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User:Louis/California AB 2047 and the Physna conflict of interest

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California Assembly Bill 2047, the California Firearm Printing Prevention Act, would require every 3D printer sold in the state to run a state-mandated detection algorithm that reads each print file and blocks anything it decides would produce a firearm or an illegal firearm part.[1] The bill passed the Assembly on May 26, 2026 by a vote of 58 to 19 and moved to the Senate the next day.[2][3] One company has gone on the public record telling lawmakers this kind of detection is ready to deploy: Physna, Inc., the Columbus, Ohio firm that built what it calls the world's first true 3D geometric search engine.[4][5] It is also the company that holds the patents on the matching method a mandate like this would force every printer maker to buy, and its best evidence that the matching works is a set of United States Air Force contracts, where the work runs on enterprise and cloud hardware, not on the controller board inside a desktop printer.[6][7][8] The same company has wired its geometric engine into Palantir's data-fusion platform for defense and commercial customers.[9] Its founder and chief executive, Paul Powers, a former intellectual property lawyer[10][11] and a named inventor on those patents,[7][6] went further on July 1, 2026 and personally urged in public that printers carry the detection where the law requires.[12] I oppose this bill, on the same technical, moral, and philosophical grounds I oppose the New York 3D printer blocking technology mandate.

What AB 2047 would require

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AB 2047, as amended in the Senate on June 15, 2026, adds Title 21.1 to the Civil Code and a new section to the Penal Code.[1] It defines a firearm blueprint detection algorithm as a software service that evaluates a printing file, in the form of an STL mesh, a CAD file, or geometric code, and flags any file it decides would produce a firearm or illegal firearm part.[1] The California Department of Justice would publish written guidance on performance standards for those detection algorithms on or before September 1, 2028.[1] The statute even names the technique it is reaching for: it directs the Department to review emerging detection methods including, but not limited to ... volumetric search functionality.[1]

  • AB 2047, the detection algorithm it defines and the technique it names
  • AB 2047 defines a firearm blueprint detection algorithm as a software service that evaluates a printing file, whether an STL mesh, a CAD file, or geometric code. California Legislative Information, AB 2047.
    AB 2047 defines a firearm blueprint detection algorithm as a software service that evaluates a printing file, whether an STL mesh, a CAD file, or geometric code. California Legislative Information, AB 2047.
  • AB 2047 directs the state to periodically review emerging detection techniques, naming volumetric search functionality among them. California Legislative Information, AB 2047.
    AB 2047 directs the state to periodically review emerging detection techniques, naming volumetric search functionality among them. California Legislative Information, AB 2047.

The compliance regime lands on the manufacturers. By March 1, 2029 any business that makes printers for sale in California has to file a sworn attestation for each model, and a false attestation is punishable as perjury.[1] By June 1, 2029 the Department publishes a list of attested models, updated quarterly.[1] Starting December 1, 2029 it is unlawful to sell a printer that is not equipped and not on the list, with a civil penalty of up to twenty-five thousand dollars per violation.[1] The bill also adds Penal Code section 29187, which makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly disable or circumvent the blocking technology with intent to manufacture firearms, and to sell modified versions of a listed printer with the intent to facilitate the unlawful manufacture of firearms.[1] The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that clause reaches ordinary owners, because it would criminalize the use of open-source alternatives like the Marlin and Klipper firmware that most consumer printers run.[13][3]

Physna's on-record feasibility claim

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At an online seminar on this legislation, a Physna technical account manager named Julian Chultarsky told the audience the technology is ready. His exact words, as reported by the Associated Press, were Geometric search is mature, it's deployed, it is ready to be applied to this problem.[4] Solomon Diamond, an associate engineering professor at Dartmouth who was on the same panel, described the idea as a bit like a phone app that identifies a tree or a flower from a photo.[4]

Physna technical account manager Julian Chultarsky told the Associated Press that geometric search is mature, deployed, and ready to be applied to this problem. Associated Press, via PBS NewsHour.

