There you have it! A year ago, in the role I held at the time, I filed a formal protest against t…
September 10, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 comments
AI
There you have it! A year ago, in the role I held at the time, I filed a formal protest against the government's $1 AI deals. The argument was simple: they skipped competition, ran through a reseller instead of the model makers, and locked agencies in for pennies so the real bill could land later. It got dismissed on a technicality. Nobody ever ruled on the merits. We moved on. The warning didn't.
Now watch the renewal.
OpenAI just announced a new GSA deal — the successor to the $1 giveaway. $0 monthly license fees, down from $15 per user. "50% off" usage. Every government entity eligible — federal, state, local, tribal. More than 1 million government employees already on ChatGPT through the old agreements.
Read that as a business model, not a gift.
Step one: hand it out for a dollar until a million people depend on it. Step two: "discount" the renewal to 50% off — of a price nobody negotiated, on a contract nobody bid. Fifty percent off a number they set themselves is still real money out of your paycheck. That is how a loss-leader works. Get them hooked, then set the price.
Let me be clear about what this is and what it isn't. I put AI on classified networks. I build companies that run on it every day. What I am against is no-bid, sole-source deals that wire the entire federal government into a vendor's stack — no competitor at the table, no exit ramp, no price discipline. That is not procurement — that is capture.
And here is the part that should worry you beyond the invoice. When one company controls the models an entire government runs on, you have built a single point of failure for how the state thinks. Concentrated, unaccountable, and impossible to audit from the outside.
That is the exact problem I built UnbiasedHeadlines.com to solve on the news side. No newsroom deciding what you're allowed to see. 100% built by AI agents, every story carrying its full source and citation trail, out in the open where you can check the work. Facts. Not spin. The antidote to any concentrated, unaccountable pipeline — a government AI monopoly or a newsroom — is transparency and the power to audit it.
On Sept 22 at 1:30PM ET I'm doing a live walkthrough of the entire AI agent stack behind UBH — the full credibility engine, gate by gate, out loud. Come see what auditable actually looks like.
One founding-sponsor seat is still open. If you want your brand on the platform that shows its work, reach out: sponsors@unbiasedheadlines.com. These go fast.
Time to wake up!
Now watch the renewal.
OpenAI just announced a new GSA deal — the successor to the $1 giveaway. $0 monthly license fees, down from $15 per user. "50% off" usage. Every government entity eligible — federal, state, local, tribal. More than 1 million government employees already on ChatGPT through the old agreements.
Read that as a business model, not a gift.
Step one: hand it out for a dollar until a million people depend on it. Step two: "discount" the renewal to 50% off — of a price nobody negotiated, on a contract nobody bid. Fifty percent off a number they set themselves is still real money out of your paycheck. That is how a loss-leader works. Get them hooked, then set the price.
Let me be clear about what this is and what it isn't. I put AI on classified networks. I build companies that run on it every day. What I am against is no-bid, sole-source deals that wire the entire federal government into a vendor's stack — no competitor at the table, no exit ramp, no price discipline. That is not procurement — that is capture.
And here is the part that should worry you beyond the invoice. When one company controls the models an entire government runs on, you have built a single point of failure for how the state thinks. Concentrated, unaccountable, and impossible to audit from the outside.
That is the exact problem I built UnbiasedHeadlines.com to solve on the news side. No newsroom deciding what you're allowed to see. 100% built by AI agents, every story carrying its full source and citation trail, out in the open where you can check the work. Facts. Not spin. The antidote to any concentrated, unaccountable pipeline — a government AI monopoly or a newsroom — is transparency and the power to audit it.
On Sept 22 at 1:30PM ET I'm doing a live walkthrough of the entire AI agent stack behind UBH — the full credibility engine, gate by gate, out loud. Come see what auditable actually looks like.
One founding-sponsor seat is still open. If you want your brand on the platform that shows its work, reach out: sponsors@unbiasedheadlines.com. These go fast.
Time to wake up!