his hands and his feet were handcuffed and his hands
1:04:43
were behind him and
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: they sort of carried him in.
1:04:46
you know,
1:04:47
he was horizontal,
1:04:48
and they,
1:04:48
like,
1:04:48
plopped him about as far away as you and I are.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_01: And I was already, you know, this was already a lot for me.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't really a bad kid or anything.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_01: I was weighing over my head at this point,
1:04:58
SPEAKER_01: and now I'm just freaking out,
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: and the cops,
1:05:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm not joking,
1:05:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:05:03
SPEAKER_01: it's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_01: They started hitting,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_01: he was passed out,
1:05:07
SPEAKER_01: and they're like,
1:05:08
SPEAKER_01: don't make us take you back to the hospital,
1:05:10
SPEAKER_01: wake up,
1:05:11
SPEAKER_01: and they kept hitting him with their billy clubs.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_01: They kind of got around him.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they were,
1:05:16
keeping track of points of how high his limbs were raising up
1:05:21
off the ground when
1:05:22
SPEAKER_01: they hit him,
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: and they just kept yelling at him,
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:05:25
SPEAKER_01: don't make this point bring you back to the hospital,
1:05:27
SPEAKER_01: as if,
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: hitting him was gonna help.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_01: And then this guy in the drunk tank was like,
1:05:33
SPEAKER_01: leave him alone,
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: and then they all turned and went to that guy.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: When I went back to see that guy,
1:05:38
SPEAKER_01: He was on the ground with blood coming out of his mouth.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_01: All his teeth were on the floor thing.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_01: Anyways.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_01: What year was this approximately?
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: This was like, uh, 96.
1:05:46
And then when I went to my hearing,
1:05:49
so this is the part where the body cam thing comes in,
1:05:51
um,
1:05:54
SPEAKER_01: Look, we were privileged kids.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: Most of us were like the children of lawyers,
1:05:57
SPEAKER_01: so we said nothing to the cops the whole time this was going on.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: And when I got into the court proceedings,
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: there were these massive statements of,
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: everything we had said,
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: conversations that had never happened.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_01: It was like, yes, officer, I am...
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: your dope boy and like all, you know, like all these things.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, man, this is crazy.
1:06:17
I actually,
1:06:18
I was very naive and I assumed like,
1:06:22
God,
1:06:22
I hope this is not normal.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it is,
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: but I was like,
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: wow,
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: I did not,
1:06:28
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know you could just like make things,
1:06:29
SPEAKER_01: you just legit just make up this whole
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: It was wild.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: The whole experience was wild to me.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, somebody should be keeping an eye on some of this stuff.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, life is complicated.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_00: Like that can be true.
1:06:43
And at the same point,
1:06:44
cops can deal with all sorts of horror shows out in the real
1:06:46
world and
1:06:48
you know difficult things and like and unfortunately people
1:06:51
tend to polarize into
1:06:52
these like simplistic world views like cops are heroes and
1:06:55
never do anything wrong
1:06:56
and if you you know if you obey the law then whatever happens
1:06:59
to you is your
1:06:59
business of course on the other side like all cops are bad and
1:07:02
100 100 100 um i
1:07:04
have a big picture question so you guys have done all this
1:07:06
technology i mean you've
1:07:07
been on this quest to remove to lessen gun violence obviously
1:07:11
you know you've been
1:07:13
SPEAKER_01: at this for 25 30 years it's like you
1:07:17
SPEAKER_01: we're not doing great as a country writ large.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:07:20
SPEAKER_01: you guys are doing your part,
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: but,
1:07:22
and I know at one point you were looking at some technology to
1:07:25
stop shootings at
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: schools that ended up being a little controversial.
1:07:29
You were talking about like an automated kind of drone taser
1:07:32
system that would spot
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: these people coming in,
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: but like,
1:07:36
My big question to you is,
1:07:39
yeah,
1:07:39
we're clearly not in a better place with all this stuff.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: You guys have invented these tools to help along the way.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so how does that make you, how do you assess all this?
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: And like...
1:07:55
have you fulfilled your goal and is are there still is there
1:07:59
anything that can be
1:07:59
done oh man uh no we have not fulfilled our goal and i've used
1:08:03
this this was the
1:08:04
core theme when i went to our board and our engineers and i'm
1:08:07
like guys we are
1:08:09
failing the job is not to sell more tasers the job is to cut
1:08:12
bun confines and we
1:08:13
have anecdotes we have lots of i can show you tons of incidents
1:08:16
where a taser was
1:08:17
SPEAKER_00: used in a situation that could have lended in lethal force
1:08:21
SPEAKER_00: but the numbers keep creeping up.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_00: And so I use this moonshot analogy where I say,
1:08:26
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:08:27
SPEAKER_00: we need,
1:08:27
SPEAKER_00: let's set a specific goal and let's use that to drive our behavior.