On July 1, 2026 the pitch moved up from a technical account manager to the founder. Paul Powers, Physna's founder and chief executive and a named inventor on both patents discussed below, posted a public defense of the mandate on LinkedIn, casting it as adding a narrowly targeted safety feature comparable to the counterfeit-currency detection built into copiers, to car airbags, to drone no-fly zones, and to laser interlocks.[12] On the question that decides whether the filter is usable, whether it wrongly blocks ordinary parts, he pointed to Physna's own testing:

Modern physical AI can distinguish between firearm components and ordinary industrial parts with very high precision because it analyzes the actual three-dimensional geometry rather than relying on filenames or keywords. ... At Physna, we've demonstrated that this approach works in real-world testing. Our testing showed that ordinary industrial parts were not incorrectly identified as prohibited firearm components.

[12]

Physna founder and chief executive Paul Powers argued on July 1, 2026 that the detection works in real-world testing and that ordinary industrial parts were not misidentified as firearm components. The test is Physna's own, with no methodology, dataset, or error rate attached. Paul Powers, via LinkedIn.

That is the interested party grading its own exam. The testing is Physna's, the result is Physna's, and no methodology, dataset, error rate, or independent replication is attached to it. It also answers only half the question. Powers reports that ordinary parts were not flagged as guns, a false-positive result; he says nothing about the false negative, the split file or the sub-visibly-edited receiver the filter has to catch and does not, and nothing about whether any of this runs on the controller board of a consumer printer instead of on Physna's servers. Those two gaps are the subject of the next two sections.

In its 2023 Air Force contract abstract, Physna calls its platform the world's first true 3D geometric search engine and deep learning platform, built to search by geometry and label and retrieve 3D models by shape.[5] Geometric search of 3D files is exactly the category AB 2047 would have the state set the standard for and then mandate.

In its 2023 Air Force award abstract, Physna describes its platform as the world's first true 3D geometric search engine and deep learning platform. SBIR.gov.

Patents Physna holds on the matching method

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Physna holds the foundational patents on the method. United States Patent 11,422,531, System and methods for 3D model evaluation, was granted on August 23, 2022, and United States Patent 12,147,736, System and methods for 3D model evaluation using triangle mesh hashing, was granted on November 19, 2024.[7][6] Both are assigned to Physna Inc., and both name Paul Powers, Physna's founder,[14] and Glenn Warner as the inventors.[7][6] The 2024 patent describes hashing a model's triangle mesh into a fingerprint and comparing it against reference models, including detecting added or removed sub-parts.[6]

United States Patent 12,147,736 is assigned to Physna Inc. and names Glenn Warner and Paul Powers as inventors. US Patent 12,147,736, via Google Patents.

Powers is a former intellectual property lawyer,[10] a law graduate of Heidelberg University, who founded Physna in 2015 to stop the unauthorized copying of physical parts.[11] The print-blocking checkpoint the bill describes is the one he has pitched since the company's first beta. In a January 2017 interview he described the mechanism directly:

So once the model is in our database any other model will automatically be matched to that and if it includes a certain threshold and being matched for 3D printing, our software will be able to block that and say you cannot print this or develop this anyway without having authorization to do so.

[10]

AB 2047 would take that private authorization checkpoint, swap the blocklist from patented parts to firearm files, and require it by statute.

A bill that forces every printer maker to ship a geometric detection algorithm builds a captive market for exactly this patented method. The incentive is documented and structural: the state would require a category of technology, and one company holds the patents and the on-record sales pitch for that category. That is a conflict of interest whether or not a single email ever passed between Physna and the bill's author.

Why the Air Force proof does not run on a desktop printer

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Physna's strongest evidence that its matching works is its federal record, and that record is a defense and enterprise record. The Air Force awarded Physna a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II contract, FA8649-23-P-0450, Geometric Deep Learning Technology for Supply Chain, for $1,040,000 in 2023.[8][5] It followed with FA7014-25-C-0023, Physna SBIR III Technology of Supply, for $1,500,000, and a $1,900,000 award for multimodal image search supporting Air Force Digital Material Management.[15][16] A separate Air Force order, FA7014-24-P-0043, paid Physna to identify alternate sources of supply through comparison of digital files.[17] The company also carries a General Services Administration schedule contract, 47QTCA24D00BN, for federal information-technology buyers.[18] This is geometric matching run on cloud and enterprise hardware, against catalogs of aerospace parts.

