Cody Wilson - Founder, Defense Distributed HARDtalk

they will their children are too heavy. `` they or their children.

Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Stephen Sackur. We live in the internet age

but perhaps most of us haven't realised just how radically it will

change our lives. Today's guest is part of the crypto`anarchist

movement which, wants to use the so`called dark web ` anonymous,

borderless, and lawless` to empower individuals and undermine big

government. Cody Wilson's symbolic first move was to make a gun using

open source software and a 3D printer. Is this really where we

want the internet to take us? Cody Wilson, welcome to HARDtalk. I

have seen you described as a crypto`anarchist. Is that a

description you would place on yourself? Enthusiastically. Yet what

does it mean? We invoke an essay by Timothy May. We read the

crypto`anarchist manifesto. It comes from a cyberpunk tradition. The idea

was that public encryption, these new network technologies and

peer`to`peer technologies, specifically, would shut out

government intervention. Why the gun? Why did you make such a point

of garnering publicity by showing how to download a design for a gun

and make it home`made with the use of a 3D printer? In the beginning,

we had the ambition for garnering this kind of worldwide attention.

But we didn't know... It was a process... It is difficult to

describe. There was a kind of logic that we started accessing once we

got involved. We realised... I don't know. There was a strategy we could

execute where to get the government to step into the situation would be

the way that we could succeed. It is difficult to understand. So it is a

provocation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was intended as a provocation but it

had grander elements that are hard to succinctly describe. It is not so

difficult for me to look back and wonder how irresponsible you could

be. Everyone, you proclaimed, should have access to a gun. I want the

widest distribution possible of implements of violence. Yeah, yeah.

I intentionally use language like that. Let's stick with that. What is

the public good of wanting the widest distribution possible

implements of violence? I do not define it in terms of the public

good. Our project is questioning this idea of a consensual claim of a

universal public good, that there is a certain kind of moralistic

hegemony of human`rights pacifism, which is used to reinforce a certain

structure of domination. Right? But also, because this is an American

project, we began appealing to American liberal nostalgia. I was

using some of these great insurrectionists in American

history, harking back to some of the statements they made. It is all very

philosophical but let's think practical. You put up on the web a

design for a gun, just for a few days before it was taken down by

federal authorities. It was available to anyone and at least

100,000 people downloaded it. There are now many people, not just in the

US but across the world, who can follow your guide and build a

home`made gun using a 3D printer. Yeah, that's right. And of course,

we did not put it up for a few days. To put up for a few days is to put

up forever. Everyone understands the dimension of that. What we did was a

permanent situational transfer. The direct contradiction of an entire...

The whole situation was trying to say that this is something that

should not happen. We were saying no, it is going to happen. You said

there is a philosophy behind it but sticking with the practical, you

live in a country where there are 300 million guns in civilian hands,

a country where anybody who wants a gun can get a gun. Yes, there are

certain restrictions, but we know through online purchases and

Craigslist and everything else, if you want a gun you can get one. What

on earth was the point? It was less discernible to an American audience.