1:08:30
And part of it was also to help us deal with some of the
1:08:34
critics because we knew,
1:08:35
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:08:35
SPEAKER_00: if we launch a 10 shot capable taser weapon,
1:08:38
SPEAKER_00: there are going to be critics that'll say,
1:08:39
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:08:39
SPEAKER_00: if cops are abusive with a one shot,
1:08:41
SPEAKER_00: you give them 10 shot.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_00: So we need to frame the why.
1:08:45
And the why is when you miss with the taser weapon or you get a
1:08:49
clothing disconnect
1:08:49
SPEAKER_00: or the wire breaks,
1:08:51
SPEAKER_00: you're done, you have to escalate.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: some of the critics,
1:08:56
the most valid critique that just hits me in the gut is when
1:09:00
people say tasers are
1:09:01
SPEAKER_00: ineffective or unreliable.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we are not there.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_00: We've done as good as we can.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_00: The new ones are stretching upward.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_00: This new clothing penetrating dark,
1:09:12
SPEAKER_00: I think this next year,
1:09:14
SPEAKER_00: we will finally be getting to a position where it's like,
1:09:16
SPEAKER_00: okay,
1:09:17
We finally got this dialed in and we're setting up programs to
1:09:22
measure at agencies
1:09:23
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:09:23
SPEAKER_00: okay,
1:09:24
SPEAKER_00: we're now going to measure the before and after.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_00: Do shootings actually go down?
1:09:28
SPEAKER_00: And our goal is to prove that in the next two to three years.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_00: We'll be at year five of our moonshot at that point.
1:09:33
SPEAKER_00: That gives us five more years to scale it.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_00: So we're really serious.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_00: We think we can do this.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_00: This is the first year.
1:09:39
Gun fatalities between police and the public are down slightly
1:09:43
from last year.
1:09:44
SPEAKER_00: It's early to say we're having any influence,
1:09:46
SPEAKER_00: but we have sold about 200,000 of these new Taser 10s.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_00: We have lots of anecdotes where they've saved a life.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, give me another six years.
1:09:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't feel like we've, we're not done for sure.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_00: We haven't delivered on our core promise.
1:10:00
SPEAKER_01: Because your goal, you've said, I mean, it would be to also have the U.S.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_01: police not have guns maybe, right?
1:10:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, no, no.
1:10:06
SPEAKER_00: I have to be very careful about this.
1:10:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, we stay out of the whole gun debate.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:10:11
SPEAKER_00: cops in U.S.,
1:10:12
SPEAKER_00: as long as the public has a lot of guns,
1:10:13
SPEAKER_00: which they will,
1:10:14
SPEAKER_00: it's in our constitution,
1:10:15
SPEAKER_00: police are going to need guns.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_00: But until now,
1:10:18
SPEAKER_00: what happens right now,
1:10:19
when a police officer is going through the door and they don't
1:10:21
know what's on the
1:10:22
SPEAKER_00: other side,
1:10:23
SPEAKER_00: the thing in their hand is a gun.
1:10:25
I want to change that and I've got to earn the right to say,
1:10:28
you know what?
1:10:29
SPEAKER_00: Having a gun in your hand, bad things can happen.
1:10:32
SPEAKER_00: When you open the door,
1:10:33
you don't have to make a life or death decision literally in
1:10:35
less than a second
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: sometimes.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you saw that incident in Columbus,
1:10:39
SPEAKER_00: Ohio,
1:10:40
SPEAKER_00: a couple of years ago,
1:10:40
SPEAKER_00: white cop going through the door,
1:10:43
SPEAKER_00: The canine is barking like crazy.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_00: They told him there's nobody in the house.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_00: So somebody's lying to him.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_00: There's somebody in there.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: He opens the door.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: There's a fast movement.
1:10:49
SPEAKER_00: Boom, he shoots and kills him.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a young black man who's in bed.
1:10:53
SPEAKER_00: The thing in his hand was a vape pen.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: Exploded.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_00: And right, the community was outraged and rightfully so.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think it's unfair to say that cop was a racist.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have time to be a racist.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_00: He had a gun in his hand.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_00: He had his training.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_00: that says, hey, if something's moving, it's dangerous, you fire.
