I Made a Fitness App Where You Run from AI Killer Drones.

I Made a Fitness App Where You Run from AI Killer Drones. And Apple’s Deciding if Anyone Gets to See It.

A few weeks ago, I read a headline that stopped me cold.

It wasn’t about music.
It wasn’t about tech.
It was about war.

Now, you’ve probably already heard about this, but with 3 little kids, I tend to be a bit… umm… behind.

So just in case you haven’t read the news lately:

A few weeks ago, Daniel Ek, the billionaire founder of the world’s biggest music platform (aka Spotify), has invested a staggering 1 billion dollars into AI-powered military drones.

Not tools for artists.
Not solutions for the broken royalty system.
Not community, connection, or creativity.

No.
Weapons.

The same man who built a cultural empire off the backs of unpaid musicians, many of whom still struggle to make rent while streaming platforms rake in billions, has now decided to funnel that wealth into autonomous killing machines.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I’m not an activist.
I’m not a journalist.
I’m just a guy who builds weird apps.

Maybe it’s one of my various ‘tisms kicking in, but I just can’t get this story out of my head. So much so, I woke up talking to myself about it at 2am recently. Yeah, I know… I’m cooked.

So I did what I do.

I made something.

(and then I cancelled my much loved Spotify account after I realised I’d been loyally paying my subscription for over 10+ years)

Introducing Musical Drones

It’s a fitness app that feels like the Squid Games version of musical chairs.

You press play. The music starts. You run.
Stop moving, even for a second, and a “killer drone” locks on.
Slow down? It starts hunting you.

All while you’re obliviously trotting along to your favourite Spotify playlist… (and turns out that’s what a lot of us do.)

So yeah, this is my silly little attempt at showing Spotify listeners what our music subscription has now become: an investment into the war machine.

Yes, Musical Drones is a fitness “survival game”.

But my hope is that it’s more than that, I hope it’s also a question:

What does it feel like when the tech we build to entertain… turns to kill?

We’ve all accepted that the tools we use daily — recommendation engines, facial recognition, location tracking— are being co-opted by big tech for purposes that are totally out of our control. But most of us don’t feel it. Not really. Not viscerally.

So I wanted to make something you could feel.
Something you could run from.

Why I Made It

Honestly, I’m tired.

Tired of watching artists get squeezed by platforms they once trusted.

Tired of billionaires playing war games with money made from our creativity.

Tired of tech acting like it’s apolitical, as if building weapons of war is just another line on the product roadmap.

So no, this app won’t stop drones.

But maybe it will get a few more people asking questions.

About power.
About profit.
About who benefits when the tools of creation are turned into tools of destruction.

And there’s one last reason I did it — some dusty old rule from my Sunday School I somehow managed to retain: Thou shalt not kill. Supposedly, it’s a big one.

Waiting on Apple

I just submitted Musical Drones for review.
Now I’m waiting.

Not just for approval, but for judgment.
Will Apple allow an app that calls out another tech titan?
Will they let something explicitly satirical, explicitly political, into their walled garden?

I don’t know.
But I’m watching.
And I’ll share what happens next.

Because this matters.
Not just to me.
But to every artist, every runner, every person who still believes tech can be more than extraction.

Final Thought

We live in an age where billionaires aren’t just CEOs. They are unelected policy-makers, cultural architects, and now, in some cases, private arms dealers.

And yet, like me, most people have no idea what their subscriptions are funding.

Spotify just made this blatantly clear.
But this isn’t just about one app. Or one man.
It’s about what happens when power — cultural, financial, and technological — is allowed to concentrate without scrutiny.

Yes, Daniel Ek is free to spend his fortune however he wants.
But at a certain scale, is it still just his money?

If that wealth was built directly off the creative labor of millions of artists, and funded by the monthly payments of hundreds of millions of listeners, don’t we deserve some say in how that power is wielded?

Shouldn’t there be some accountability when tech founders turn entertainment empires into weapons portfolios?

And if the platforms we once trusted to share music are now helping build machines that end lives, isn’t it time we asked whether our silence is complicity?

These are uncomfortable questions.
But I think we need to start asking them — loudly, publicly, creatively.

This app is my way of doing that.
What’s yours?

Here’s an idea:
Cancel your spotify