Stopping Police Shootings with Revolutionary Tech w/ Rick Smith | EP #43

26:59Or look, if you make a mistake, we can all criticize these officers. Like I don't know if you remember there was an officer in Columbus, Ohio last year, who shot and killed a man who was in bed, turns out the guy who was in bed had a bait pen, not again. But if you go back and look it from the moment that officer opened the door until the shooting happened, it was less than a second. And so, you know, while we all can look at what a terrible outcome, you know, we all know what happens if you human brain. When you're afraid and you're surging with adrenaline and your cognitive functions are not fully there.

27:36You're fighting your own fight or flight response. And that's where I think we'll be able to make the biggest difference where it's like, you know what, if God forbid you made a mistake, you can take it back. So let's go back to the moment of your of your moonshot. We've talked about when the, you know, did you, let me back up a second. Did you have what we now in our parlance called a massive transformative purpose back when you started this company? And I wanted to transition to the moon to the moment where you came up with this moonshot. It was less well developed. I mean, I think our idea has always been to create an alternative to firearms for self -defense.

28:15And I think we went after the consumer market first, and then we learned, oh, we've got a lot of work to do. And even as we see here today, the taser, even as it's used by police, they actually don't use it to defend themselves. They will use a taser weapon to capture somebody who's exhibiting signs of resistance. But if an officer's actually defending themselves from an attack, they'll typically go to their gun. That is the Rubicon that we believe we are in the process of crossing right now with our New Taser 10, which is a massively multi -shot, 10 -shot magazine reloading system. And so it's taken us 30 years to get to this point where we're about at parity.

28:52And over the next few years, we need to sort of leapfrog over the effectiveness of the gun. So where were you when you came up with this moonshot idea? I'm saying that's, you know, and a moonshot, you know, is a very clear objective goal within a certain time frame that you know when you hit it and the world knows when you hit it. And your moonshot, as you've described it, cutting gun -related deaths in police and public activities in 10 years, very clear. It's a beautiful moonshot. I love it. Well, I would tell you, it actually is a result, direct result, Peter, if attending a Venice 360 and working with you.

29:31So we had a general concept of what we wanted to do. And then over time, when I would go to your conference So, or other tech conferences, right? You take inspiration about what's possible. And in particular, the work you've done around moonshots and the specificity, it forced another level of thinking. So I would say the first thing happened around 2018 or so, I began using an internal moonshot with our engineers and our team internally, where I started saying, look, our moonshot is to outperform the pistol, not to sell the next generation taser. We don't want to get stuck in this incrementalist loop where the iPhone 14 is a little better than the iPhone 13.

30:14We have got it, we're not competing with ourselves, we've got a stretch and take some risk. And then really that became to then externalize, okay, how are we going to measure that when we have performed again? Like what's the measurable goal? And then what's something that's very internally focused, I can use to push my engineers, but is there something that's more inclusive that we could use to create a kind of an industry partnership with our customers? and that's where we shifted to this results orientation of, okay, if we're really meeting this performance level, we should begin to see shootings come down.

30:45And then you start digging in, okay, let's go, let's go read 500 new support incidents and categorize which of those we think we could have intervened in. And that's where we get to between 40 and 70 percent. To get to 70 percent, we need drones and robotics in addition to handheld weapons. but it was that process of just trying to keep crystallizing it down in a part of it too is we originally were going to talk about just cutting police shootings in half but then we had discussions with police unions and others who would say hey wait a minute I'm worried you're going to encourage cops to put their lives at risk so if you cut police shootings but you get a lot more cops killed that's not success and so that's where we then broadened it to say okay we're going to add up the sum total of everybody who had shot and killed at police incidents including the cops And that is sort of, that's when we hit this resonance where we had police unions and civil rights advocates all agreeing, hey, this, this is a good goal that's kind of inclusive of all stakeholders.

31:43And it is, for those who have ever used a taser or who own guns, let's take this jump in the technology because the taser 10 is a state of the art, a unique piece of tech. I had a chance to actually try it out and use it at your recent summit and it's amazing and you know with little to no training was able to hit my targets and felt good about it. So, Divein described this device to us, describe what it looks like, how it works. I give people excited about the alternative. Yeah, so first let's go back to the first principle. What we need to do, the goal of this device is to temporarily impair your nervous system.