1:11:11
SPEAKER_00: You can't take that back.
1:11:12
So I want to get to a point where we've earned the right where
1:11:15
officers are like,
1:11:16
you know what?
1:11:16
I'm learning that my Taser 10 is so effective or Taser 11 in a
1:11:19
few years is so effective.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have that in my hand.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_00: I still have my gun if I need it.
1:11:24
But until I know it's a lethal force situation,
1:11:28
that's how we're going to get.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_00: And I think we can get to...
1:11:31
SPEAKER_00: Well,
1:11:31
SPEAKER_00: with a highly effective taser weapon that's handheld,
1:11:34
SPEAKER_00: we can get to about 40% of police shootings are possible.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_00: We can get up to 75% if we had a drone with a taser on it.
1:11:42
SPEAKER_00: And yes, that was controversial.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_00: We got spanked badly in the public media.
1:11:46
I think it's because we tied it to school shootings and there's
1:11:49
a lot of emotion around that.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_00: And look, for me, it was emotional.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_00: I have twins that are the age of all those kids in Uvalde.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_00: And I believe.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: Rather than waiting 90 minutes for the police,
1:12:00
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:12:01
SPEAKER_00: the police mishandled that badly,
1:12:02
SPEAKER_00: but even waiting 10 minutes for the SWAT team to show up,
1:12:05
We should have taser capable drones we can send in because the
1:12:09
way we stop a person
1:12:10
SPEAKER_00: with a gun today is the same way we did in the wild west.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_00: The sheriff shows up with a gun and you have a gun fight.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_00: That's the world we live in.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_00: That shouldn't happen.
1:12:18
SPEAKER_00: We should send in a drone or a robot with a less lethal weapon.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: And now it's safer for the kids.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_00: Like when you come in guns a blazing, you miss.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_00: People get hit by accident.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_00: The officers are at risk.
1:12:30
SPEAKER_00: They make bad decisions because when your life is at risk,
1:12:33
SPEAKER_00: Your higher order thinking is offline.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_00: You can't use your higher reasoning.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_00: The fight or flight means your vision is narrowed.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_01: These would be like indoor drugs?
1:12:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, these would be indoor or outdoor.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_01: And they would be,
1:12:46
SPEAKER_01: so if it's outdoor,
1:12:47
SPEAKER_01: well,
1:12:47
SPEAKER_01: I could see where a police first was,
1:12:49
SPEAKER_01: they,
1:12:49
SPEAKER_01: they could see and send something from the police department,
1:12:51
SPEAKER_01: but you're,
1:12:52
SPEAKER_01: you're kind of talking about like drones installed at the school,
1:12:55
SPEAKER_01: right?
1:12:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, long, I would say in the near term, that's probably a bridge too far.
1:13:00
In the near term,
1:13:01
it would be with the SWAT teams or pre-installed,
1:13:04
but always human controlled.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I'll actually give you this.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_00: We are working on a taser capable drone.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_00: I walked back that we're gonna do it for schools.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_00: Now I've met with many schools since then to understand the problem,
1:13:18
SPEAKER_00: but here's the paradigm I'm using.
1:13:19
When you look at what people said,
1:13:21
there was a lot of negativity about the taser capable drug.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: They said, number one, cops are gonna abuse it.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna use it on protestors.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_00: Number two was that the Terminator scenario is gonna happen.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_00: These things will like go around tasing people on their own.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_00: By the way, these are solvable problems.
1:13:40
And so the paradigm in my head is I wanna design this thing
1:13:43
with such good product
1:13:44
safety design that I can go sell it to the San Francisco PD who
1:13:48
will not buy our
1:13:49
SPEAKER_00: existing handheld taser weapons.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
1:13:52
so if you're a cop and I give you a gun or I give you a taser
1:13:56
weapon or a baton,
1:13:58
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you what your policy is,
1:13:59
SPEAKER_00: but I actually can't stop you from doing something terrible.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_00: With a drone,
1:14:05
SPEAKER_00: I actually met with the military,
1:14:07
SPEAKER_00: one of the guys who ran the drone program,
1:14:09
SPEAKER_00: and I said,
1:14:09
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:14:10
SPEAKER_00: I have this thesis that drone operators make more thoughtful,
1:14:13
SPEAKER_00: better decisions than guys that are in foxholes getting shot at.
