Moonshots with Peter Diamandis Stopping Police Shootings with Revolutionary Tech w/ Rick Smith | EP #43
May 11, 2023
Rick Smith, CEO of Axon Enterprise, founded the company to protect life and make bullets obsolete. He shares his bold mission to cut gun-related deaths involving police by 50% in a decade through innovative, non-lethal technologies like TASERs. Smith discusses the trials of developing these alternatives, the evolution of law enforcement tools, and the psychological impacts on officers. He emphasizes the importance of data-driven strategies, ethical considerations in policing, and the transformative potential of technology to improve community safety.
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Lethality vs. Reliability
- Police use lethal force for its reliability, not its lethality.
- The goal is to develop non-lethal weapons that are more effective at stopping threats than guns.
Axon's Origin Story
- Rick Smith's friends were killed in a road rage incident, inspiring him to create non-lethal weapons.
- He contacted Jack Cover, a NASA scientist and Taser inventor, and they began working together.
Early Failures and the Pig Study
- Axon's first products, including a consumer Taser and a car security product, failed.
- They had to improve the underlying science of Tasers by measuring electricity doses in pig muscle tissue.
