Silicon Valley has a habit of treating emerging technologies like they arrive with an instruction manual already written: draw the red lines, define what’s acceptable, and then let everyone else comply. But in a long conversation with The Verge’s Decoder, Skydio CEO Adam Bry argued that this instinct—especially when it comes to military and policing applications of autonomous drones—can be both misguided and counterproductive.
Bry’s position isn’t that ethics don’t matter. It’s that “bright-line” bans drawn by technology companies or outside observers often miss how real-world accountability works, how adversaries behave, and how autonomy changes the practical meaning of surveillance and force. In his view, the more effective approach is to focus on building reliable systems and letting democratic oversight and institutional policy determine how those systems are used.
The interview also offered a window into why Skydio has become one of the most prominent U.S.-based drone manufacturers at a moment when the consumer drone market has been disrupted by geopolitics and regulation. Bry described a shift from drones as hobbyist gadgets and camera platforms toward drones as infrastructure—autonomous, dock-based systems that can be deployed quickly, integrate into workflows, and deliver actionable information without requiring expert piloting.
That framing matters because it shapes how Bry thinks about governance. If drones are becoming infrastructure, then the question isn’t only “what can the technology do?” but also “who controls deployment, under what oversight, and with what accountability mechanisms?”
A drone, Bry says, is no longer just a camera with rotors. It’s a flying sensor platform with onboard compute, perception, and autonomy. Skydio’s customers, he explained, span public safety agencies, militaries, energy utilities, construction companies, departments of transportation, and security organizations. The common thread is high-risk physical operations where placing sensors at the right time and location can change outcomes. That’s why Bry repeatedly returned to the idea that the “core technology foundation” has to be excellent—because integrations and software workflows only matter if the drone itself is reliable and capable.
He described the industry’s evolution in chapters. The first chapter was electrification and radio-controlled flight—drones as recreational machines. The second chapter was cameras: once people realized you could put useful imaging hardware in the sky, drones became tools for cinematography and commercial inspection. The third chapter, which Bry believes is now arriving at scale, is autonomy. In this phase, the drone lives in a docking station, connects to the internet, can be flown remotely and autonomously, and becomes a piece of infrastructure rather than a device you manually operate.
This is where Bry’s argument about “red lines” begins to take shape. Autonomy doesn’t just add convenience; it changes deployment patterns. Dock-based systems can respond faster, cover larger areas, and reduce the need for highly trained pilots. That means the governance question shifts from “is the drone capable of doing something?” to “how does the system behave in the field, and who is responsible for its use?”
Bry’s view on autonomy is also grounded in engineering realism. He pushed back against a trope in the drone industry that says “it’s not about the drone, it’s about the data.” Data matters, he said, but you have to earn the right to deliver solutions by being world-class at designing and manufacturing systems that are super capable and super reliable. Drones, he emphasized, are cutting-edge aerospace devices with vibration, aerodynamics, thermal concerns, and advanced onboard compute. He compared it to building a self-driving car that flies.
That insistence on reliability and capability is part of why Skydio’s product strategy has leaned heavily toward enterprise and government customers. Bry said Skydio stopped making consumer drones in 2023, and that the company’s first enterprise drone came earlier, around 2020. He described the decision as difficult and consequential, driven by focus and impact opportunity. When Skydio started in 2014, enterprise and government markets weren’t really “a thing” yet. The company initially planned to build consumer products first and then expand the platform into other domains. But as the company grew, Bry said it became clear that it couldn’t be great at both simultaneously.
He acknowledged that the consumer product was personally appealing—he said he loved what customers were doing with it—but he argued that the impact opportunity in enterprise and government was too large to ignore. In practice, that meant choosing a path where the company could deliver life-saving and efficiency-driving work for critical industries.
The interview also made clear that this shift is happening in a market environment that has changed abruptly. Bry discussed how cheap consumer drones that had served as substitutes for many use cases largely disappeared from the U.S. market after foreign-made drones were banned late last year. He framed this as leaving expensive U.S.-based alternatives like Skydio as the main option.
That context came up directly when Bry addressed first responders’ fears that there would be no cheap drones left for volunteer fire departments and small budgets. The interviewer read a quote suggesting that first responders were using consumer drones for search and rescue and that they couldn’t afford $50,000 Skydio programs. Bry responded with two points.