1:14:17
SPEAKER_00: And he said,
1:14:17
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:14:17
SPEAKER_00: Rick,
1:14:17
SPEAKER_00: that's a really interesting observation,
1:14:20
SPEAKER_00: but you're actually thinking this the wrong way,
1:14:21
SPEAKER_00: because in the military,
1:14:22
SPEAKER_00: drone operators don't make the decisions.
1:14:24
They're part of a team,
1:14:25
and there's a lawyer who understands the laws of war.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_00: There's a commander.
1:14:28
In some cases,
1:14:29
there's the president of the United States in the situation
1:14:31
room.
1:14:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a great analogy.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_00: So if we...
1:14:36
SPEAKER_00: gave Taser drones to the San Francisco PD.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_00: And I know their concerns are gonna be, what about abuse?
1:14:42
SPEAKER_00: Great.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_00: You can assign a human rights officer or multiple of them.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_00: And anytime that drone is activated, it's locked.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_00: And it cannot fire until the human rights officer or one of them
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: has given the approval.
1:14:57
SPEAKER_00: It is a connected piece of technology.
1:14:58
SPEAKER_00: The operator will make better decisions.
1:15:01
SPEAKER_00: Many times they say police have an excuse.
1:15:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was afraid for my life.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_00: Many times they were.
1:15:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe sometimes they weren't.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_00: That drone operator is not afraid for their life.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_00: They're safe.
1:15:11
SPEAKER_00: So we break that psychology.
1:15:13
SPEAKER_00: We can institute institutional multiparty decision making.
1:15:17
And we know we'll always have a video because you have a camera
1:15:20
to operate the darn thing.
1:15:21
So I actually think this will be the least abusable weapon in
1:15:24
the history of
1:15:25
SPEAKER_00: policing technology when we finally launch it.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_00: And it will not only it will not be able to autonomously fire at people.
1:15:33
You have to have a credentialed operator and they,
1:15:37
we know who the operator is.
1:15:38
SPEAKER_00: Like I could take your gun and go shoot somebody.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_00: We don't have a record of that.
1:15:41
SPEAKER_00: To use the taser drone,
1:15:43
you'll have to be an operator who is credentialed by a law
1:15:45
enforcement agency.
1:15:46
It's been given authorization and we'll have different levels
1:15:48
of authorization.
1:15:50
SPEAKER_00: Like they may say, okay, Ashley Vance, you're a highly trained SWAT guy.
1:15:53
SPEAKER_00: You have authority to fire all on your own.
1:15:55
SPEAKER_00: Rick Smith, you're a patrol guy.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_00: Eh.
1:15:58
SPEAKER_00: You have to wait till the human rights officer slides it to green.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_00: So, um, I'm really excited about this.
1:16:03
I think the last thing I would say is gun violence is also a
1:16:07
social academic epidemic.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:16:09
SPEAKER_00: and in particular these mass shootings,
1:16:12
SPEAKER_00: people that go into a school to do a mass shooting have no delusions.
1:16:15
SPEAKER_00: They're coming out alive.
1:16:17
SPEAKER_00: They have this sick, twisted fantasy.
1:16:19
They're going to go down in a gun battle,
1:16:21
like they've seen in a video game or in a movie.
1:16:23
SPEAKER_00: with the police.
1:16:24
SPEAKER_00: They want a gunfight.
1:16:25
SPEAKER_00: I want to take that away from them.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_00: You show up and you go into the city hall with a gun.
1:16:30
SPEAKER_00: They're going to deploy a drone or a robot very quickly.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_00: You never get your gunfight.
1:16:36
SPEAKER_00: We don't have the risk of additional bullets going down range.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_00: You're incapacitated.
1:16:39
SPEAKER_00: You're arrested.
1:16:40
SPEAKER_00: You don't make the news.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_00: Your manifesto isn't read worldwide.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_00: We need to break that.
1:16:44
And I think we just got to get out of the business that
1:16:46
gunfights are how we deal
1:16:47
SPEAKER_00: with gun violence.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_01: Last question then.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_01: Just along these lines,
1:16:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:16:52
SPEAKER_01: you acquired a drone company to get into some of these businesses.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:16:56
SPEAKER_01: And then what you just talked about again is in the
1:16:58
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'm going to cut you off.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_00: I bought that drone company to make the Taser drone.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_00: Because drone companies were terrified of the controversy.
1:17:06
SPEAKER_00: And my core belief is, if we do this right, this will be transformative.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_00: We will break the back of the gun violence cycle,
1:17:13
SPEAKER_00: and we will save lives,
1:17:14
SPEAKER_00: and we will do it the right way.