32:27So, every other weapon in history has been about causing injury to someone, whether it's a stick or your fist or a bullet or a spear, you're physically damaging their body to stop them. The tip of that means either you've stopped them because you've broken such big bones, they can't continue or cause so much pain or ultimately they've just died. The difference here is... Or they've let it, they've let it death, yeah. Yeah. So, the difference here is we're going after your command and control system. So the human body uses these networks of nerves that are all electrically connected and those electric signals control muscle movement.

33:01And so we design a system to tap into that and to do it, we basically have to get two electrodes connected to your body, spread about 12 inches apart. And the reason we need that spread is that the size of the electric field we create in your body is sort of a square function of the distance. Think of it like the area of the circle, if you were to put these two probes kind of on the perimeter of a circle. And that surface area picks up more nerve tissue. And once we get a critical mass of that, you get this electric storm going through your body. The muscles are locking up, and that means you can't use them in that case.

33:38Now to do that, so we've got to get two darts onto the target with a fine filament. It comes back to the wires, back to the hathil unit, and we then transfer power through that circle. The new Taser 10, what's big and different is we've gone from two shots up to 10. And so now you've got 10 total darts, each with its own wire attached. And then we've got a bunch of intelligence inside the weapon. So you don't have to think about it. It will select which darts are furthest apart in three dimensional space. And it will deliver electric charge across those longest connections. But if anyone's ever fired again, it's actually very similar.

34:14So we've copied a lot of user interface because firearms are shaped the way they are for very good reasons. You know, over hundreds of years, we've really refined like what fits in the human hand in a way that's very intuitive to operate. And so we've got a safety operator through film, a trigger operator with your trigger finger. We make them bright yellow so you won't confuse it with a gun. But they just have to point, and basically pick two locations, get two guards on target. And again, if they're 12 inches apart and we got you. There's a laser sighting. And how far does the electric wire reel out?

34:46It'll go out to 45 feet. What's interesting for me was once you've hit the target and if the target is partially disabled, the person you're aiming at, you can send another bolt of current down the wires, right? You can hit them without actually having to fire again. You can send a charge down the wires again. You can reenergize by just tapping the safety switch. And that feels like the ability to make sure that you're able to have control of the situation and be safe. Yeah, long term, you know, I mentioned so 45 feet is as far as you can go with the handheld device. And we think that's approaching a limit.

35:32We might be able to get to 50 or 60 feet. But beyond that, in a bad way, a lot of people also say, oh, when are you going to get rid of the wires? For a bunch of technical reasons, I mean the wireless transmission of energy over long distances is a very hard physics problem so there's not a really clear answer. But the wires work great. When we want to go beyond 40 or 50 feet, the best way to do it is actually just have a small power supply, take the whole taser system and then mount it on a small drone. And now we can go not only 100 feet, I can go a mile. In fact, I can begin to remove the human operator from harm's way.

36:08So over the next 10 years, we'll start to see. My personal belief is we need to change the way we think about violence. Like violence is just bad. We shouldn't celebrate it. We still sort of think of this like, today, the technology in the world is if a gunman shows up, somewhere it's sort of a mass shooter event. The only way we stop them is we send in more people with more guns and they have a gun fight. I think we need to get out of this mindset that it's not like this medieval battle between good and evil. It's like people that are committing violence are doing the bad thing. And if we can get to a point where we have technology that can safely come in and subdue them without requiring our sons and daughters in uniform, another person put themselves in risk.

36:52I think we get a fundamental shift in how we think about this to where violence is just less interesting even for people to think about doing it in the first place. You know, another part we talk a lot about exponential technologies on this program. And one of the areas that I used before going up and using the Taser 10 was I trained in VR. How much is VR playing a world and are you bringing AR augmented reality into the axon world as well? Yeah, so we're very focused on VR right now. And part of the reason is, if I take a step back, police are very comfortable with their guns and they have a very intimate relationship with their guns.

37:38And part of that's because the risk of the job rate, and this is the ultimate thing that stands between me and potential death, I have to be very familiar with it, but there's also very practical basis, they train with their guns a lot. And it's fun, like you'll go to the range with your buddy and you'll compete in terms of speed and score. So up until now, training with a taser is frankly been kind of boring. They're about $30 a shock, so they're very expensive to train lift. And so you can't go get that volume. Well in VR, suddenly now we can train endlessly with unlimited numbers of shots and we can use visual feedback mechanisms.