A consumer printer is not that. The board that drives a $200 printer's motors does not have the memory or the processor to reconstruct a model from a stream of G-code and hash it against a live national database of firearm files before every job. So the mandate forces one of two outcomes. Either the print file gets uploaded to a server for the check, which turns every printer in the state into a reporting device and puts home fabrication under surveillance, a harm the EFF says the bill would create.[13] Or the printer carries enough added hardware to do the work locally, which raises the price of the cheapest machines, the ones in schools, libraries, and makerspaces. AB 2047 exempts printers sold to licensed firearms makers, to law enforcement, and to aerospace, automotive, biomedical, and propmaking buyers, but it writes no exemption for the consumer machine on a classroom bench.[1][3] Tom's Hardware noted the same gap: detection capable enough to catch a gun part may exceed the compute available on consumer printers, pushing checks to remote servers.[3]

Physna's Palantir partnership

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If the check cannot run on the printer, it runs in a cloud, and the vendor with the on-record pitch to run it is not a neutral utility. In December 2024 Physna announced a strategic partnership with Palantir Technologies. In his own post announcing it, Powers wrote that Physna's cutting-edge 3D insights will seamlessly integrate into Palantir Foundry's Ontology and that once Physna's 3D data is integrated into Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), customers could query it, for both Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial customers.[9] Physna's product is a cloud service built to be queried by outside software. Powers said in 2026 that the company works closely with Palantir, AWS, Google and many others, and that a customer's AI agent can ask Physna to tell the agent everything it knows.[19]

Palantir is the data-fusion contractor that privacy and civil-liberties groups have spent years documenting at the center of government surveillance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, writing about a Palantir tool that hands Immigration and Customs Enforcement home addresses pulled from Medicaid records, called Palantir a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights and likened the broader push to merge government databases into one searchable interface to the Total Information Awareness programs of the early 2000s.[20] Palantir rejects the charge. Answering the EFF, it said the narrative that it is leading an effort to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the privacy of our fellow citizens is not happening, and it denied proposing any government master list for the surveillance of citizens.[21]

I am not claiming that a print of a phone case gets shipped to Palantir. I am pointing at what the bill leaves open and who is standing in the gap. AB 2047 mandates the checkpoint and says nothing about where the scan runs or what becomes of the file. The EFF reads the bill to render all 3D printer users vulnerable to surveillance, either by forcing a cloud scan or by chaining printers to first-party software that has to phone home.[13] The company telling legislators the scan is ready is a cloud vendor whose other flagship relationship is with a firm the EFF says has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights.[20] For an audience that cares about who gets to see what you build in your own home, that is the part of this bill that should not be waved past.

Shared geometry and the industry's own verdict

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The detection cannot be made reliable, because a firearm part is a geometric signature shared with ordinary objects. A suppressor baffle is the same stack of cones as a Tesla fluid valve; a pistol conversion device is the same dovetailed block as a camera flash shoe; an AR-15 lower is the same hollowed box as an electronics enclosure; a suppressor tube is the same threaded cylinder as a flashlight body. I documented these geometric twins, file format by file format, in a companion essay, and the chokepoint problem behind them in another. Set the filter wide enough to catch the gun part and it flags pipes and brackets; set it narrow and a sub-visible edit or a split file walks straight through.

Adafruit's Phillip Torrone laid out the same problem in Techdirt:

A firearms blueprint detection algorithm would need to identify every possible firearm component from raw STL/GCODE files, while not flagging pipes, tubes, blocks, brackets, gears, or any of the millions of legitimate shapes that happen to share geometric properties with gun parts. This is a classification problem with enormous false positive and false negative rates.

