If you’re not careful, you’ll mistake this for generosity.
But this is NOT benevolence.
It’s capitalism at its most sophisticated and strategic.

$1 today.
Billions tomorrow.
And we, the people, foot the bill, in more ways than one.

end/🧵

This is NOT about innovation.
It’s about building dependence, extracting value, and consolidating power.

The government becomes a client.
The worker becomes a data source.
The public becomes an afterthought.

All in the name of “AI for good.”
11/x

Remember: this isn’t new.

Gillette gave away razors to sell blades.
Amazon sold Kindles at cost to control e-books.
Netflix offered free trials to dominate streaming.
Now OpenAI is giving the government ChatGPT Enterprise for an entire year.

And then comes the bill.
10/x

They call this “public-private partnership.”
But it’s not partnership, it’s capture.

📌 Workers are exploited.
📌 Public data is extracted.
📌 Government capacity is hollowed out.
📌 Corporate power expands.

And it all starts with a symbolic $1.
9/x

This is about class power.

The ruling class is digitizing state functions and handing control to fellow billionaires.
AI is just the next phase of privatization.

And the government isn’t just complicit, it’s dependent.
8/x

And don’t forget who benefits.

This is a gift-wrapped market monopoly.
Smaller AI companies? Priced out.
Open-source competitors? Excluded.
Democracy? Compromised.

All so one company can embed itself inside the federal government for pennies.
7/x

This $1 deal also helps OpenAI shape future AI policy from the inside.

By becoming the default tool inside federal agencies, OpenAI can set standards, write guidelines, and influence regulation to benefit itself—while the public is locked out of the conversation.
6/x

This is the logic of platform capitalism:

→ Offer the tool “for free”
→ Extract value from user behavior
→ Monetize the patterns
→ Replace the worker
→ Sell access to government dependency at scale

The worker is not the customer.
The worker is the product.
5/x

Government workers using ChatGPT aren’t just users—they’re data generators.

Every prompt, every workflow, every decision becomes behavioral surplus which is valuable metadata for OpenAI to study, monetize, and refine its tools.

And none of that value goes back to the public.
4/x

This is the same playbook Amazon used with AWS, Google used with Chrome, and Microsoft used with Windows.

First: give it away (or close to it).
Next: make yourself indispensable.
Finally: monetize the lock-in through contracts, subscriptions, and total data control.
3/x

This isn’t a favor. It’s a bait-and-capture model.

The $1 price tag is designed to lock in government dependency, gather behavioral data, and pave the way for massive future contracts, all while giving OpenAI influence over the rules, ethics, and infrastructure of public sector AI.
2/x