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But if Ross wanted to keep growing his flourishing business, he needed to appease the more
conventional customers, libertarian or not.
“Guns will scare off a lot of mainstream clients,” Variety Jones had said.
So Ross was going to have to make some changes. If he really wanted to make drugs legal, which
was his ultimate quest, he was going to have to solve the gun issue. While he wouldn’t bar them—he
wouldn’t bar anything—he instead decided to create a gun-only Web site.
When he explored the idea with VJ, they had together come up with the name the Armory. (At
first it was going to be called “Silk Armory,” sticking with the Silk Road branding, but they both
decided it sounded too bizarre. Or, as VJ pointed out, “Silk Armory sounds like they sell Hello Kitty
AK-47’s.”)
Thankfully, it hadn’t been too difficult to build the Armory; it wasn’t like creating an entirely new
site. Ross simply siphoned the code from the Silk Road, slapped on a new logo—a big, rugged A with
wings—and changed some design elements.
But the Armory failed to solve a number of existing problems with weapons sales. Ross had
hoped that people would be able to use the site to buy guns with the same ease as picking up a .22 at a
local Walmart. But it turned out that shipping guns in the mail was a lot more complicated than
placing a few sheets of acid (which looked like blotter paper) in an envelope. Ross needed to ensure
that the people buying and selling the weapons from the Armory would be able to get them to one
another without someone from ATF showing up at their door and escorting them to jail.
But he kept asking himself how.
It wasn’t like he could call his local post office on Park Drive in Austin and say, “Hey, I want to
send some guns to a friend. What’s the best way to do this?” So he did what most people his age do
when they don’t know something: he went to social media. Plodding over to his personal Facebook
and Google+ accounts, Ross posted an update asking, “Anyone know someone that works for UPS,
FedEx or DHL?” When a friend asked why he wanted a contact at one of these mail companies, Ross
replied, “Well, I have a startup idea in the shipping sector, but I have zero experience there.”
There was another issue that came with the guns Web site. It meant that more law enforcement
would be looking not just for the generals who ran the Silk Road but also the people behind the
Armory. (Not to mention the bulk drug Masters of the Silk Road site, which would bring more global
attention and the interest of more governments when it eventually opened for business.)
The scrutiny the site was now receiving from the press, and the inevitable added attention that
would slam upon it with the opening of the Armory, made it clear that the stakes were rising. All of
these terrifying prospects led Variety Jones, who was now being dubbed the site’s security chief, to
decide that it was time for him to move further underground.
The best place he knew to do that was Thailand, where he had hidden once before and where, he
told DPR, he had a few cops on the payroll. But going back to Thailand meant he would have to leave
his lady behind in London.
“I’m getting her out of the crossfire,” VJ wrote to DPR. “I need the world to think we’ve split. If
I end up in Guantanamo, I don’t want her in the next cell.”
“That’s tough.”
“She knows I’m changing the world, and that it’s dangerous for her,” VJ replied. “But I’m not
safe to be around.”