[22]

The EFF called the requirement censorware that is doomed to fail for its intended purpose.[13]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes AB 2047 as a censorware mandate that would criminalize the use of open-source alternatives. Electronic Frontier Foundation.

AB 2047 concedes the point in its own text: it tells the Department to set acceptable false-positive and false-negative rates rather than require a perfect one, and it asks stakeholders to identify benign files an algorithm wrongly flags.[1] Bill Decker, executive chairman of the Association of 3D Printing, whose organization supports the New York and California laws, says of the technology: It's not going to work. It's more of a political statement than anything else.[4]

No lobbying paper trail to Physna

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I went looking for a paper trail tying Physna or Paul Powers to the writing of this bill, and there is not one. There is no public record that Physna lobbied for AB 2047, drafted it, paid for it, or was named as its vendor, and none for the New York mandate either. The documented legislative push comes from Everytown for Gun Safety and from the bill's author, Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan.[3]

What is on the public record is advocacy after the fact. A company does not have to write a bill to be built for the market the bill would create, and Physna's founder is now openly urging that printers carry the detection where the law requires.[12] None of this requires anyone to have done anything corrupt. A documented conflict of interest and a detection method that has never been shown to run on a consumer printer sit in the same bill, and either one alone is reason enough to vote it down.

The Los Angeles Times story

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On July 19, 2026, the Los Angeles Times published a report on AB 2047 by Gavin J. Quinton, built around the Hollywood special-effects studios opposing it.[23] The story notes, citing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, that most privately made firearms recovered by police are assembled from mail-order kits or unfinished parts rather than printed at home. It also reports that the entertainment exemption the bill's author added covers only printers manufactured for and sold exclusively to entertainment industry stagecraft and propmaking studios, and that Samuel McBride, the 3D printing lab manager at Legacy Effects, says those printers do not really exist; his studio builds its props on the same general-purpose machines the bill would regulate.[23]

The Times gave Paul Powers the response to the bill's critics, and identified Physna only as a company whose technology could be used to block gun parts on 3-D printers.[23] Powers said the strongest criticisms of AB 2047 misunderstand how the software works. Something that vaguely looks like a gun part is not considered to be a match, he said. Answering the surveillance concern, he said the software only blocks the print: There's no communication with anyone; it doesn't go anywhere.[23] The story does not tell the reader that Powers is a named inventor on the patents covering the matching method, that the deployments he points to run on Air Force enterprise and cloud contracts, or that his company's flagship partnership is with Palantir, and nobody quoted in it challenges his description of his own product. The closest thing to a rebuttal is general: Marleen Vogelaar, chief executive of Thangs3D, told a Senate hearing in July 2026 that detection databases generate false positives that block legal designs and wrongly flag everyday makers.[23] Set the claim that the check involves no communication with anyone next to how Powers describes the product everywhere else: in 2017 as a database the software automatically matches every incoming model against,[10] and in 2026 as a cloud platform working closely with Palantir, AWS, Google and many others that an outside AI agent can query.[19] A reader of the Times story learns none of that.

The story also settles who in the printer industry was willing to be named. It reports a June 1 letter to lawmakers opposing the bill, signed by 3D printing companies, stagecraft and prop-making studios, and industry stakeholders, and it quotes exactly one printer manufacturer on the record: Prusa Research. Jakub Kmošek, Prusa's head of public affairs, said in a statement to the Times:

To an algorithm, a gun barrel and a piece of pipe are the same grooved cylinder. This bill will only make it harder to build, repair, experiment, and innovate in California.

