The Taser drone project to protect schools from mass killers is debated

After the drama of Uvalde in Texas, Axon, the manufacturer of the Taser, unveiled a drone project capable of paralyzing an attacker in a closed place. Internally, the project caused a public outcry, and faced with the resignation of its ethics committee, the boss had to backtrack.

It is rare for a brand or an object to become a common name, and this is the case with Tasers of which the gun with electric pulse has become the benchmark of its kind for arresting and neutralizing dangerous individuals. It is thus used and sold over the counter in 49 states of the United States.

But the American brand, known as Axon, has other plans in mind, and the recent shooting at a school in Uvalde has resulted in a prototype of drone electric pulse. Designed for the moment on a computer, this defense drone could ” help prevent the next Uvalde, Sandy Hook or Columbine” declared the CEO of the brand.

Objective: one minute to neutralize an attacker

This remote control drone would be ” capable of neutralizing an active shooter in less than 60 seconds”. A strong argument when you know that Uvalde’s killer was able to stay for an hour in the school… and Axon would thus have been in contact with the police for six years. The idea would be to equip each establishment with one or more droneposted in the corridors, and which someone from the establishment could take over in the event of a serious problem, such as the intrusion of an armed individual.

However, this project did not pass the obstacle of the company’s ethics committee since nine of the twelve members of this committee resigned when they learned of the project! They fear that this drone, placed in the hands of the police, will become a dangerous weapon what’s more. According to one of the resigning members, it would be simply dangerous and irresponsible”while the committee generally believes that this project “ distracts society from real solutions to a tragic problem “.

Coaster

Faced with these resignations, the founder and CEO of the company, Rick Smith, had to backtrack : “ I want to be explicit: I announced a potential delivery date in a few years as an expression of what might be possible. This is not an actual launch schedule, especially since we are suspending this program. A Taser drone no lethal remote control in schools is an idea, not a product, and that’s a long way off. We have a lot of work and studies to see if this technology is even viable and to understand if public concerns can be adequately addressed before moving forward. »

When initially announcing his project, Smith directed commission members to a comic book he co-wrote, titled The End of Killing. In this comic, he described in detail how such a system might work” through an imaginary counter-terrorist operation in Syria. The assailants were thus neutralized with robots Tasers driven in particular by Artificial Intelligence. For now, reality will not join fiction.