38:19So like when I tell you you need a 12 inch spread, if you're firing at a target other than the instructor telling you, oh, yeah, you need your darts for their park, in VR we can animate that. So if you get the two darts too close together, you see this wimpy little effect that obviously doesn't happen in the real world, but in video games we're used to these sort of visual feedback and makes it very intuitive as you start to realize, okay, I now kind of understand on the intuitive level how far apart I've got to get my darts to get that big glowing effect that really fascites the target. So VR just gives us a creative canvas to be able to do superhuman levels of training with feedback mechanisms that are impossible in the real world.

39:02And we think that is going to be a big part where we need to get officers as comfortable using their tasers they are with their gun and build all the right skills through high repetition. How many times you've been shot? Eight. Eight times by this. Does it get easier? No. No. It's one of my least favorite parts of the job. It's a very odd sensation. It's more, it's, it's frankly a little more scary than painful, just because you lose control of parts of your body or seizing up and There's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Yeah, I tried to volunteer at once at singularity university to To take it, but usually you said no Probably smart Did people tell you were crazy to go after this moonshot?

39:47Oh, man Yeah, yeah, I actually We recently found a video from a couple of my friends who came out in the spring of 1994 when we were first starting the company. Mercelously making fun of me for this whole idea. They left this was crazy. The moonshot, you know, in its current iteration is we've crystallized it down. We actually haven't had too much skepticism there because we've already built a lot of credibility with the taser, but I would say the early taser, everybody thought I'd lost my mind. Everybody, let me take a quick break from my episode to talk about something important for your diet.

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41:50And enter the code Peter20 at checkout. That's houseofmacadamias .com slash Peter20. And then again use the code Peter20 to get that 20 % off. Trust me, you'll love them as much as I do. Now back to our episode. You know, one of the things I'd love is is let's crystallize some of the the learnings you had on building this extraordinary company as an entrepreneur and getting to this moonshot. I mean, financing was never easy and this you had financing principally from family and friends, right? This is the most traditional early stage. Did you end up taking outside capital before taking the company public.

42:34Oh man, we tried. So my dad made his money out in Silicon Valley in the 80s. And so he had raised money from venture capitalists. So he was pretty well connected. But nobody, my dad's friend Bruce Culver in my father, the only two people who put money into this. The first outside dollar we raised was in the IPO. Wow. We got a nose from every VC. We talked to private investment banks. We talked to probably I'd say I'll told maybe three to 500 people we pitched over the first seven years and not. I think a familiar story. You know, and I think it's really important for folks to for entrepreneurs to hear that because a lot of folks get demoralized when they can't raise capital from the outside world.

43:25And if you believe in yourself enough and you believe in your technology enough and you're willing to go and go and go. It's a digital outcome. And sometimes you don't win, but you knew in your heart that there was a there there, yes. We did. I mean, look, there were dark days. There was about a year where I had lost hope, but we're still struggling through. But you're absolutely right. Raising money is so disheartening, because you assume that these people are smarter than you, right? They're managing money. They've seen all these investments and we've added zero and it's still worked out for us.

44:07So sometimes you just got to have faith. Amazing. Other lessons. What about your partners and finding those individuals that stuck with you? Any lessons around that? You know, one thing I would say that if I could go back to my, myself 30 years ago and give one piece of advice, it would really be focused rigorously on attracting the best people you can. And what I mean by the best people, smart, independent thinking early on, I'd say I was a bit too egotistical. I kind of felt like, well, you know, I'm the company founder. I've got to solve all the interesting problems. I just need to hire people who will do the work and I was a chronic micromanager I got really burned out You know even after we finally made it you know successful and it wasn't till about Probably 15 16 years in somebody having watched that famous Netflix Talk on you know we're building a pro sports team not a family about how to think about.

45:17Because I was thought of hiring, he's like, oh God, it's something I've just gotta do. I hate doing it. It's like an administrative task. I'm gonna go solve interesting technical problems. But then we really made a hard pivot to really focusing on not just hiring nice people, but really kick ass people that are legitimately smarter than you at the thing you're hiring them for. And everybody says that, but a lot of people don't believe it. that was pretty transformative to where the now the company scales and we, you know, we hire slow, we fire fast. If we find people who are not a culture fit, we move now quickly and spend a lot of time trying to get the team right because if you get the team right, everything else takes care of itself.