[23]

No other printer manufacturer is quoted in the story. Two weeks before it ran, I published a video about that silence, arguing that when the companies with the most at stake refuse to oppose these mandates on the record, they let the bills' sponsors tell legislators the industry does not object.[24]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 "AB-2047 Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology, as amended in the Senate June 15, 2026". California Legislative Information. 2026-06-15. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Civil Code Title 21.1 (Section 3273.631 et seq.), the California Firearm Printing Prevention Act; the operative text is headed "Amended IN Senate June 15, 2026." Section 3273.632 defines the "firearm blueprint detection algorithm" evaluating a printing file "whether in the form of stereolithography (STL) files or other computer-aided design files or geometric code"; Sections 3273.633 and 3273.634 set the September 1, 2028 algorithm performance-standard date, direct periodic review of emerging techniques "including, but not limited to ... volumetric search functionality," and address "acceptable false-positive and false-negative rates"; Section 3273.635 sets the March 1, 2029 manufacturer self-attestation deadline (a false attestation exposing the filer to perjury prosecution under Penal Code Section 118) and the June 1, 2029 published-list date, updated at least quarterly; Section 3273.636 requires manufacturers to equip printers with firearm blocking technology, lists the exemptions, makes the sale prohibition operative December 1, 2029, and authorizes a civil penalty not to exceed twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) per violation; Penal Code Section 29187 makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly disable or circumvent the blocking technology with intent to manufacture firearms, or to sell a modified listed printer with intent to facilitate the unlawful manufacture of firearms.
  2. ↑ "AB-2047 Bill History". California Legislative Information. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Records the May 26, 2026 third-reading passage "(Ayes 58. Noes 19.)" and the May 27, 2026 entry "In Senate. Read first time. To Com. on RLS. for assignment."
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Luke James (2026-05-30). "California Assembly passes 3D printer bill that would criminalize bypassing mandated gun-blocking software". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Reports Assembly passage and transfer to the Senate, the DOJ performance-standard and list dates, the $25,000 penalty, the open-firmware (Marlin, Klipper) exposure, the exemptions that omit consumer machines in schools, libraries, and makerspaces, and that detection "may exceed the compute available on consumer printers, pushing checks to remote servers."
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 David A. Lieb (2026-06-13). "First-of-its-kind law in New York could block 3D printers from making guns". Associated Press, via PBS NewsHour. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Quotes Julian Chultarsky, "a technical account manager at Physna, a Columbus, Ohio-based company," saying "Geometric search is mature, it's deployed, it is ready to be applied to this problem"; describes Solomon Diamond, an associate engineering professor at Dartmouth, at the online seminar; and quotes Bill Decker, executive chairman of the Association of 3D Printing, saying "it's not going to work" and "It's more of a political statement than anything else."
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Geometric Deep Learning Technology for Supply Chain (SBIR Phase II, FA8649-23-P-0450)". U.S. Small Business Administration, SBIR.gov. 2023. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Air Force SBIR Phase II award to Physna Inc., $1,040,000; abstract states "Physna has developed the world's first true 3D geometric search engine and deep learning platform" enabling "true 3D search by geometry, automated labeling of digital assets based on shape, retrieval of 3D models with 2D images and photographs."
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 "US Patent 12,147,736 B2, System and methods for 3D model evaluation using triangle mesh hashing". United States Patent and Trademark Office, via Google Patents. 2024-11-19. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Granted November 19, 2024; assignee Physna Inc.; inventors Glenn Warner and Paul Powers; abstract describes neighbor-facet edge hashing of a triangle mesh into an object hash value and comparison against reference models, including detection of added or removed sub-parts.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 "US Patent 11,422,531 B2, System and methods for 3D model evaluation". United States Patent and Trademark Office, via Google Patents. 2022-08-23. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Granted August 23, 2022; assignee Physna Inc.; inventors Glenn Warner and Paul Powers.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Award FA864923P0450 to PHYSNA INC, "Geometric Deep Learning Technology for Supply Chain"". USAspending.gov. