Cody Rutledge Wilson (born January 31, 1988) is an American gun rights activist, and crypto-anarchist.[1][2] He is a founder and director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "wiki weapons", suitable for 3D printing and digital manufacture.[3][4] Defense Distributed gained international notoriety in 2013 when it published plans online for the Liberator, the first widely available functioning 3D-printed pistol.[5]
In 2012, Wilson and associates at Defense Distributed started the Wiki Weapon Project to raise funds for designing and releasing the files for a 3D printable gun.[6] At the time Wilson was the project's only spokesperson; he called himself "co-founder" and "director."[7]
Learning of Defense Distributed's plans, manufacturer Stratasys threatened legal action and demanded the return of a 3D printer it had leased to Wilson. On September 26, 2012, before the printer was assembled for use, Wilson received an email from Stratasys suggesting he was using the printer "for illegal purposes". Stratasys immediately canceled its lease with Wilson and sent a team to confiscate the printer.[8][9]
While visiting the office of the ATF in Austin to inquire about legalities related to his project, Wilson was interrogated by the officers there.[8] Six months later, he was issued a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to manufacture and deal.[10]
In May 2013, Wilson successfully test-fired a pistol called "the Liberator" that reportedly was made using a Stratasys Dimension series 3D printer purchased on eBay.[11] After test firing, Wilson released the blueprints of the gun's design online through a Defense Distributed website.[12] The State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanded that Wilson remove the files, threatening prosecution for violations of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).[13]
In October 2014, Defense Distributed began selling to the public a miniature CNC mill named Ghost Gunner for completing receivers for the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.[14][15] In November 2014 Wilson was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30[16], a pick the publication regretted nine years later, placing Wilson on its Hall of Shame, featuring ten picks it wished it could take back.[17][18]
After his arrest on charges of sexual assault against a minor in September 2018, Wilson resigned from Defense Distributed.[21] After his plea deal in September 2019, he rejoined Defense Distributed.[22][23][24]
On U.S. election day, November 4, 2014, Wilson announced in an interview that he would stand for election to a seat on the board of directors of the Bitcoin Foundation, with "the sole purpose of destroying the Foundation." And Wilson stated: "I will run on a platform of the complete dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation and will begin and end every single one of my public statements with that message."[29]
Hatreon
In 2017, Wilson launched Hatreon, an "alt-right version of Patreon", to provide crowdfunding and payment services for groups and individuals banned from platforms such as Kickstarter, Patreon, PayPal, and Stripe.[30] The site attracted notable alt-right and neo-Nazi figures, including Andrew Anglin and Richard B. Spencer. While Wilson said that Hatreon clients included "right-wing women, people of color, and transgender people", Bloomberg News reported that most donations went to white supremacists.[31] According to Hannah Shearer, staff attorney at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Hatreon users were inciting violence contrary to Hatreon's terms of service, which forbid illegal activity.[31][32]
The site claimed to have received about $25,000 a month in donations.[33] Hatreon took a five percent cut of donations.[31] Several months after Hatreon's launch, Visa, the site's payments processor, suspended its financial services. With no means of processing payments, the site became inactive.[34][35]
...understanding that rights and civil liberties are something that we protect is also understanding that they have consequences that are also protected, or tolerated. The exercise of civil liberties is antithetical to the idea of a completely totalizing state. That's just the way it is.[44]
Cody Wilson discussing 3D printed guns at Liberty Forum 2014
Wilson is generally opposed to intellectual property rights.[45] He has indicated that although his primary goal is the subversion of state structures, he also hopes that his contributions may help to dismantle the existing system of capitalist property relations.[46]
In a January 2013 interview with Glenn Beck on the nature of and motivations behind his effort to develop and share gun 3D printable files Wilson said:
That's a real political act, giving you a magazine, telling you that it will never be taken away ... That's real politics. That's radical equality. That's what I believe in ... I'm just resisting. What am I resisting? I don't know, the collectivization of manufacture? The institutionalization of the human psyche? I'm not sure. But I can tell you one thing: this is a symbol of irreversibility. They can never eradicate the gun from the earth.[47]
Awards
Wired's "Danger Room" named Wilson one of "The 15 Most Dangerous People in the World" in 2012.[48][49] In 2015 and 2017, Wired named Wilson one of the five most dangerous people on the Internet, and in 2019 named him one of the most dangerous people on the Internet of the decade.[50][51][52]
On December 28, 2018, Wilson was indicted for sexual assault after a sexual encounter with a minor he met on SugarDaddyMeet.com, a website that matches younger, adult women with older men.[56] He was accused of committing a second-degree felony by paying a 16-year-old girl $500 for sex in a hotel room in Austin, Texas in August 2018.[57]
Wilson's defense attorney, F. Andino Reynal, said Wilson thought the girl was a consenting adult. SugarDaddyMeet.com requires users to declare they are at least 18 years old before they can create an account.[58]
When the police issued a warrant for his arrest, Wilson was overseas in Taipei, Taiwan. Wilson was charged with an immigration violation by the Taiwanese National Immigration Agency (NIA), and he was deported to the United States, where his passport had been revoked by the U.S. government.[59][60] After he was returned to the U.S. by the United States Marshals Service on September 23, 2018, he was released on $150,000 bond from Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas.[61][62]
On August 9, 2019, Wilson accepted a deferred adjudication in exchange for pleading guilty to one charge. He was sentenced to seven years of probation, 475 hours of community service, fined $1,200.[63][64][65] Upon completion of his probation in 2022, Wilson's charges and case were dismissed.[64][66][67][68]
^Sackur, Stephen (March 11, 2014). "Cody Wilson". BBC HARDtalk. Season 17. BBC. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
