Axon Enterprise

Based on Wikipedia: Axon Enterprise

In 1969, a NASA researcher named Jack Cover set out to solve a problem that had vexed police departments for decades: how do you subdue a dangerous suspect without killing them? His answer would eventually become one of the most controversial and profitable weapons in law enforcement history—and the company that sells it would quietly transform into something far more powerful than a weapons manufacturer.

That company is Axon Enterprise, and if you've watched any news coverage of police incidents in the past decade, you've almost certainly seen their products in action, even if you didn't know it.

The Sci-Fi Origins of the Taser

Cover named his invention after a children's book from 1911: Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. The Tom Swift series featured a young inventor protagonist who created fantastical gadgets—the kind of adventure stories that inspired generations of engineers. Cover took the title, rearranged it into an acronym (Tom Swift Electric Rifle, or TSER), and then, finding it awkward to pronounce, added a letter to create "TASER."

The device itself was straightforward in concept: fire two small darts connected by thin wires, then send an electrical current through those wires to incapacitate the target. No bullets. No permanent damage, at least in theory. The problem was the propellant.

Cover's original design used gunpowder to launch the darts. In 1976, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms classified it as a firearm—which meant the same regulations that governed handguns would govern tasers. This essentially killed the commercial market. Who would buy a "non-lethal alternative" that required the same paperwork as a Glock?

The Los Angeles Police Department ran a successful field test in 1980, but even their interest couldn't save Cover's company. Taser Systems Inc. collapsed.

The Resurrection

Thirteen years later, two brothers named Rick and Tom Smith saw potential in Cover's failed invention. They partnered with the original inventor to solve the gunpowder problem, replacing it with compressed nitrogen gas. No explosion, no ATF classification, no regulatory nightmare.

Getting to market proved difficult. The Smiths nearly went bankrupt in 1997 after trying to sell a taser-based anti-theft system for cars called the "Auto Taser." Consumers weren't interested in electrocuting car thieves.

But police departments were interested in electrocuting suspects.

The company introduced its M26 model in 1999, and the timing coincided with growing public concern about police shootings. Departments wanted alternatives. TASER International, as the company was now called, went public in 2001 with $6.8 million in debt. By 2003, they'd hit $24.5 million in sales. By 2004, nearly $68 million.

The turnaround came partly from an unusual marketing strategy: paying police officers to train other officers on how to use tasers. This wasn't just product education—it was peer endorsement. When cops told other cops the device worked, the orders followed.

The Bodies Started Piling Up

As tasers spread through American policing, so did taser deaths.

The company has acknowledged losing two product liability lawsuits, though they emphasize that fifty-nine other lawsuits have been dismissed or decided in their favor. But the numbers obscure a troubling pattern. People kept dying after being tased, and the company kept winning in court.

One case became internationally notorious. In 2007, Robert Dziekański, a Polish immigrant, died at Vancouver International Airport after Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers tased him multiple times. He had no criminal record. He spoke no English. He was confused and frustrated after spending ten hours in the arrivals area waiting for his mother, who was waiting in a different area of the airport.

A bystander captured the incident on video. Dziekański, visibly agitated but unarmed, was tased within twenty-five seconds of officers arriving. He fell. They tased him again. And again. He never got up.

A provincial inquiry found the use of force unjustified. The British Columbia Coroners Service ruled the death a homicide—a heart attack caused by repeated electrical shocks.

Here's where the story takes a darker turn. Axon has been identified as a chief proponent of a controversial diagnosis called "excited delirium." This supposed medical condition describes a state of extreme agitation followed by sudden death, typically occurring when someone is being restrained by police, often after being tased.

The problem? Many medical professionals don't believe excited delirium is a real condition. It appears almost exclusively in cases involving law enforcement. Critics argue it's essentially a medical-sounding excuse for deaths caused by positional asphyxia—when someone can't breathe because of how they're being restrained.

If someone dies from excited delirium, that's a tragic medical event. If someone dies from positional asphyxia while being tased and held down by officers, that's a potential homicide. The diagnosis matters enormously in courtrooms.

The Pivot to Surveillance

In 2005, TASER International started attaching cameras to tasers.