There was a kind of ennui about it. I said, hey, we are going to put

this online, and the typical American response was, so what? I

can just go buy one. So it was a challenge. You pushed it to the most

perverse limit because you decided with your company, as I understand

it, to produce a particular part for a semi`automatic rifle that is

normally stamped with a serial number. You are offering people the

chance to buy that part, produced by a 3D printer, with no serial number

on it. It is an invitation to criminals. Not to buy. There was no

economic element. It is an invitation to criminals to make a

weapon with your particular part that you are offering, open source

to anybody, making that gun untraceable. Yes. You are familiar

with the Liberator pistol? I am not talking about the Liberator. I'm

talking about the AR`15. I do not consider that as radical as the

pistol. But it is a lethal weapon, the sort of weapon that Adam Lanza

used at Sandy Hook Elementary. Oh, it has had its moment of infamy. Why

do you want to help people develop a gun like that, which is untraceable

because the key part that has the serial number is off a 3D printer? I

love where you are coming from but we have not contributed to that

space at that point. Making rifle receivers was commonplace. The files

are already on the Internet. We did not really... We brought people

people's attention to the fact it could be done but we did not

contribute to it. I think we made receivers in polymer, which was

again kind of new. That was the opening act to gain attention. I

have not tried to avoid the question. As you're saying, that was

already achievable. The only thing that we did was tell people that

this is pretty easy. There is a subjective element to your own

genesis. Allow me to address a moral reflection on your activities. You

are suggesting this has nothing to do with morality. I am just pointing

out to people what they can do. This is why I do BBC and UK television.

It always comes down to, what is the level of responsibility? I really

think I want to try to go beyond good and evil here. I think that the

greater question is ` is this morality to set up a permanent

surveillance warfare state programme that only gives us a kind of appeal

to universalism that reinforces it? Whether it be guns or drugs or a

host of other things, medicine, whatever, the government sees fit to

regulate in the interest, they say, of the public. It seems that your

message generally is that you don't believe in any form of government

regulation. If you can use the Internet to subvert regulation,

rules and control coming from the state, you will. Yeah, I think so.

There are certain projects I will not step into because they are less

technically achievable. With the 3D printer we noticed that these

plastics which are already being distributed, these printers can

already print a gun. It was a moment just waiting to be executed. It is

not about... It's about being extremely suspicious of a kind of

self`justifications of the present order. It is not just, like, I

oppose regulations as a fetishistic reaction. I do want to be

controlled, that is in all of us. I think it is something else that we

can teach and project a kind of suspicion and demonstrate with these

objective strategies and projects we have. This is yields a certain...

What was the provocation that the government responded to in my case

was a direct message. If you just press a button and get a gun, that

was something that had to be contested. I want to put to you this

thing about the Silk Road. It became a marketplace for the sort of

Internet trades which were, in the real word or the legitimate world,

illegal. Gun`running, buying drugs. All these things happened on the

Silk Road. You are a great advocate of the Silk Road. Explain to me why.

I wish I was a better one. I want to come from a different ethical

discourse. I want us to be able to think evil and engage in extreme

phenomena. This is kind of human destiny. Right? In that there is a

massive cultural, social force which has been ingrained and is something

of a legacy, which is built on to prevent us from reaching these

conclusions and operations. I wonder if you got a buzz, from being named

in Wired Magazine as one of the 15 Most Dangerous People in the World.

Is that something that appeals to your character? That's the thing.

The guy who named me that thought it would be some kind of injury. It was

a feather in my cap. You got a kick out of that? Anarchy is such an

interesting concept because it seems to build into itself so much

destructive power ` to tear things down, to destroy, to be nihilistic.

Is it your aim to tear down the capitalist system? Oh, wow.

Capitalism is such... Like anarchy is, they're packed with historical

associations. I often use the word anarchy and crypto`anarchy as a way

of challenging that historical position. Mostly, I want people to

think anti`state, to be suspicious. So far we have talked about state

regulation and how it is unacceptable to regulate guns. I

want to turn to capitalism. It seems to me there is an interesting debate

about 3D printing in particular which, because it changes the mode

of production, it challenges our traditional economies which in the

developed world, have been built for centuries on production.

Manufacturing. If you take a product, you can load it onto your

computer and turn it into a design that you can then download and make

at home on your printer. That just kills off intellectual property

rights in the manufacturing industry. It does make them less

operable. A number of people are extremely unhappy about digital

manufacturing. These network devices, industrial structures. That

model is antithetical to the current top`down,

progressively`administrative operation. This model can be easily

imported to the gun control debate. That is one of the first things we

did. Gun control, background checks, what does that depend upon? On a

large corporation stamping a model with a sear, these big players

getting involved so it's something you can buy from a company. Now, I

have something you can download from the Internet relatively anonymously

and print out at your own home. And it is undetectable to modern imaging

techniques. It was an explosion of the whole paradigm. And it's more

than what was even thought achievable. The media has focused

mostly on your anti`state message but I am suggesting you have an

anti`capitalist message. Is it your idea that you can, via the Internet

and the use of the Internet, tear down capitalism? Yes. The only thing

that has stopped me so far, only stopped me from publishing the files

to the Internet, was an intellectual property claim by the political,

diplomatic Bureau of the State Department. It is these regimes that

prevent biotech, electronics, armament and medicine from getting

out of certain structures and into the people in a more diffuse way.