46:03Yeah, I just want to put an exclamation point on the fire fast. You know, you're a super a nice guy and I've known you for a while now and I think probably want people to do well and there's a desire to help someone see what they're doing wrong or to help coach them. But my experience is if it's not a fit and in the back of your mind if you're starting to think this person isn't working out and isn't likely to succeed, some of the kind of thing you can do is move them out to where they can find something that works for them. It's really hard. Any more thoughts on that? No, I couldn't agree more.

46:43Now, to be honest, I do struggle with this today. So, actually, today we're at a scale where I'm not very involved in hiring. They use me as a cheerleader. I've learned I'm a better cheerleader than a head coach. Like, you know, I give people excited about the mission. I struggle, you know, giving people hard feedback. But I've learned you at least, I'm self -aware. And I've got a chief operating officer who's really good. He's a fantastic head coach and a hard ass. Yeah, it's kind of a hard ass. And you can meet that. And it actually works well for the company that we've separated those functions.

47:16It gives a little bit of a separation for me and my brand within the company from the inevitable negative feedback that does need to happen. But I would just say in my entire career, I've never regretted firing somebody too fast. Yes, I would say many times you were like waiting too long. Never regretted doing it too fast. And every one of those people landed on their feet. The thing that used to kill me was I don't like that feeling of all these guys got kids in a family and, you know, I'm going to ruin her life if we fire like, that's not true. Everybody ends up playing on their feet somewhere else and they're usually happier.

47:54They know it and you know it and they're wondering when it's going to happen and it starts to degrade rapidly. How what other lessons as an extraordinary moonshot entrepreneur would you put out there? Was there, when you were looking for this moonshot of reducing it by 50%, did you have other moonshots in mind or did that one sort of just feel right in the sweet spot? This one, I mean, tuning the numbers, you know, is a process, but the cutting gun -related deaths was a very natural extension of what we've always been doing. So for us, it's been, I think, just sort of taking what's fuzzy and just adding focus and clarity and continuing to add more focus and clarity to our mission.

48:42So let's head towards Mars or perhaps out of the solar system. Where is this technology going eventually? I mean, what do you dream about? What's sort of like the crazy ideas that you have for axon beyond the taser 10? Yeah, so I wrote a book in 2019 called The End of Killing. And it basically is this, it's a manifesto that says, look, we should not accept that killing people is okay. Now that's not to say you're never gonna need a sicko or a serial killer, but like the government should not be killing its people. Now, we have to today because we don't have Captain Kirk's phaser. We have this technology limitation.

49:23But to me, that is an animating concept that, and look, before this craziness that's happening in Ukraine right now, I thought we were at the end of industrialized warfare. Now, the optimist in me hopes that maybe that's true. If this ends very badly from Mr. Putin and sends a very strong message that this is not a successful strategy to engage in, you know, war is a war of choice. But I've been a little bit shaken there. But I would even say, even there, if we thought about things a little bit differently, we could have built today, we could have had a technology, if we'd invested in it five or six years ago, where we could have shipped Ukraine containers of drones, right?

50:07And when the Russians came across the border, you could have released those drones fully autonomous. Now, by the systems and I agree we shouldn't build robots that can kill people but we could have built drones that could recognize tanks our artillery pieces trucks and with fairly basic Machine vision processing would fly up autonomously They you send them into area coverage and then if it's a tank they take out the turret they'd you know drop a thermite Package on the barrel take out the tread to the engines and avoid the human compartments You can imagine if we could have ended this and had 150 ,000 Russians walking home because we destroyed their equipment.

50:48But again, it's sort of not how we think. We tend to think of, oh no, wars are like about killing people. No, they're not. They're about how do you degrade the enemy's capability to do what they want to do. So, you know, I'm interested in, we're starting to approach more aggressively the military about what sorts of non -killing technologies would augment. And I don't think we can ever turn our military into, you know, flower children that don't have lethal capability. But I think the most effective military is one that can over match your adversary. So well, you don't even have to kill them. You can just wipe out their capabilities and do it in the most moral high ground way, which is not killing a much 18 to 25 year old kids.

