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The National Design Studio
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the The Tech Right hub.
The National Design Studio
Silicon Valley's shadow IT layer for the federal government. A billionaire Airbnb co-founder, four federal websites, a live copy of the Social Security file, and a reporting line that routes around every oversight law written since 1974.
A parallel technology apparatus sits inside the Executive Office of the President, outside every law that would normally watch it.
Better forms is the cover story. The collection surface is the point.
The record, in order.
The studio is chartered under the same authority as DOGE, which places it outside Senate confirmation, Inspector General jurisdiction, and the federal contracting database.
Chartered as a 5 U.S.C. 3161 temporary organization. CISA records list the Executive Office of the President as registrant of its public sites; USAspending carries no record of it at all. Oversight runs through the White House Chief of Staff, not GSA, OMB, or the National Archives.
At DOGE he led the digitization of federal retirement records held on paper for OPM. He came to the studio with an announced roster of venture-capital endorsers.
Who stood up for it, on camera.
- Founders Fund / Peter ThielNamed backer of the studio, per Gebbia
- a16z / Marc AndreessenNamed backer; Andreessen also an 'unpaid intern' at DOGE
- 8VC / Joe LonsdaleNamed backer; Palantir co-founder
- Thrive Capital / Josh KushnerNamed backer
- Scott BelskyChairs the NDS Advisory Council, per Gebbia
DOGE moved a live copy of the Social Security NUMIDENT file, roughly 300 million Americans' identity records, to a cloud environment outside SSA oversight.
Charles Borges filed the allegation on the sworn record in August 2025. In January 2026 the DOJ's own Notice of Corrections admitted the third-party Cloudflare server it had earlier denied, corroborating him. Three separate SSA insiders have now placed the same concern on the public record.
The studio's federal websites record visitors with session-replay tools and a custom 539-line script, configured to slip past adblockers, with no privacy filing on the record.
The Guardian found PostHog session recording live on trumprx.gov and trumpaccounts.gov, a bespoke 'AutoMonitor' script shipping telemetry off ndstudio.gov to an address invisible on the public internet, and no Privacy Impact Assessment or System of Records Notice for any of it. EPIC's John Davisson called it 'a pretty clearcut violation of Section 208.'
One venture fund, a16z, is a named backer of the studio and the lead investor in Toka, an Israeli firm whose product alters networked camera footage and whose disclosed customer list includes the United States.
Nothing on the record puts a Toka product inside the studio. The network fact is the capital: the same fund invested in both. Toka's own pitch documents, obtained by Haaretz in 2022, sell three capabilities: Discover, Hack, Alter.
What we grade, and what we only pose.
- A live copy of the NUMIDENT file, outside SSA oversight.
- A White House-controlled passport portal and a copy of vote.gov.
- Session recording on federal sites, built to evade adblockers.
- Custom telemetry on ndstudio.gov, sent to a hidden address.
- The same DOGE operators, one reporting line to the White House.
- That the surfaces could be joined into one composite record on a citizen.
- That vote.gov previews could profile individual voter intent.
- That a16z's dual backing is a disclosable procurement conflict.
Whether a16z's public backing of both the studio and Toka meets the federal disclosable-conflict standard is, on the record, undisclosed.
Any federal conflict-of-interest disclosure addressing a16z's simultaneous backing of the National Design Studio and Toka, and a ruling on which body has jurisdiction to demand one.
Help us fill it →Why it matters now.
The capability is on the ground: identity, biometric, and voter surfaces under one White House reporting line, with no filing that accounts for them as a system. When the office that installed it sits outside every ordinary check, the burden of accounting for it does not go away. It just has nowhere to land.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenCan a session recording from trumpaccounts.gov, an identity from the passports.gov flow, and family links from NUMIDENT be joined into a single composite record on one citizen?
- OpenDoes a16z's public backing of both the studio and Toka meet the disclosable-conflict standard in federal procurement, and if so, where is the disclosure?
- OpenWhich body, GAO, OMB, the FEC, the FTC, or Congress, actually has jurisdiction to investigate an office the temporary-organization charter removes from Inspector General oversight and USAspending?