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Department of the Air Force contract to PHYSNA INC, $1,040,000, period of performance February 21, 2023 to February 22, 2024. The award page is a dynamic application; its structured record (recipient, amount, description "GEOMETRIC DEEP LEARNING TECHNOLOGY FOR SUPPLY CHAIN") is served at https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/awards/CONT_AWD_FA864923P0450_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Paul Powers (2024-12-09). "Physna and Palantir Announce Strategic Partnership to Revolutionize 3D Data Analysis for Defense and Commercial Sectors". Medium. Retrieved 2026-07-04. Post by Physna founder and CEO Paul Powers announcing the December 2024 partnership. States "Physna's cutting-edge 3D insights will seamlessly integrate into Palantir Foundry's Ontology," that "once Physna's 3D data is integrated into Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), organizations will be able to leverage advanced AI models to analyze geometries," and that the collaboration serves "both Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial customers." Quotes Palantir's global head of business development, Kevin Kawasaki: "We've deployed our software alongside Physna's powerful 3D capabilities across both commercial and government customers."
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Ann Thompson (2017-01-23). "Cincy Start-Up Protects Your 3D Design And Makes Sure It Works". WVXU (Cincinnati Public Radio). Retrieved 2026-07-03. Profiles Physna and founder Paul Powers, whose background is in intellectual property law. Quotes Powers describing the print-blocking mechanism: "So once the model is in our database any other model will automatically be matched to that and if it includes a certain threshold and being matched for 3D printing, our software will be able to block that and say you cannot print this or develop this anyway without having authorization to do so."
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Beau Jackson (2018-08-03). "Q&A with Paul Powers CEO of Physna 3D model analysis company". 3D Printing Industry. Retrieved 2026-07-03. Identifies Paul Powers as CEO of Physna, "a law graduate of Heidelberg University, Germany, Astronomy and Astrophysics alumni of Harvard and serial entrepreneur," who "founded Physna in 2015." States a founding principle of Physna was to help additive manufacturers prevent theft.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Paul Powers (2026-07-01). "This isn't about banning 3D printing. It's about adding a narrowly targeted safety feature..." LinkedIn. Retrieved 2026-07-03. Public post by Paul Powers, founder and chief executive of Physna, Inc. (his LinkedIn handle is "techlab"). Argues the mandate is "adding a narrowly targeted safety feature to stop printers from producing a very small category of prohibited firearm components," compares it to counterfeit-currency detection in copiers, car airbags, drone no-fly zones, and laser interlocks, states "Modern physical AI can distinguish between firearm components and ordinary industrial parts with very high precision," writes "At Physna, we've demonstrated that this approach works in real-world testing. Our testing showed that ordinary industrial parts were not incorrectly identified as prohibited firearm components," and concludes it is "reasonable to use it where the law requires."
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Cliff Braun and Rory Mir (2026-04-13). "The Dangers of California's Legislation to Censor 3D Printing". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Calls A.B. 2047 a mandate for "censorware" that is "doomed to fail for its intended purpose," states it would "criminalize the use of open-source alternatives," and warns it would "render all 3D printer users vulnerable to surveillance either by forcing them into a cloud scanning solution for 'on-device' results, or by chaining them to first-party software which must connect to the cloud to regularly update its print blocking system," and enable DRM-style platform lock-in.
  14. ↑ Jonathan Shieber (2021-01-29). "Three-dimensional search engine Physna wants to be the Google of the physical world". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Identifies "Physna founder Paul Powers."
  15. ↑ "Award FA701425C0023 to PHYSNA INC, "Physna SBIR III Technology of Supply"". USAspending.gov. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Department of the Air Force contract to PHYSNA INC, $1,500,000, beginning March 25, 2025. Structured record (description "PHYSNA SBIR III TECHNOLOGY OF SUPPLY") at https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/awards/CONT_AWD_FA701425C0023_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/
  16. ↑ "Award FA810024P0001 to PHYSNA INC, multimodal image search in support of USAF Digital Material Management". USAspending.gov. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Department of the Air Force contract to PHYSNA INC, $1,900,000; description "SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION RESEARCH, TACTICAL FUNDING INCREASE (TACFI) SEQUENTIAL PHASE II +, TOPIC NO. AFX234-DCSO2, MULTIMODAL IMAGE SEARCH CAPABILITIES IN SUPPORT OF USAF DIGITAL MATERIAL MANAGEMENT (DMM)." Structured record at https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/awards/CONT_AWD_FA810024P0001_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/