1:17:15
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to buy a drone company so we can build this.
1:17:17
SPEAKER_00: To make this happen.
1:17:18
SPEAKER_01: And then I was wondering, I mean, then I saw, you know,
1:17:22
SPEAKER_01: So there's that quest.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the work that you guys do with police departments.
1:17:27
Then I saw some stuff about Ukraine and where you guys were
1:17:30
going with the drones.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, are you looking to compete?
1:17:34
Are your drones just meant to be focused on these jobs so close
1:17:39
to your current business?
1:17:40
Or are you guys trying to be...
1:17:41
You know,
1:17:41
America has a huge drone problem right now.
1:17:45
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm always... I've been following Andrel.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_01: I've followed...
1:17:49
All the US drone makers,
1:17:50
I've seen the young ones get wiped out by China.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so I'm very curious how ambitious you guys are about this.
1:17:57
SPEAKER_00: I just got back from Kiev.
1:17:58
SPEAKER_00: I was over there.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to learn about what's happening.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: They are a customer.
1:18:04
They're using our stuff to defend their cities and their people
1:18:08
from drones.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: Right now, our drone business does counter drone detection and jamming.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you guys had some cool stuff, man.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_01: You got like weird bots.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_00: So we can detect drones.
1:18:21
SPEAKER_00: We can jam them.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_00: So we protected the Super Bowl.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_00: We protect the World Cup.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_00: It's a company we acquired called D-Drone that does this.
1:18:28
We're doing a lot of soul searching right now about,
1:18:31
okay,
1:18:32
in the drone wars,
1:18:34
SPEAKER_00: the new drones are going to be unjammable.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_00: The fiber optic drones, the fiber optic cable can't jam it or AI.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: So we are going to get into kinetic solutions.
1:18:43
I've actually been personally in the lab designing projectiles
1:18:46
that are designed to
1:18:47
SPEAKER_00: fire into the props of drones and take them down.
1:18:51
SPEAKER_00: Those will also be non-lethal.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_00: However, we're also in...
1:18:56
SPEAKER_00: Again, I share way too much.
1:18:58
I'm actually having conversations with my board and my
1:18:59
employees right now about
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: this topic where,
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:19:02
SPEAKER_00: if we want to sell to the military,
1:19:04
SPEAKER_00: if we take a position that,
1:19:06
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:19:06
SPEAKER_00: if you buy our drones,
1:19:07
SPEAKER_00: you cannot ever use it on a lethal mission,
1:19:09
SPEAKER_00: they have told us,
1:19:10
SPEAKER_00: then we will not buy your drones.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_00: They view their mission is to kill people, just to put it very bluntly.
1:19:17
I want to engage because I think we can bend the arc of their
1:19:20
thinking where it's
1:19:21
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:19:21
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:19:22
we will never go build drones for the purpose of like just
1:19:24
killing people.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of people doing that, including Andrel.
1:19:27
And by the way,
1:19:28
thank goodness for Andrel and America because war is back.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_00: In my 2019 book, I started by saying, I think we're at the end of war.
1:19:36
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I don't get it all right.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_00: I was dead wrong.
1:19:38
SPEAKER_00: And thank goodness we have this new breed of tech company.
1:19:43
SPEAKER_00: And to the degree we need high lethality, we have them.
1:19:46
Where I think we can make a difference is we will build like
1:19:50
part of the reason
1:19:50
SPEAKER_00: we're designing this drone with this system for firing projectiles.
1:19:55
SPEAKER_00: We can go full autonomous AI.
1:19:56
We don't need human approval because if we accidentally shoot
1:19:59
somebody with it,
1:20:00
no big deal.
1:20:00
SPEAKER_00: You just got hit in the face with a web.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, it's like spider, take it off, throw it away.
1:20:04
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:20:05
SPEAKER_00: and,
1:20:06
but now like I was in Kyiv when they sent hundreds of drones
1:20:10
into town and the air
1:20:10
SPEAKER_00: raid sound was going off.
1:20:13
SPEAKER_00: We wanna help in that case as well.
1:20:15
Now there,
1:20:15
we probably need to build something that's a little bit more
1:20:18
kinetic.
1:20:19
And we have not yet decided,
1:20:21
actually in a few weeks after my board meeting,
1:20:22
we'll come back.
1:20:24
But I stood in front of the company six months ago and I
1:20:26
started this conversation.