51:31Yeah, kids is the right, you know, a descriptor for someone in the military at age 18, 19, 20. Well, and I think about like all those, I mean, they're doing some awful things, but I find it's more helpful not to vilify individuals, but try to understand like how systems get you there. Like, how do you end up with 150 ,000 of these young Russian kids, you know, doing the awful things they're doing in Ukraine? There's most of them didn't end up wanting to be there and the experience of like what Putin's doing to his own people, I think is every bit as horrific as what he's doing to the Ukrainians.

52:12And so I find that just as a helpful way to get out of this mindset of like, oh there's some people that just need killing. I think humanity can kind of rise above that level of thinking. It's almost like again this tarot universe having deflector shields To to keep you safe Let's go back to the home here because unfortunately good violence and how in the home and And accidental deaths in the home is a significant I don't have the numbers off hand I don't know if you do but it's it's it's extraordinarily sad. I mean, what's your message for parents at home right now? Well, I would say stay tuned.

52:55We're very focused. We do have consumer taser products, and they're a good choice for many people today. But in another five to ten years, I think we'll have some amazing products. Let me take a look where I think the end state is. And I'll start with a story. My wife called me. She was at a, I was at a board meeting out of town. And my phone lights up, And she sends me a text message, there's somebody in the house. So, oh my God, so I stepped out and I call my wife and I said, hey, have you called 911? She says, no, no, no, I've got the taser, I'm going downstairs, I'm sweeping, I'm not, no, no, no, maybe, like, stop calling 911.

53:31And so, I'm imagining this. So today, if you want to protect yourself or your family or loved one, you, most people would buy a gun or they might buy a taser. But what if, so in that moment, my wife had to become like a hero, right? The operating the weapon system operator to protect the family and the house. What if instead she could hit a button, a panic button, and five micro drones are released around the house and over the air, maybe through your Alexa system. Hello, Mrs. Smith, this is Captain Johnson, retired US Air Force. I've got a drone in front of each of the kids bedrooms. I've got one sweeping the property outside.

54:13I'm on the police dispatch there on the way. I think like a personal concierge with a professional weapon system operator. Well now I would have more confidence, okay, my wife's not gonna have to try to figure this out while she's freaking out and afraid. But more importantly, if I have a suicidal teenager who breaks into the box and gets the drone or you go a curious child, you go down the list of all the parade of forables that can happen when you do put a weapon in your house. None of those things can happen. Now there's new risks, like you want to make sure you can't have bad actors who could hack into that system.

54:47So you're gonna want to have very tight system control. So there's some local physicality that has to happen that's got the right levels of controls. But I think that's where we end up in another 10 or 20 years, where it's not even a human that is protecting you. We've just, if we do our job rate, we make violence boring. It's no longer worthy of a movie plot because when violent things happen, it's so overwhelming, we bad and suppressed quickly, that it's just not that interesting anymore. And then the other pandemic we're having is that of school violence, right? I mean, it's insane what we've seen in the last few years.

55:20What's your vision for that? I mean, that was a subject we were talking about at X -Prize at a visionary years ago is how do you protect our schools or places of worship without making them lockdown zones? Well, that's one where, so last summer, I actually did a public announcement on doing a school safety, taser drone. And look, it got a ton of negative blowback in the Twitter sphere. And most of the time it was like, why is that? It was very emotional. And I think what it was, the real criticism was largely from people who don't trust police. And the theme of the feedback was, cops are just going to use this on protesters.

55:59And it wouldn't be used to protect children. Now, I don't believe that to be true. and I actually believe you could build the right systems of controls to reduce the abuse of things. But that was, we had not done our homework. That was just an idea I wanted to put out. Because like you, I like all of us. I get tired of saying, and then, you know, Marjorie, whatever the high school in Florida, right? It's just a key happening. Long term, I think there will be a technology element. I'm not sure exactly how it's going to work. But we, in minimum, we need to give the police better tools to be able to go in rapidly and I think, you know, without sending cops bristling with lethal weapons into the building to have to bring somebody down.

