Axon's Ethics Board Resigned Over Taser-Armed Drones. Then the Company Bought a Military Drone Maker

This article was copublished with The Markup, a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that challenges technology to serve the public good. Less than 10 days after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022, Axon Enterprises CEO Rick Smith announced the company had formally started developing Taser-equipped drones. The technology, Smith argued, could potentially save lives during mass shootings by incapacitating active shooters within seconds. For Axon, which changed its name from Taser in 2017, the concept seemed a sensible next step for stakeholders who share Axon's public safety mission, Smith said on the company's site. "In brief," he wrote, "non-lethal drones can be installed in schools and other venues and play the same role that sprinklers and other fire suppression tools do for firefighters: Preventing a catastrophic event, or at least mitigating its worst effects."