1:20:28
SPEAKER_00: I said, look, I wanna hear your feedback.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_00: How do you guys feel about this?
1:20:32
I feel like if we engage,
1:20:34
the world will be better than if we don't engage.
1:20:37
SPEAKER_00: But we're dealing, so as of today,
1:20:41
We certainly won't make lethal weapons and we have avoided
1:20:45
doing things where our
1:20:45
SPEAKER_00: weapons could be used for lethal purpose,
1:20:47
SPEAKER_00: but we're struggling with what's happening in the world.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_00: To figure out the future.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_01: And where do you make them?
1:20:52
SPEAKER_00: So we have a global supply chain.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_00: We make all the taser weapons right here in Scottsdale,
1:20:55
SPEAKER_00: Arizona today,
1:20:56
SPEAKER_00: although we're getting ready to spin up,
1:20:59
SPEAKER_00: given the world tariff situation.
1:21:01
SPEAKER_00: And frankly,
1:21:01
a lot of our European customers are feeling uneasy about
1:21:04
relying entirely on a US
1:21:05
SPEAKER_00: supply chain.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_00: So we're starting to spin up in the EU.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_00: We'll have a new manufacturing.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_00: Our drones are currently made in Europe.
1:21:12
SPEAKER_00: Our drone team is in Belgium, we acquired.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_00: D-Drone, we make that in Germany.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow, okay.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_00: We have a vision team in Finland.
1:21:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes I have to pinch myself.
1:21:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm like sitting atop this big organization with offices in,
1:21:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:26
SPEAKER_00: London and,
1:21:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:28
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:21:28
SPEAKER_00: 12 different cities worldwide.
1:21:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_01: And, okay, all right.
1:21:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, fascinating.
1:21:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I...
1:21:35
SPEAKER_01: going into this knew you guys as the taser and the body cam company.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_01: And then when I was on the website and I got into the drone stuff,
1:21:44
SPEAKER_01: I would urge people to go to the Axon website and have a peek around.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_01: You guys have some cool, cool ideas.
1:21:48
And,
1:21:49
and,
1:21:49
um,
1:21:51
you know,
1:21:51
I think this was technology that I didn't realize.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to phrase this.
1:21:58
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it felt...
1:21:59
SPEAKER_01: The Taser stuff,
1:22:00
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
1:22:01
SPEAKER_01: in my head,
1:22:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:22:02
SPEAKER_01: it just felt like,
1:22:03
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:22:03
SPEAKER_01: this is kind of a solved problem.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how far that was going.
1:22:05
The body cam stuff,
1:22:08
I assumed would be kind of cool just because of where we're
1:22:11
heading with...
1:22:12
SPEAKER_01: computer vision all the time and, and how good cameras are getting.
1:22:15
SPEAKER_01: But then I really had no idea of the breadth of products you guys make.
1:22:19
And then clearly there's,
1:22:21
there's these future avenues for where you're,
1:22:24
you're heading.
1:22:24
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it was, it was, uh, it was really eyeopening.
1:22:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, we have one major area of controversy, so let's open it up.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's get it.
1:22:33
SPEAKER_00: Surveillance.
1:22:34
SPEAKER_00: We run a million body cameras.
1:22:37
We also have a company we acquired called Fusus that allows you
1:22:40
to take any camera
1:22:41
SPEAKER_00: from a school or business and share it to the police.
1:22:44
Now look,
1:22:44
most schools will tell you,
1:22:46
I don't want the police watching my kids all day.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, great, the police don't have time to watch it either.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_00: But if there's an active shooter,
1:22:52
you want them to be able to see your cameras and they wanna see
1:22:54
your cameras.
1:22:55
And so we've built a system that allows anybody who has cameras
1:22:59
to integrate back to police.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we earlier this year announced a partnership with Ring
1:23:03
SPEAKER_00: the doorbell cam company, where homeowners can choose.
1:23:09
SPEAKER_00: They can't share real-time video,
1:23:10
but if there's like a carjacking or something terrible in your
1:23:13
neighborhood,
1:23:13
SPEAKER_00: the police,
1:23:14
SPEAKER_00: you can opt in to say,
1:23:15
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:23:15
SPEAKER_00: the police can send out and say,
1:23:16
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:23:16
SPEAKER_00: does anybody have video that might help with our investigation?
