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Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 10 • 16 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

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Every time you push code to GitHub for free, Microsoft makes money.

Every React component you build, Meta profits.

Every TensorFlow model you train, Google cashes in.

You're not a developer - you're an unpaid employee of Big Tech 🧵

The numbers are staggering.

Recreating all existing open source software would cost $8.8 trillion.

Yet who maintains it?

Mostly unpaid volunteers working nights and weekends.

Meanwhile, Google pulls $200+ billion annually built on Linux, TensorFlow, and thousands of free projects.

Here's the con: 70% of open source contributions come from individuals and volunteers.

Big Tech contributes strategically - just enough to control direction, never enough to match what they extract.

They're not partners. They're parasites with billion-dollar PR budgets.

React powers millions of apps.

Built by community, controlled by Meta.

Kubernetes runs the cloud economy - billions for AWS and Azure.

GitHub Copilot?

Trained on your free code, sold back to you for $10/month.

They're literally monetizing your unpaid work.

The patent trap is worse.

Companies file thousands of software patents on open source derivatives.

NVIDIA patents OSS-published software.

OpenAI stopped open-sourcing after GPT-2, then patents the tech.

They take your free work, lock it up, charge you to use it.

Meet the victims: "My open source code is worth millions, but I live paycheck to paycheck."

Maintainers burn out, quit, leave critical infrastructure vulnerable.

Remember Log4j?

One unpaid developer's library nearly broke the internet when hackers exploited it.

The H1B scam makes it worse.

Big Tech uses open source to suppress wages, replacing American developers with cheaper labor.

"Why pay $150k when someone in Bangalore will contribute for free?"

It's wage theft disguised as globalization.

GitHub Copilot is the smoking gun.

Microsoft trained it on billions of lines of code without paying creators a cent.

Now they sell AI generated from YOUR work back to YOU.

It's digital colonialism - extract resources, sell refined products.

OpenAI's the worst offender.

ChatGPT trained on uncompensated data from millions of creators.

Kenyan workers earn $1-2/hour labeling data.

External testers work unpaid.

A $150 billion company built on free labor from the global south.

The "open source AI" lie is their latest con.

Meta pushes "open" models while patenting key components.

Zuckerberg says it's "good for developers" while Meta dominates.

DeepSeek from China just exposed how fake Western "openness" really is.

They've turned Richard Stallman's liberation movement into corporate feudalism.

What started as empowering users against monopolies now CREATES monopolies.

Big Tech harvests community innovation, plants patent walls, charges rent on digital sharecropping.

The AI disruption proves it works.

While millions contributed free training data and code, a handful of companies worth trillions emerged.

Your tweets trained their models.
Your GitHub repos built their empires.
Your free labor created their monopolies.

Time for a reckoning. Demand fair compensation.

Use restrictive licenses. Build worker cooperatives.

Or watch the next generation of developers burn out building Big Tech's empire for free.

The code was open - until they slammed the vault door shut.

I’m Shawn, a Generative AI Consultant passionate about building AI-driven solutions.

I write about AI, startups, and the future of work.

If you found these insights valuable: Sign up for my free AI newsletter!

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https://twitter.com/813034080044392448/status/1954557598952517734

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Follow me @shawnchauhan1 for more.

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More from @shawnchauhan1

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 8

Your iPhone's GPS exists because 269 people died in 1983.

Korean Air Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet missiles after a navigation error.

Two weeks later, Reagan declassified America's most classified military technology for civilian use.

The smartphone in your pocket is built on tragedy 🧵

KAL007 wasn't supposed to be there.

A Boeing 747 carrying 246 passengers veered 200 miles off course into Soviet airspace.

The crew had no idea. Soviet interceptors mistook it for a U.S. spy plane.

Two missiles. 269 dead.

All because they couldn't figure out where they were.

GPS wasn't built for your Uber ride.

It was designed to guide nuclear missiles during the Cold War.

NAVSTAR GPS: $20 billion military project to ensure American ICBMs could hit Moscow with pinpoint accuracy.

Your navigation app runs on weapon guidance technology.

Read 15 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 7

One American fruit company killed more people than most wars.

200,000+ dead across Latin America.

All so your bananas stayed under $1/pound.

This is the United Fruit Company story 🧵

United Fruit didn't just sell bananas.

They owned countries. Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica - entire governments danced to their tune.

Railways, ports, telegraphs, hospitals. They controlled everything.

Even gave us the term "banana republic." That wasn't a joke. It was a warning.

The numbers were insane: UFCo valued their Guatemala land at $1.2 million for taxes.

When the government tried to buy it back?

They demanded $19.3 million. 16x markup.

Imagine if Amazon claimed your house was worth $50k for taxes, then demanded $800k when you tried to buy it back.

Read 17 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 6

The US built a 500KB virus that destroyed 1,000 Iranian centrifuges.

Zero shots fired.

It escaped globally. 100,000 computers infected.

Every dictator learned how to weaponize code.

This is how America opened Pandora's box 🧵

Stuxnet wasn't just malware. It was a declaration of war through code.

Six years of development. Multiple zero-day exploits worth millions on the black market.

All to make Iranian centrifuges spin themselves to death.

They called it "Olympic Games." Iran called it an act of war.

The scary part is it worked too well.

Stuxnet was supposed to stay contained at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility.

Instead, it infected 100,000 computers worldwide.

Including US systems at Chevron. The weapon escaped.

And now everyone has the blueprint.

Read 16 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 4

Trump just committed the biggest economic suicide in history.

He slapped 25% tariffs on a country 17x larger than the one getting preferential treatment.

India: 1.4B people. Pakistan: 240M.

Remember, Pakistan is the the one that harbored Osama bin Laden

A thread 🧵

The numbers are staggering.

- India: $4.2 trillion economy, 1.4 billion people, $129 billion trade with US.

- Pakistan: $373 billion economy, 240 million people, $7.3 billion trade with US.

Trump is punishing the giant to reward the minnow.

Here's what makes this insane: India provides 75% of America's H-1B visa holders.

These aren't just workers, they're the backbone of Silicon Valley.

Apple, Google, Microsoft all depend on Indian talent.

Trump is literally sabotaging his own tech sector.

Read 18 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 3

The man who put Americans on the Moon was a Nazi SS officer.

He killed 20,000 slave labor to build the infamous V-2 rockets that later terrorized London.

Meet Wernher von Braun: Nazi mass murderer turned American hero and the dark secret NASA doesn't want you to know 🧵

In 1945, as Germany fell, the US launched Operation Paperclip - a covert program to recruit Nazi scientists before the Soviets could get them.

Over 1,600 German experts were brought to America.

Many were war criminals. All had their records "sanitized."

Von Braun wasn't just any Nazi scientist. He was SS-Sturmbannführer von Braun.

He developed the V-2 rocket that terrorized London, killing 9,000 civilians.

The rockets were built at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp using slave labor from Buchenwald.

Read 17 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 2

Africa loses $88.6 billion every year to Western corporations.

That's more than all foreign aid and investment COMBINED flowing into the continent.

While you're donating to "save Africa," multinational giants are literally stealing it blind.

Here's the heist nobody talks about 🧵

Shell, Total, and mining corporations didn't get rich by playing fair.

They use something called "transfer pricing" - selling Africa's diamonds, gold, and oil to their own shell companies at fake low prices.

Result? Billions in profits recorded in tax havens. Zero taxes paid in Africa.

The math is staggering:

Between 2000-2015: $836 billion stolen from Africa
Gold alone: 77% of all illicit flows
Tax revenue lost to havens: $9.6 billion annually

That's enough to educate every African child. Instead, it's funding London penthouses.