Let's use the 3D printer as a concrete example. This thing was

sold and used by these strategists, these legacy players, people who had

been in the space for 30 years. Once they saw there was a retail space,

they said it was the next industrial revolution. Look at all the trinkets

you can make! But there was an intense effort at preventing

unintended uses. The actual interesting uses which, when the 3`D

printer... How can we contain each component of this machine? You

cannot hack the firmware on an Apple machine. Everything is segmented and

it's an illusion of an Industrial Revolution that we say is just

advertising. If you say it's a revolution and you want to go

further, my question is why anyone will invest in innovation in R

LAUGHTER. If as soon as they produce something

new, it goes to open source immediately and people can just make

it themselves? This is a common refrain of the critics. The large

firm is valuable because it can invest in development. Well, give me

some answers, then. People who say that only these people can innovate.

Anybody can innovate. It's mostly portfolio patents and patents in

portfolios, these large projects, allow these large players to sue you

once you enter the space and bring someone down. I would say, to the

contrary, that if the laws of IP crumble a bit more, there would be

more rapid innovation in different spaces. This seems like I'm some

kind of liberal romantic. Like, let innovation run free. I just believe

that it's structurally more true. You have a great trust, it seems, in

where the internet can take us. You are basically a very optimistic guy

about how individuals can be empowered through the internet. Are

there not some very recent reasons that give you pause? I'm thinking of

Bitcoin, for example. It has been trumpeted over the last two years as

the future of currency, pure electronic currency not controlled

by a nation state or a reserve bank, based on algorithms, computerised

and devised by some brilliant genius in Japan. And yet it turns out that

over the last few weeks, the greatest exchange for Bitcoin has

been hacked into and they lost millions of millions of dollars

worth and faith and credibility in this currency has gone through the

floor. One, I don't believe that's true. There still strong price

support. It has more than halved in value. If you bought at the top, you

would say that you wished you'd never heard of... Well, never buy at

the top. If you have a dollar in your pocket, you can be pretty sure

the US government is not going to go bust. Bitcoin does not have that

fundamental guarantee. This comes to a critical discussion about what is

money. Is it a thing that is backed by a large player? The dollar will

have value because of guns and oil and that's true in an immediate

sense. Everyone knows that the dollar is in a perpetual freefall.

We have quantitative easing and open market operations and it's just an

instrument to achieve a wealth effect in domestic policy and keep

the people happy about the stock market and their jobs and

everything. It's an instrument to beat us over the head. Bitcoin as a

store of value is still valuable. It did 56 times in appreciation in the

last year alone. I don't want to sell Bitcoin as a way that people

can get rich or speculate. Digital libertarians are still into Bitcoin.

My company is working on an anonymity protocol, a tool in the

browser called a Dark Wallet. We have been working on it since

November. To make exchanges even more secretive than before? And you

know darn well who is going to want to use that new technology. Yes, the

free man. The free man will use it. A criminal is the ultimate free man.