1:23:19
So the reason I'm bringing this up is there's a lot of concern
1:23:22
about surveillance
1:23:23
SPEAKER_00: and people tend to have these very polarized positions.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_00: My view is this, we can't go back to 1950.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_00: There's cameras everywhere.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we need to say,
1:23:33
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:23:33
then let's just become China and we're gonna track everybody
1:23:35
everywhere they go.
1:23:36
So I think we'd love this sort of thing and it's gonna be
1:23:40
controversial and I'm
1:23:40
gonna be hit and name your tech magazine is gonna have negative
1:23:44
hit pieces on us as
1:23:45
SPEAKER_00: we extend what they're gonna call a surveillance network.
1:23:48
SPEAKER_00: And what I would say is like,
1:23:49
SPEAKER_00: I think we can all agree,
1:23:50
SPEAKER_00: like if somebody collapses on the ground in front of a camera,
1:23:52
SPEAKER_00: or there's a violent attack happening in front of a camera,
1:23:55
SPEAKER_00: or there's a car crash in front of a camera,
1:23:56
SPEAKER_00: we can come up with a bunch of things we all agree on.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_00: They're like, you know what?
1:23:59
We want that camera to notify the police and open a live stream
1:24:01
of video or the fire department.
1:24:03
SPEAKER_00: I was talking with Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring just recently.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, you know what?
1:24:09
SPEAKER_00: We at Ring had...
1:24:13
hundreds of thousands of cameras we had all the data we could
1:24:16
have been sharing it
1:24:17
with police and fire and done a much better job of helping them
1:24:20
track those fires
1:24:21
early on yeah that kind of data sharing is not yet possible we
1:24:25
are collaborating
1:24:26
with ring and others to begin to make that possible and our
1:24:28
guiding principle is we
1:24:30
want to help identify bad situations people that need help the
1:24:33
things we can all
1:24:33
agree should be shared there's a set of things we all would
1:24:37
agree we don't want
1:24:37
SPEAKER_00: shared like what
1:24:39
SPEAKER_00: what bar you go to,
1:24:41
SPEAKER_00: what route political rally you go to,
1:24:43
SPEAKER_00: what medical facility you go to,
1:24:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:24:45
SPEAKER_00: who's in your car in the middle of the day when you go past a red light,
1:24:48
SPEAKER_00: like what,
1:24:49
SPEAKER_00: Great, yeah, we don't need to get into people's private lives.
1:24:52
SPEAKER_00: And then there's gonna be some murky stuff in the middle.
1:24:54
We're gonna have to like do some real careful thinking about
1:24:57
those edge cases.
1:24:58
SPEAKER_00: But that's the kind of thing that excites me.
1:25:00
SPEAKER_00: It's like, wow, this is a fun, interesting project.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has to solve this.
1:25:04
We can't sit here where the Palisades burned down because those
1:25:06
camera feeds were
1:25:08
SPEAKER_00: just locked away in an unusable state.
1:25:11
SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
1:25:12
that will be the next big controversy is as we aggregate all
1:25:15
these cameras
1:25:16
SPEAKER_00: together,
1:25:16
SPEAKER_00: we want to do it in a way that supports democracy and Western.
1:25:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't like the idea of Western values.
1:25:21
SPEAKER_00: I would actually say civilizational values.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh, cause I think this whole West versus East thing is, is, is bullshit.
1:25:27
SPEAKER_00: Like,
1:25:27
SPEAKER_00: like Japan is probably the world's leaning democratic,
1:25:30
SPEAKER_00: but they're not Western,
1:25:31
SPEAKER_00: they're Eastern.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_00: I,
1:25:32
I view what's happening right now is there's a war between sort
1:25:34
of civilization and
1:25:36
SPEAKER_00: brutality,
1:25:36
SPEAKER_00: what's happening in Russia and what's happening in the middle East,
1:25:40
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:25:41
SPEAKER_00: And when we think about preserving democracy and advancing civilization,
1:25:47
SPEAKER_00: I want to build the world of Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_01: Do you say which way you lean politically?
1:25:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually really transparent.
1:25:54
SPEAKER_00: In presidential elections, my voting record is exactly 50-50.
1:25:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's actually 40-40, 45-45-10, roughly.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_00: I voted independent twice, and then I'm equally split.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_00: So I am the ultimate swing voter,
1:26:09
and I am deeply disturbed by the level of hyper-partisanship
1:26:13
and the lack of
1:26:13
SPEAKER_00: productive debate.
1:26:16
I think,
1:26:17
you know,
1:26:17
with democracy,
1:26:18
you need to have,
1:26:19
you need to be able to disagree agreeably.
