Dystopian video shows Taser drone designed to take down migrants at border

A technology start-up built a prototype drone armed with a Taser to take down migrants at the US border, and it feels about as Black Mirror as it gets.

21-year-old Blake Resnick initially created his company, BRINC, to aid law enforcement agencies through the use of non-violent robots, following the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.

But it appears as though the company ended up considering a very different turn.

In a company promotional video obtained by The Intercept, BRINC appeared to have developed stun gun-armed drones to attack migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Although BRINC’s “Values & Ethics” states their “duty to bring these technologies into the world responsibly” and commits to “never build technologies designed to hurt or kill,” their 2018 promotional video proves that a different path was considered.

The Intercept shared a horrifying clip of what the Taser would look like in action on Twitter.

Saying the drone is “a solution” designed to “fully secure the U.S-Mexico border,” the video features a Latinx actor who calls himself “José.” When he fails to provide satisfactory identification, the drone attacks him and leaves him incapacitated.

“Every year, over $100 billion of narcotics and half a million people flow through areas just like this one,” Resnick, who was recently inducted to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, says in the full video.

The Intercept wrote: “Blake Resnick claims that Brinc was founded ‘in large part’ as a lifesaving response to the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. But a company promo video reveals a different vision: selling Taser-armed drones to attack migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Resnick told the outlet that the video in question is “immature, deeply regrettable and not at all representative of the direction I have taken the company in since.”

People expressed their horror with the pitched idea on social media.