MEET CODY
AMERICAN CRYPTO-ANARCHIST
AMERICAN FREE-MARKET ANARCHIST
AMERICAN GUN-RIGHTS ACTIVIST
INVENTOR OF THE WIKI-GUN
HOME OF THE WIKI WEAPON PROJECT
Wired Magazine’s “Danger Room” named
him one of “The 15 Most Dangerous People
in the World” in 2012.
GUEST AUTHOR/ANALYST: Cody Wilson, author of Come And Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free. He is the founder and director of Defense Distributed, Home of The Wiki Weapon Project, a non-profit organization that developed and published the world’s first open source gun designs suitable for 3D printing.
COME AND TAKE IT
THE GUN PRINTER’S GUIDE
TO THINKING FREE
“At high summer, we gathered in Little Rock at the Peabody. By the evening the hotel’s signature ducks—four hens and a drake—would have already completed their twice-daily march from the rooftop penthouse to the lobby fountain, where they fluttered and splashed.
In a few more months the Southern charm would be wrung from the place: no more mallards in the elevator. But back then, in the summer of 2012, we basked in the final flickering of it all. We drank to the uneasiness in culture.
Music, voices, and the sounds of the running fountain danced about the marbled, open floors. Golden light filled the huge recesses above and around the lobby bar, ringed by six great pillars. The hotel opened directly onto Markham Street and the walking crowds on the Old Statehouse plaza. I lured any who might listen to this marvelous set piece with the grandest exhortations—Would you be remembered?—and here made a ritual of holding a fiendish court.
At one of these twilight salons sat Chris Hancock, an old classmate of mine, his tangled black hair brushed from his face. He had brought a friend.
“You remember WikiLeaks!” I insisted to them both. “Do you recall the insurance files?”
“WikiLeaks sends everything they’ve got out to the public in advance. It’s all published and torrented but protected from reading by some long password, right?” Chris answered.
“Exactly,” I said, losing the word on my breath. “And in the event the states move in for some final shutdown, only then do they release the password. The copies were already distributed. The damage sits waiting to be done. Maybe the files had been seeded for months, maybe years. You can’t pull them all down. The threat is credible because everyone has a computer. Every computer is always already on the Internet.”
“Peer-to-peer technology gives you leverage, sure. So, what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is you can leak more than emails and cables. There are new machines—networked, material printers. They use complex and evolving materials. Into this budding universe of digital production . . . you leak a gun.”
I liked to watch the realization come to people in stages. It had been no different with Chris. Except on this night he made a conceptual leap.
“A Wiki Weapon,” he mused, looking down at the square candle on our table.
And I admit I was a little stunned by the words. Alarmed, even, that the clever coinage was a sign I still didn’t understand the significance of the proposition after these months. They made me jealous too.
Chris’s friend looked at both of us then, his face flushed with the chill of true and unwelcome surprise. And I whispered it:
“We are the heartworms of history.”
PLUG BOOK: amazon.com/Come-Take-Printer%E2%80%99s-Guide-Thinking/dp/1476778264/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475721506&sr=8-1&keywords=cody+wilson
BIO: Cody Wilson is a former student of the University of Texas School of Law. He is the founder and director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that developed and published the world’s first open source gun designs suitable for 3D printing. Forbes called Wilson one of the most polarizing figures in technology, and Wired named him one of the fifteen most dangerous people in the world. Since the development of his firearm, the Liberator, Wilson has become the spokesperson for the digital arms revolution and an enfant terrible of the lecture circuit. He is a member of the tech fraternity unSYSTEM. His work has been featured in DOMUS Magazine, exhibited at the New Museum, and has been permanently acquired by London’s V&A, the world’s greatest museum of design.
WEBSITE: defdist.org
ABOUT: Defense Distributed is a corporation organized in the state of Texas. The specific purposes for which this corporation is organized are: To defend the human and civil right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the United States Constitution and affirmed by the United States Supreme Court; to collaboratively produce, publish, and distribute to the public information and knowledge related to the digital manufacture of arms.
WATCH: youtube.com/watch?v=g5fhBBipU3w
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/DefenseDistributed/
TWITTER: @DefDist