That says something. Most human activity, and this is an OECD

assertion, most human activity occurs outside of regulation, the

all`seeing eye of the state. Two`thirds of activity by 2020 will

be, like, the black market activity. That's, like, what just has to get

done, what has to happen in this world. I want these people to use

digital cash. I want them to use it as anonymously as possible. And

everything else is just an illusion. Everyone else is just trying to tell

a competing story in the history of technology. Everyone is trying to

brush up Bitcoin and put a suit and tie on it and say that it's part of

the story of money and nations. We say it's part of the fundamental

question. Criminals use it. Yes, they use cash as well. Bitcoin will

never be regulated. When there was a crisis, as there was in the MtGox

exchange when it became clear it had been hacked into, there was no way

to restore confidence, credibility, among users because there is no real

authority behind that currency. I have two things to say about it.

First, thank God the banks did not step into this. It was bad

technology and it was a bad company. It should have been destroyed and

liquidated. None of the people I know were in MtGox. Many people I

know were laughing at the people who got owned in MtGox. I know that's

not perfectly fair but we use other exchanges. Don't trust someone with

your private keys. That happens. Everything you say and point to

suggests a fundamentally different world within ten or 20 years. You

say that what we call the black market, this shadow economy, is

going to explode. It's already, like, the largest... If you took the

entire global shadow economy, it's the largest economy in the world.

It's bigger than the US and necessarily so. Especially as the

regulatory state becomes so byzantine. It's impossible to get

anything done. People have to eat. Things have to happen in the world.

When I listen to your stuff, I cannot help but think on what Evgeny

Morozov, one of the leading analysts in the world on the internet, has

said. He talks about two clear phenomena among people like

yourself, who spend all of your time thinking about an internet future.

He talks about cyber`utopianism and internet`centricism, the idea that

the identified logic of the internet will reshape every environment it

penetrates. So often, it will be the other way around. I'm more

suspicious of the future that everyone is talking about. I reverse

this. No, the real utopia is right now. It's thinking that there could

be some kind of, you know, these secular assertions about the state

of technology. After I did the 3D printing thing, New York congressmen

said that they would freeze the state of the technology so that

critical pieces of guns will always be made of metal. Or we will return

to 1994 and do background checks and everyone will have a serial number

on their gun. The entire organisation in the framing of the

situation suggests the opposite. The utopia is now. Do you not see what

they're pointing to? You maybe overestimate the ability of

individuals to harness the power of the internet. It may be traditional

power structures of the state and big corporate capitalist enterprises

that are best able to harness the power. No question. What did Edward

Snowden teach all of us? That the deep state is real and there is no

way to separate the eminence of the mechanisms of control from what

would ostensibly be the techniques of liberation. You suggest that we

are going to be freer than ever thanks to the internet. I might

suggest that we remain more exposed, more vulnerable and more party to

the powers that be than ever before. I believe that the current

technologies, Facebook, Bitcoin, GoogleGlass, these are more used as

technologies of the self, ways that we can bind ourselves to these

existing powers than anything else. I'm not optimistic about a grand

liberative moment. I think that emancipatory participation is

possible. Look at what I did with the gun. This followed a fatal

object of strategy. I don't know, we put the gun where it needed to go.

It's in the internet forever. That does not mean there will be some

kind of grand enlightenment because of it. These techniques and these

strategies are still available against the adversary in Family

America, the UK, the West itself. It can be tricked into helping us

execute our plans. I never think that there will be some kind of mass

awakening. You seem to believe the internet is the great way to

diminish, maybe even destroy, big government. Barack Obama addressed

this point not so long ago and said, hang on a minute, remember what big

government is. We are big government. Government is ours. And

you simply do not buy that for one second? Barack Obama is a grocery

clerk, a fraud and salesman just to sell you something. Democracy as it

is practised in the US... Democracy has been liquidated. Everything is a

pretence to sell you the larger mechanisms of control. Liberalism

is, like, selling you the larger mechanisms of control. Liberalism is

what we whistle while we, like, assert our domination over people.

No, that's all for TV. Just like this interview. Thank you very much

for being on HARDtalk. There is some warmer weather on the

way for most of us, not just yet though. Still quite chilly out there

with computers close to freezing. Too many areas of rain continuing as

we head into the morning. The first is in northern areas being ready to

Northern