Editor's Note: ...on public records, federal court filings, and published reporting. No original interviews were conducted. All factual claims are drawn from the following primary sources: Executive Order 14338, "Improving Our Nation Through Better Design," signed August 21, 2025, and published in the Federal Register, Vol. 90, No. 163, pp. 41759-41760; federal court dockets including AFSCME v. Social Security Administration (D. Md., No. 1:23-cv-00596), EFF/Lex Lumina v. OPM (S.D.N.Y., filed February 11, 2025), New York v. Trump (S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-cv-01144), Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent (D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00313), and AFL-CIO v. Department of Labor (D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00339); reporting by Bloomberg News, Wired, Reuters, NBC News, The Daily Beast, TechCrunch, Federal News Network, FedScoop, and FedTech Magazine; the Congressional Research Service report LSB11370 on Privacy Act lawsuits and DOGE; and official government websites including ndstudio.gov and americabydesign.gov. The author has no financial or professional connection to any individual or organization named in this report.
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THE INVISIBLE STUDIO
How the Trump Administration Built a Shadow Tech Agency Inside the White House,
Armed It With DOGE Veterans, Handed It Access to 27,000 Federal Websites,
and Asked No One's Permission
* * *
An Investigative Report
May 2026
The Executive Order No One Read
On August 21, 2025, President Donald Trump signed
Executive Order 14338, formally titled Improving Our Nation Through Better Design. It was published in the Federal Register on August 26, 2025, in Volume 90, Number 163, pages 41759-41760. It created a new White House agency called the
National Design Studio (NDS), established the position of Chief Design Officer of the United States, and quietly set in motion one of the most sweeping and least scrutinized reorganizations of how Americans interact with their own government. Most Americans have never heard of it. That is not an accident. When a billionaire Airbnb co-founder designs how Americans file their taxes, renew your passports, and collect their Social Security, the government has not been modernized. It has been acquired.