56:43I mean, for me, it seems like the taser and its offshoots are the logical extrapolation. Is there another kind of technology that goes beyond that besides just electrical current and hitting your command of control? Yeah, so if you want to bring somebody under control without causing injury or death, I think you fundamentally have to go after command and control or physical restraint. So we either have to build like a robot that can run up and sort of physically restrain you pretty quickly or take down command and control. In the due command and control, there's two ways you can do it, electrically or chemically.

57:22Chemical inhibition is hard. You can do it with inhalants, nerve gases, one for example, but it becomes like a lethal. But you can't control it. Yeah, where it goes. Yeah, but the Russians tried the remember back to the the theater Attack many years ago they used it and in Hamlet that was An anesthetic, but the dose control was difficult like a lot of people died of overdoses, etc So I'm a pretty big fan of electricity is the primary immediate Impact but then you could have a layer defense as well where you might hit some of your electricity put him down and then dose them with You know the tranquilizer so interesting right because the tranquilizers take time and you don't know what the doses depending on the person's weight and, you know, frankly, what they're jacked up on in terms of drugs.

58:05But if you can immobilize them with electricity and then dose them so it's a long term, when you get hit by a taser and it knocks, literally knocks you off your feet, how long are you out for typically? Or how long are you disabled for? So the effect is kind of like a light switch. So like right now, I'm contracting the muscle when I stop, it's back to normal. So while the taser current is flowing, you're having these severe contractions until the moment it stops. And so this is actually a public misconception because a lot of times you'll hear, you know, people say, oh, the police used a taser four times on somebody.

58:42And the implication is that it was excessive or egregious. Well, in most of those cases, the taser runs for five seconds every time it's discharge. That's a very short window to get handcuffs on somebody. Now, many people will comply after they've been hit, but okay, I don't want any more of that. But especially if you have somebody who's high on PCP or met that, that means the ones that really Put you into a psychotic rage those folks do not react to the pain and those are the ones who typically might take 3 4 5 5 second burst till they can get the handcuffs on amazing, so We're gonna be seeing a new generation of humanoid robots, right?

59:19We're seeing optimists from or test labot We're seeing figure. We're seeing a number of those. Do you? I mean, a lot of the Robocop movies of the past portray robotic AI driven. And Axon is in not just the taser business, you also make body cameras. Can you talk a little about sort of where the technologies are beyond just the taser and where you think they might be going? Yeah, so we started the body camera space largely to help reduce concern about police abuse with tasers or any use of course. But I figured, okay, let's record what's happening. And then once we started going down the pathway of body cameras, we had to build a software business, like how do you handle all that data?

1:00:08That's a fairly challenging problem. So today we run one of the largest data sets in the world on Microsoft Azure. We're hundreds of petabytes of police videos. And then we do in -car cameras and we part of the branch of the different drone providers. And we're very interested in what's happening in robotics. I think there will be a big role for robotics. I also think that, look, we're going to need some good rules of the road. Like, I personally don't think we would want at least any time soon to delegate the decision to use force on a human. Should not be made by an algorithm. That should be made by a human operator who's taking legal moral responsibility for that decision.

1:00:45But that's fairly straightforward, those sorts of controls. The benefits of being able to stop somebody without requiring another human being put themselves immediately at risk has a whole bunch of benefits. So I would be in another 20 to 30 years. I think the majority of the policing function will not, the most dangerous stuff is going to be robotics. So we're not going to be sending people through the door with guns to deal with threats anymore. And I remember the way we got over the idea of humans being out of the loop in the elevator or in the trolley car or other things, it was a slow and gradual process.

1:01:31Do you think the public's ready for robots taking action? We've seen all kinds of movies about this. But you're in the front line of this. I mean, you get both the thank you so much for saving lives and people I'm sure being critical. How far are we from seeing robots and drones in the public sector, the public legal sector, you think? So, interestingly, last summer after we had the whole debate about the taser drones in schools, We went out and we started doing some public sentiment analysis and what we found is 70 % of the American public is supportive of the idea of using drones or robots to stop mass shooter events.

1:02:19That would be. Now the most people are much more rational. Like Twitter and or media headlines are not geared to give you the answer of what like the rational average person thinks. They exacerbate the extreme view and so I And at any point, these things, yes, they're going to be inflammatory in social media and in normal media. But I think the public overall is a pretty rational head on its shoulders and given the epidemic of gun violence that we're still dealing with, I think people will be open to well -designed, well -considered, and well -regulated approaches. So we're personally going to be working very closely on developing the right ethics frameworks working with the right regulatory bodies.