1:26:21
SPEAKER_00: And I don't like all the polarization.
1:26:23
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a flaming moderate.
1:26:25
SPEAKER_01: Which years did you choose to go independent?
1:26:27
SPEAKER_00: That I'm not going to answer.
1:26:30
SPEAKER_00: That gets into a little too much detail.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, on the camera stuff, yeah.
1:26:35
SPEAKER_00: One of them was Ross Perot.
1:26:36
SPEAKER_00: I'll share that.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_00: I had a feeling.
1:26:38
SPEAKER_01: I was going to guess.
1:26:40
SPEAKER_01: I never know how I feel on the camera part of the stuff.
1:26:43
SPEAKER_01: I always feel...
1:26:47
Sort of seems inevitable,
1:26:49
and for all the reasons that you outlined,
1:26:52
you want this data.
1:26:55
SPEAKER_01: I like to think,
1:26:56
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:26:56
SPEAKER_01: the Americans would handle this maybe better than the Europeans,
1:27:00
with some of the stuff that goes on in England freaks me out
1:27:02
with all the CCTVs and
1:27:04
SPEAKER_01: everything.
1:27:05
SPEAKER_01: And then,
1:27:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:27:06
I guess Peter Thiel used to always make this argument to me
1:27:10
about Palantir,
1:27:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:27:11
SPEAKER_01: because Palantir was scaring everybody,
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: and he's like,
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: well,
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: look,
1:27:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:27:14
SPEAKER_01: you...
1:27:15
SPEAKER_01: you want the data,
1:27:16
and then you just want to put really great controls around it
1:27:18
so it's not getting
1:27:19
SPEAKER_01: abused.
1:27:20
SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know,
1:27:22
this is going to happen and it's better for you to have some
1:27:25
record of who's
1:27:26
SPEAKER_01: accessing what and to have these,
1:27:27
to have controls around who can get to what instead of the
1:27:30
system today where it's
1:27:31
SPEAKER_01: just a free for all and,
1:27:33
SPEAKER_01: and people in their own government are looking at stuff,
1:27:35
SPEAKER_01: you know?
1:27:36
SPEAKER_01: So,
1:27:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:27:36
SPEAKER_01: this is kind of the argument of like,
1:27:37
SPEAKER_01: okay,
1:27:38
SPEAKER_01: we have the data,
1:27:38
SPEAKER_01: but like,
1:27:39
SPEAKER_01: let's set up a nice structure around it for the,
1:27:42
SPEAKER_01: for the cameras and everything.
1:27:43
SPEAKER_01: So, but I don't know.
1:27:45
SPEAKER_00: It's hard stuff, man.
1:27:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like, and you're never going to be able to make everybody happy.
1:27:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I,
1:27:51
SPEAKER_00: In this case, as we look at it, we generally don't take this position.
1:27:55
I'm not saying that Peter Schielder,
1:27:56
I agree with the stuff you just said there.
1:27:59
There are some folks that might say,
1:28:00
well,
1:28:00
somebody's going to do it,
1:28:01
might as well be us.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_00: We tend to take the position of like,
1:28:04
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:28:04
SPEAKER_00: if we're going to do it,
1:28:06
it should only be because we think we will do it in a way
1:28:08
that's different in a
1:28:09
SPEAKER_00: positive way.
1:28:11
SPEAKER_00: If it's like,
1:28:12
SPEAKER_00: we're not going to go do stuff like,
1:28:13
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:28:13
SPEAKER_00: somebody's going to make a buck doing this,
1:28:15
SPEAKER_00: might as well be us.
1:28:17
SPEAKER_00: Life's too short for that.
1:28:18
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:28:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, Rick Smith, thank you so much for coming in.
1:28:21
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to talk to you ever since Glenn told me I should.
1:28:26
SPEAKER_01: And it was great.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
1:28:28
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
1:28:29
SPEAKER_00: It's been a great interview.
1:28:30
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:28:30
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:28:31
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
1:28:36
core memory podcast is hosted by me ashley vance it is produced
1:28:41
by david nicholson
1:28:43
and me our theme song is by james mercer and john sortland and
1:28:49
the show is edited
1:28:52
SPEAKER_01: by the john sortland
1:28:55
SPEAKER_01: Thanks as always to Brex and E1 Ventures for making this possible.
1:29:01
Please visit our Substack YouTube and podcast channels to get
1:29:06
more of what Core Memory makes.
1:29:08
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, y'all.