  17. ↑ "Award FA701424P0043 to PHYSNA INC, alternate sources of supply through comparison of digital files". USAspending.gov. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Department of the Air Force contract to PHYSNA INC, $530,000; description "ONE-TIME SERVICE TO IDENTIFY ALTERNATE SOURCES OF SUPPLY THROUGH COMPARISON OF DIGITAL FILES." Structured record at https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/awards/CONT_AWD_FA701424P0043_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/
  18. ↑ "Federal Supply Schedule contract 47QTCA24D00BN to PHYSNA INC". USAspending.gov. Retrieved 2026-06-23. General Services Administration, Federal Acquisition Service, Federal Supply Schedule contract to PHYSNA INC, beginning June 25, 2024. Structured record at https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/awards/CONT_IDV_47QTCA24D00BN_4732/
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Interview: Paul Powers, CEO of Physna". Fifth Wave Manufacturing. 2026-04-29. Retrieved 2026-07-04. Powers describes Physna as a platform other software can query, states the company works "closely with Palantir, AWS, Google and many others," and says that if a company has an AI agent, "you can ask Physna to tell the agent everything it knows."
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Josh Richman (2026-01-15). "Report: ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2026-07-04. Reports that Palantir built a tool (ELITE) that populates a map of potential deportation targets for ICE using addresses drawn from Department of Health and Human Services data including Medicaid, calls Palantir "a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights," and compares the effort to consolidate government data into a single searchable interface to the "Total Information Awareness" programs of the early 2000s.
  21. ↑ "Correcting the Record: Response to the EFF January 15, 2026 Report on Palantir". Palantir Technologies. 2026-01-27. Retrieved 2026-07-04. Palantir's official response to the EFF, calling the narrative that Palantir "is leading an effort to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the privacy of our fellow citizens" something that "is not happening," and stating that Palantir "has not proposed the US Government build a 'master list' for the surveillance of citizens, nor have we been asked to consider building such a system for any customer."
  22. ↑ Karl Bode (2026-04-27). "California's 3D Printer Law Would Criminalize Open Source, Enshittify The 3D Printing Space". Techdirt. Retrieved 2026-06-23. Reproduces Adafruit's Phillip Torrone describing firearm-blueprint detection as "a classification problem with enormous false positive and false negative rates" that would have to identify every firearm component from raw STL/GCODE files "while not flagging pipes, tubes, blocks, brackets, gears."
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5 Gavin J. Quinton (2026-07-19). "California's push to ban technology used for 'ghost guns' finds unlikely foe in Hollywood". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2026-07-19. Reports Hollywood effects studios among AB 2047's opponents; cites federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives data that most privately made firearms recovered by police "are assembled from mail-order kits or unfinished parts rather than printed at home"; describes the exemption for printers "manufactured for and sold exclusively to entertainment industry stagecraft and propmaking studios" and Legacy Effects lab manager Samuel McBride's statement that "those printers do not really exist"; identifies Physna as "a company whose technology could be used to block gun parts on 3-D printers" and quotes chief executive Paul Powers saying the strongest criticisms "misunderstand how the software works," that "Something that vaguely looks like a gun part is not considered to be a match," and "There's no communication with anyone; it doesn't go anywhere"; quotes Thangs3D chief executive Marleen Vogelaar telling a Senate hearing the databases "generate false positives that block legal designs and wrongly flag everyday makers"; and reports the June 1 opposition letter signed by companies including Prusa Research, quoting Prusa head of public affairs Jakub Kmošek's statement to The Times: "To an algorithm, a gun barrel and a piece of pipe are the same grooved cylinder. This bill will only make it harder to build, repair, experiment, and innovate in California."
  24. ↑ Louis Rossmann (2026-07-04). "3D printer manufacturers are cowards". YouTube. Retrieved 2026-07-19. Video arguing that major 3D printer manufacturers have declined to publicly oppose the printer firearm-detection mandates, and showing hearing footage in which the absence of on-record manufacturer opposition is cited in support of the California bill.
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