Cody Wilson

Cody Rutledge Wilson (born January 31, 1988) is an American gun rights activist, and crypto-anarchist.

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.

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.

At the time Wilson was the project's only spokesperson; he called himself "co-founder" and "director."

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.

While visiting the office of the ATF in Austin to inquire about legalities related to his project, Wilson was interrogated by the officers there.

Six months later, he was issued a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to manufacture and deal.

Defense Distributed gained international notoriety in 2013 when it published plans online for the Liberator, the first widely available functioning 3D-printed pistol.

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.

After test firing, Wilson released the blueprints of the gun's design online through a Defense Distributed website.

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).

In 2013, Wilson, along with Amir Taaki, began work on a Bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet called Dark Wallet, a project by which he planned to help anonymize financial transactions.

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.

In November 2014 Wilson was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30, a pick the publication regretted nine years later, placing Wilson on its Hall of Shame, featuring ten picks it wished it could take back.

He appeared on behalf of the Dark Wallet project at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in 2014.

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."

On May 6, 2015, Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation filed Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dept. of State, a constitutional challenge of the ITAR regime used to control their speech.

He did not vote in the 2016 United States presidential election.

He frequently cites the work of post-Marxist thinkers in public comments, especially that of Jean Baudrillard, whom he has claimed as his "master".

Asked during an interview with Popular Science if the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting affected his thinking or plans in any way, Wilson responded:"...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."

Wilson is generally opposed to intellectual property rights.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The site claimed to have received about $25,000 a month in donations.

Hatreon took a five percent cut of donations.

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.

Wilson claims an array of influences from anti-state and libertarian political thinkers, including mutualist theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalists such as Austrian School economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and classical liberals such as Frederic Bastiat.

His political thought has been compared to the "conservative revolutionary" ideas of Ernst Jünger.

Jacob Siegel wrote that "Cody Wilson arrives at a place where left, right—and democracy—disappear" and that he oscillates "somewhere between anarch and anarchist".

Wilson is an avowed crypto-anarchist, and has discussed his work in relation to the cypherpunks and Timothy May's vision.

On July 10, 2018, the State Department offered to settle this lawsuit and Wilson resumed work at DEFCAD.

After his arrest on charges of sexual assault against a minor in September 2018, Wilson resigned from Defense Distributed.

After his plea deal in September 2019, he rejoined Defense Distributed.