1:03:07This is a place where we will move methodically and not try to jump the gun. And what's the mindset from the police force? I mean, because you're dealing at all levels. I mean, are they welcoming? Are they excited about the next generation? I mean, there's got to be a whole slew of like the old schoolers being resistant to change. I mean, are we seeing the same sort of thing that we see normally. I would say in general policing is an industry that does not embrace change. It is a very traditional, you know, these organizations are typically many decades old or, you know, hundreds of years old, steeped in a lot of tradition.

1:03:50That's it. I would tell you the new taser time we just launched, we are continually hearing the word game changer and a lot of positive feedback. I think part of that is also, you know, the feedback loop of just what's happening in the public. Like, when I started in 1999 in policing, when we entered policing, one of those common pushback we up back then was, look, some people just need killing. Like, oh my god. And you do not hear that anymore. Like, literally, that's gone. And I think part of it is what's happening with body cameras and the whole public debate and iPhones, right? I mean, cameras are everywhere now.

1:04:29We see, I think as you pointed out, there's, you know, the world is less violent than it has ever been in history, but we now see it all because it's recorded and it's out there. And people are less violent when you're being observed, right? People act differently when they're being watched. For sure. In that regard. You know, the challenge I imagine, though, is a lot of the nefarious characters out there are probably using advanced technology. So it's like an unfair battle. if you've got professional criminals that are using all kinds of advanced AI and robotics at some point and the police department is dealing with old -school responses.

1:05:08Do they hear that message? Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, drones are a particular area like criminal organizations are very effectively using drones to move drugs across the border and you know other areas now. You know Now, police will catch up over time. And you've got the advantage, you've got a large community that's focused on this issue. But it does take time to adapt. We're just getting lucky for us. This is what we do. I mean, my career in our organization, we've gotten pretty good at figuring out the cheat codes of how to work with police to introduce new technology in ways that you've got to prove that it's working kind of earn your right to get, you know, to earn a place on the belt if it's something they're going to carry or in their tech stack.

1:05:56Everybody at his Peter, a quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the Crisis News Network. I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. How entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges. What the breakthroughs are in longevity. How exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week I put out a blog.

1:06:35One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain, these technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of you use you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus .com, backslashblog, and learn more. Now back to the episode. So you launched this specific moonshot, how long ago? October of last year, so what is that about six months ago? So you're you have nine half years left to pull this off?

1:07:17Yep, yeah, we've said that the goal is to to hit that 50 % reduction by the end of calendar year 2032. Nice. And your confidence levels high? I am. Yeah, it is high. One of the things we're working on now, I've challenged the team, and again, this was actually very helpful from this year's abundance, was breaking your moonshot down to, okay, what are your first year goals, right? Like, how do you start to measure progress? So for us, the first year goals, I've asked the team, look, we're going to go after the smaller police departments that have the highest shooting rates on per capita basis. And the reason we're going to have those smaller agencies is they can move their faster decision -making processes and they can roll out technology faster.

1:07:59Whereas like an LAPD may take four or five years to roll out tech, 10 smaller agencies could do the same thing just faster. And the goal is we're gonna start measuring in that cohort starting from the date that they've completed their rollout. So they know every officer has a taser 10. They now go into the new cohort that we're gonna measure against the historical cohort. And that's gonna be our first canary in the coal mine. Can we begin to move the needle in those agencies who deploy early? Make it measurable. And it becomes, you know, once you've got the data, it becomes inspiration for others to follow suit.

1:08:35Absolutely inspiration for me too. Like maybe shootings don't drop in those agencies. Well, we damn want to know that. Like, hey, why not? Like, what did we get wrong? Like, where are assumptions off? And obviously, we're hoping it does. And if it does, you're right. That will inspire other agencies. And then look for the business. This is one of those things where doing things the right way builds long -term value. Like if we can show in a rigorous way those agencies are seeing a significant drop in shootings, that's gonna create just tremendous sales momentum for the business. So, I think we try to design our incentives.