The product was called TASER Cam, and the concept was simple: a grip-mounted camera that activated automatically when an officer disengaged the safety. Now there would be footage of every taser deployment. Transparency. Accountability.

Three years later, the company unveiled something far more significant: a body-worn camera called the Axon Pro. The device was head-mounted and connected to a cloud storage service called Evidence.com. Footage went straight to company servers.

Rick Smith, the CEO, framed this as a mission shift. The company wasn't just about weapons anymore—it was about "providing transparency and solving related data problems."

Then came Ferguson.

In August 2014, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager. There was no body camera footage. Witnesses gave conflicting accounts. Protests erupted. The incident became a national flashpoint about police violence against Black Americans.

In the aftermath, departments across the country rushed to equip officers with body cameras. And TASER International—now positioning itself as a technology company—was ready to supply them.

The Rialto Police Department in California had already published results from a twelve-month study of Axon body cameras. Complaints against officers dropped by 88 percent. Use-of-force incidents fell by nearly 60 percent. For police chiefs facing public pressure, this was exactly the data they needed to justify camera purchases.

By 2017, Axon cameras had captured 85 percent market share among major American police departments.

The Rebranding

On April 5, 2017, TASER International officially renamed itself Axon Enterprise.

The company still sold tasers—they still generated significant revenue—but the corporate identity now emphasized technology. Cameras. Cloud storage. Software. Smith compared the strategy to Microsoft using the Xbox brand to enter the entertainment business: a new name to grow into new markets.

There was another motivation, which Smith acknowledged candidly. The Taser brand carried baggage. All those lawsuits. All those deaths. All that negative press. When recruiting engineers and software developers in Seattle—where Axon had opened an office—the weapons association wasn't helping. The rebranding was partly about reputation laundering.

The new name came with a new offer: free one-year trials of body cameras and Evidence.com services for any law enforcement agency in America. It was the classic tech industry playbook. Get departments hooked on the platform. Make them dependent on the cloud storage. Then start charging.

The Platform Play

Evidence.com is where Axon's business gets genuinely interesting—and, depending on your perspective, genuinely alarming.

The service is a cloud-based digital evidence management system. Police departments upload video from body cameras, dashcams, and interview rooms. They can review footage, add tags, share files with prosecutors, and maintain chain-of-custody records for court proceedings. Axon offers automated redaction tools to blur faces and license plates. They provide mobile apps so officers can instantly replay incidents or stream live footage to commanders.

As of 2024, Axon's cloud services division accounts for 40 percent of company revenue. This is the business model that tech investors love: recurring subscription fees rather than one-time hardware sales.

But consider what this means. A private company now holds vast archives of police interactions across America. Body camera footage. Interrogation recordings. Evidence in criminal cases. All stored on Axon's servers, governed by Axon's terms of service.

In 2017, a California criminal defense lawyer noticed something troubling in those terms. Evidence.com's user agreement grants Axon "a non-exclusive, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable, worldwide license" to use photos and videos uploaded by its users. This language might violate California privacy law, particularly regarding footage involving juveniles.

What does Axon intend to do with a worldwide license to police footage? Train artificial intelligence systems, most likely. And indeed, the company has pushed aggressively into AI.

The AI Gambit

Draft One is Axon's generative AI product for writing police reports.

Here's how it works: an officer's body camera records audio of an incident. Draft One transcribes that audio, then generates a written summary in the format of a traditional police report. The officer reviews it, makes corrections, and submits.

Axon pitches this as efficiency. Police officers hate paperwork. Reports take hours. AI can do it in minutes.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization, opposes the technology. Their concern is straightforward: police reports are legal documents. They become evidence in criminal trials. An AI-generated report, even one reviewed by an officer, may subtly frame events in ways that reflect the biases in its training data—which, presumably, includes countless other police reports.

There's also the question of accuracy. Large language models hallucinate. They confidently state things that aren't true. Do we want AI hallucinations entering the evidentiary record in criminal cases?

The Expanding Arsenal

Axon hasn't abandoned hardware. The product line has only grown.

