Nine of Thirteen Axon Ethics Board Members Resign After Company Announces Taser-Equipped Drones Without Consultation

On June 6, 2022, nine members of Axon’s thirteen-member AI and Policing Technology Ethics Board resigned in protest after the company announced plans to develop Taser-equipped drones for deployment in schools to respond to mass shootings. The resigning members—including founding chair Barry Friedman (NYU Law), Wael Abd-Almageed (USC), Miles Brundage (OpenAI), Ryan Calo (University of Washington), Danielle Citron (University of Virginia), Rebekah Delsol (University of Bristol), Chris Harris (Upturn), Jennifer Lynch (EFF), and Mecole McBride (independent consultant)—stated they had “lost faith in Axon’s ability to be a responsible partner” after the company ignored the board’s 8-4 vote recommending against even limited pilot testing of the armed drone program. The mass resignations revealed the fundamental limits of corporate ethics boards when companies prioritize commercial opportunities over ethical constraints.

The Taser Drone Proposal

Axon CEO Rick Smith announced on June 2, 2022—in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings—that the company would develop “pre-positioned, Taser-equipped drones in a variety of schools and public places” activated by “AI-powered persistent surveillance” to identify and incapacitate active shooters. The proposal combined Axon’s existing drone technology (Axon Air), Taser weapons, and artificial intelligence capabilities into an autonomous or semi-autonomous system for schools, shopping centers, and other venues. The resigning board members condemned the announcement as exploiting public tragedies to rush forward a surveillance-heavy product with “no realistic chance of solving the mass shooting problem” while creating substantial risks of harm. They emphasized that the proposal envisioned constant AI-powered monitoring of schools and public spaces, raising unprecedented surveillance concerns beyond the weaponized drone issue.

Ethics Board Vote and Company Override

Prior to Axon’s public announcement, the ethics board had voted 8-4 against proceeding with even a narrow pilot study of the Taser drone concept, citing concerns about technical feasibility, racial bias in AI targeting systems, disproportionate harm to overpoliced communities, and the fundamental ineffectiveness of the approach for preventing mass shootings. Despite this clear recommendation and the board’s explicit request for consultation, Axon announced the Taser drone program publicly without informing the ethics board of the decision. The resigning members stated that Axon “fundamentally failed to embrace the values that we have tried to instill” and had broken the company’s commitment to meaningful ethics board engagement. The unilateral announcement demonstrated that the board functioned as advisory window-dressing rather than a genuine check on corporate decision-making when commercial interests conflicted with ethical constraints.

Racial Justice and Surveillance Concerns

The resigning board members emphasized that AI-powered surveillance drones in schools would “undoubtedly harm communities of color and others who are overpoliced,” noting that facial recognition and behavioral detection algorithms have documented patterns of racial bias. The proposal to deploy armed surveillance infrastructure in schools was particularly concerning given the disproportionate rates of police violence against Black students and the well-documented school-to-prison pipeline in which surveillance technologies criminalize normal childhood behavior. The board noted that “less harmful alternatives” to mass shootings existed—including gun control legislation, mental health interventions, and violence prevention programs—but Axon’s proposal sidestepped these systemic solutions in favor of expanding the company’s surveillance and weapons business into educational settings.

Company Response and Ethics Board Collapse

Hours after the mass resignations became public, Axon announced it was “pausing” development of the Taser drone program, though the company did not commit to permanently canceling the project or addressing the process failures that led to the board collapse. The episode effectively ended Axon’s ethics board as a meaningful institution: the remaining four members lacked the credibility and diversity of perspectives necessary for independent oversight, and the company’s broken commitment to consultation deterred potential future members. The collapse was particularly damaging given the 2019 facial recognition episode, when the same board had successfully influenced Axon to pause that technology—demonstrating that the board could work when the company chose to listen, but had no power when corporate leadership prioritized commercial opportunities over ethical limits. Civil liberties advocates noted that the ethics board’s collapse removed one of the few institutional checks on Axon’s development of increasingly invasive surveillance technologies for its near-monopoly police customer base.