Cover

Brett Adcock became obsessed with the exponential rise in K-12 school shootings in America after analyzing the data. Over the last seven years, school shootings had increased roughly 10x, with several hundred thousand guns being brought into schools annually. Unlike the high-profile mass shooting narratives, Adcock discovered that 98% of school shootings involved a student bringing a handgun as "an accessory" in their backpack, getting into a fight, and escalating to violence. He realized the solution wasn't just gun control—it was detection.

While reading research papers as a hobby, Adcock discovered a 2013 NASA Jet Propulsion Lab project that had developed high-frequency radar technology for detecting bomb vests and weapons through garments in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. He cold-called the researcher who led the project, flew to Pasadena, and was given a basement demo of the dusty, dated machine. When the scientist turned it on and showed him a mannequin with a hidden gun, Adcock saw a camera-like image of the weapon reconstructed via radio frequency—essentially a 3D point cloud. He was hooked.

An investor coincidentally brought the problem to Adcock's attention in 2023 while he was working on Figure (his humanoid robotics company). The investor asked: "As somebody with kids, how are you not trying to make this work?" Adcock decided to pursue it. Within months, Cover was formed with about 12 people, all intellectual property licensed from JPL, and a first system scheduled to be operational within 30 days.

Adcock's cold-call strategy worked because he was genuinely passionate about the JPL researcher's decade-old work and articulated that clearly. Most people will take a call from someone who has read their research and cares deeply about it. However, Adcock is candid that schools are actually "the worst market" for fundraising—they have tiny budgets and don't allocate capital for security systems like this. The real money, he acknowledges, is in stadiums, hospitals, airports, and concert venues with serious security budgets and existing security infrastructure (metal detectors, TSA PreCheck, Homeland Security contracts).

Cover is pre-revenue and pre-announcement (the interview represents the first public discussion). Adcock is funding it as a passion project and hasn't decided whether to raise outside capital. He explicitly states he doesn't care about the business model or investor pitches—he's building it to solve K-12 school shootings, not to maximize returns. The first operational system is being set up to begin imaging weapons. Adcock's philosophy on the longer-term vision is that longevity increases risk aversion; as humans live longer, they'll demand ubiquitous safety systems like this in stadiums, churches, hospitals, and public spaces—creating a massive multi-billion-dollar TAM, even if schools alone don't justify the business case.