The body cameras now come in multiple generations. The original Axon Pro was bulky, with a head-mounted camera, controller, and separate monitor. Later models simplified the design—Axon Flex and Axon Body cameras clip directly to uniforms. The newest versions shoot in high definition, feature improved low-light performance, include LTE connections for live streaming, and use AES 256-bit encryption.

There are cameras for patrol cars (Axon Fleet) and interview rooms (Axon Interview). A product line called Axon Signal automatically triggers recordings when certain events occur—a car door opening, a siren activating, a taser being armed, or a handgun being drawn from its holster.

In April 2025, Axon announced it would begin selling pole-mounted automated license plate readers. These systems photograph every passing car, record the plate number, and check it against databases. The company also offered technology to retrofit existing streetlights with similar surveillance capabilities.

The same month, Axon agreed to acquire a company called Carbyne for $625 million. Carbyne provides AI-powered 911 call center technology. The acquisition would let Axon integrate emergency call data with body camera footage, dispatch systems, and evidence management—a complete loop from the moment someone calls for help to the moment their case goes to trial.

The Drone Proposal

In June 2022, a gunman killed nineteen children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The massacre renewed debates about gun control, school security, and police response—officers had waited outside for over an hour while the shooter remained in a classroom with victims.

Axon saw a market opportunity.

The company proposed a plan for taser-armed drones that could be deployed inside schools during active shooter situations. The drones would locate the gunman and incapacitate them with electrical shocks, theoretically stopping the killing without requiring police to enter.

The proposal was met with immediate backlash. Critics pointed out obvious problems: drones navigating hallways full of panicked children, the risk of misidentification, the prospect of schools becoming surveillance zones monitored by armed flying robots. Axon's own ethics board resigned in protest.

The company shelved the plan—for now.

The Regulatory Response

Not everyone has welcomed Axon's dominance.

In 2018, Axon acquired VieVu, a competitor in the body camera market, for $4.6 million in cash plus stock. VieVu had been the second-largest vendor in the space. After the acquisition, Axon essentially had no significant competition.

In January 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal, arguing it would reduce competition in an already concentrated market. Axon responded by suing the FTC itself, claiming the agency's structure was unconstitutional.

The case, Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, went to the Supreme Court—though on procedural grounds rather than the merits of the antitrust claim. The FTC eventually withdrew its complaint in 2023.

Axon kept VieVu. Competition remained minimal.

The Controversy Machine

The company has repeatedly found itself at the center of scandals beyond the core questions of taser safety.

In 2008, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation discovered that TASER X26 models manufactured before 2005 had a faulty fail-safe system. In 2015, several Axon employees were caught review-bombing listings on Amazon and iTunes for a documentary called Killing Them Safely, which investigated deaths caused by taser use. The employees had posted negative reviews to suppress the film's visibility.

In 2016, a competitor named Digital Ally sued Axon for patent infringement related to automatic activation of body cameras. Axon called the suit "frivolous and egregious." Courts would eventually sort out who was right.

Private Government

There's a reason this article accompanies a piece about populism and resistance to political change.

Axon has become something more than a vendor to police departments. It has become infrastructure. When nearly every major police department in America stores its evidence on your servers, uses your cameras, processes reports through your AI, and triggers recordings through your sensors, you are not merely a supplier. You are a partner in the apparatus of state power.

The company is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, not Washington. Its decisions are made by shareholders and executives, not voters. Yet those decisions shape how policing happens—what gets recorded, who can access footage, how long evidence is retained, what AI systems interpret and summarize.

This is the pattern across American governance: public functions increasingly flow through private systems. The institutions that extract taxes, prosecute crimes, and maintain order are intertwined with corporations that face no elections. Any politician who wants to change how policing works in America will have to negotiate with Axon.

Whether that's good or bad depends on your view of the alternatives. Some will argue that Axon's cameras have genuinely increased transparency—that the footage from body cameras has held officers accountable in ways that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Others will note that the company built its fortune selling devices that have killed people, promoted a fake medical diagnosis to deflect blame, and now sits on a growing archive of surveillance data with unclear legal protections.

Jack Cover, the NASA researcher who invented the taser in 1969, wanted to reduce police shootings. Fifty-six years later, his creation has birthed a billion-dollar surveillance empire. Whether that counts as success depends entirely on what you think was supposed to be protected.