First, he argued that Skydio can get cheaper. He cited the R10 indoor drone as costing about $6,000 for hardware including controller and drone, and he suggested that scaling dock-based systems can reduce costs over time. Second, he argued that the highest-impact path is often dock-based, remotely operated autonomy rather than hand-flown consumer drones. He claimed dock-based drones fly five to ten times as fast and can do more because they’re available to be driven through software. In his view, the cost-per-outcome can be lower once you account for training, deployment time, and operational reliability.
Bry also gave concrete examples. He described an F10 fixed-wing product with a coverage radius of roughly 50 miles from a docking station, and he painted a scenario where a volunteer fire department could click a button on a map and have the drone arrive within minutes from 30 miles away. He contrasted that with the limitations of hand-flown consumer drones, which may be usable but require more human effort and training to achieve comparable response speed and coverage.
This is where Bry’s “infrastructure” thesis becomes more than marketing. If drones are deployed like servers—always ready, connected, and orchestrated—then the economics and governance of drones look different than they do for consumer gadgets.
Transparency and accountability in policing
The interview didn’t avoid the controversy around surveillance. Bry was asked about how autonomy could enable surveillance ideas, and about how people worry about who makes decisions—especially if drones have lethal capabilities.
His response split into two domains: military use and public safety/law enforcement.
For public safety and policing, Bry argued that drones can improve transparency and accountability rather than undermine civil liberties. He described drones as “like a flying body camera,” providing objective documentary video evidence of what happened, but in a narrow and precise way rather than blanketing a city with always-on passive collection. He emphasized that drones respond to known emergencies and provide narrow intelligence for that scenario.
He also highlighted Skydio’s “Transparency Dashboard,” which he said helps agencies publish information about flights so they can create a public record of deployments: where the drone went, what it was responding to, its trajectory, and what the camera looked at. Bry said Skydio does not publish the video itself, but citizens can see the camera footprint on the ground.
He framed this as a trade-off improvement: better policing outcomes while still protecting privacy and transparency. He also claimed that adoption hasn’t faced the kind of backlash he expected years ago. Instead, he said communities sometimes ask their local police departments to use the technology, and he pointed to stories where drones helped find missing people or deescalate dangerous situations.
When pressed on whether citizens can validate what they’re told—especially in an era of conspiracy theories and social media—Bry acknowledged the difficulty of establishing “ground truth.” He didn’t claim there’s a perfect solution. But he argued that state and local law enforcement has active accountability and feedback loops because sheriffs are elected and police chiefs are appointed by elected officials. He suggested that when concerns arise, agencies have to explain themselves publicly, which creates a form of external pressure and oversight.
Bry also described how Transparency Dashboard features evolved based on concerns. He said the dashboard was driven internally at first, but specific features were iterated after raised issues. He gave an example of a woman who feared a police agency drone might be looking at her private property; Bry said the agency wasn’t, and Skydio enhanced the dashboard to show the camera footprint so she could verify that.
This is a key nuance in Bry’s argument. He isn’t saying “trust us.” He’s saying that accountability mechanisms—public records, city council approvals, and visible footprints—can reduce uncertainty and help communities evaluate deployments.
But the interview also made clear that governance isn’t only about product features. It’s about institutions. Bry said contracts with police customers must be approved by city councils, and he argued that this incentivizes agencies and vendors to make deployments an obvious win for the community.
He contrasted this with other surveillance technologies, citing Flock Safety as an example of passive license plate reader cameras. Bry described pushback against such systems and said that because of that pushback, contracts are debated at city council and sometimes ripped out or replaced. His point wasn’t that every concern is correct; he said some may be misguided. But he argued that even harsh critics are valuable because they force accountability and can change product development.
The military “red lines” debate
The most direct challenge in the interview was about whether Silicon Valley should draw “red lines” for drone use in military contexts—similar to how some AI companies have discussed restrictions on how their models might be used.
Bry pushed back strongly against the idea that tech companies should set bright-line prohibitions on how military customers use dual-use technology. He said Skydio is focused on building flying sensor platforms and that the company is considered “dual-use technology