1:09:11So, we make more profit and more money when we do the right things. So, you wanna have your business model reinforce your mission. And you're more a shot of cutting it by 50 % outside of the police community, but in the public is really a matter of getting those new technologies in the hands of everybody, right? That it becomes the cheaper, faster, better, more effective solution for protecting your family. The other thing that's kind of fun on the consumer side of things, for police it has to be very utilitarian. For consumers it also has to be fun. And I know like some people who don't appreciate guns might find that offensive that I'm characterizing gun ownership is fun, but it is.

1:09:59Like people who own guns love their guns. They love to customize them. They love to work on them, just like a, you know, got with the muscle car, likes to work on his car. They enjoy shooting with their friends. They enjoy hunting. And so we're doing a lot of creative work. Like what can we do to have a more techno -explained based gun ownership experience? And, you know, obviously we're looking at things like AR experiences. And you know, the things we could do to quantify when you're firing these with your friends, where you're having a much more interactive gaming experience, in addition to making sure the weapon is also even more effective.

1:10:40Amazing. Well, I'm excited about your success, my friend. Where should people go to learn more about what you're doing at Axon with Taser and about your moonshot? Yep. So, we have a website set up. This is our moonshot .com. And that's really geared as a it's a non -branded, it's not about sales, it's really about we're trying to ship the narrative away from there's a lot of negative energy around policing and a lot of anger and I don't find that that leads to productive outcomes. We're really trying to ship to how do we get a solutions mindset about how we can make policing better or the company's main website which is just axon .axln .com And your message to entrepreneurs out there who have an MTP and they're trying to decide do they want to take on a moonshot?

1:11:28They've heard it can take a decade or two. They've heard it's hard. They've heard it's fraught with challenges. Is it worth it? What's your message, your inspiration for them? Absolutely. People want to be inspired. They don't want to just go to, well, you know, our basic needs. If you've got a decent job, your basic needs have been met in Maslow's hierarchy, you know, and and I think people are looking for meaning in their lives and in their work and I have found they like being stretched Again, that's why it's important though. It's got to be authentic. It's got to be something that People are going to really believe and want to grab grab hold of so I've also seen cases where it's clearly inauthentic and you've got things that just make you wins when you hear, oh God, that does it feel real?

1:12:19So I think if you're gonna do it, it's gotta be something that you can really look yourself in the mirror and be proud of and that yeah, this makes sense. And we're doing it for the right reasons, not to just put a gloss on a money -making venture. And you know, you mentioned something that's important to point out. There is a positive impact on your employees and also a positive impact. I think on how the world views your company and helping you attract new talent. You know, we talked about the importance of talent. Have you seen your moonshot use for recruiting or for inspiring internal employees to just work those extra hours and days?

1:13:01Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Like the Jeff Connons is my chief product officer, he was running Alexa Entertainment in Amazon a few years ago. Now this is before the formal moonshot, But what got him is he read my book from the end of killing and that's that is what got him to leave You know a fantastic job at Amazon to come join us was the mission And we're you know the moonshot now has become central to pretty much every time we talk about the you know the company including and our recruiting That's amazing. I don't think people realize the value that moonshots can have on the perceived value of your company both to investors and to your employees And in success, pal, countless lives will be saved.

1:13:46And I think it's a, like I said, it's a beautiful moonshot. Grateful for you, I love having you in my life. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for being part of our Bunn 'in 360 community. And excited to come back and report to everyone listening. How are you doing? When's the next major milestone for you, think? I would say probably about a year from now, we're just bringing the first cohort's life to where we'll have some real data. And by the way, I've got to return the the company with their Peter. You know, we found you. I saw the documentary on a transcendent man on Ray Kurzweil.

1:14:25And then I asked my number two to do some research on you guys. And I learned about singularity university. And this was right as we were we were the taser company just starting to do body cameras. and we were struggling with that transition. And so I met you first at the singularity university executive program and then you came to the 8 360. It's been transformative for me personally and for the business. I mean, we've gone from a $200 million valuation taser weapon company to a $16 billion tech company. And you've had a huge role as a mentor and a coach along the way. Thank you, buddy. Thank you.

1:15:04Rick Smith, CEO, founder of Axon, helping to cut gun violence in the public sector and hopefully eventually around the world, the preciousness of life. Thank you, Rick. Take care, my friend. Thanks, Peter.