There’s a little-known White House office called the National Design Studio, created by executive order in August 2025 and led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia. It has built or taken over at least 45 federal .gov websites while operating completely outside the privacy, procurement, and oversight rules that govern every other federal IT office.
There's no inspector general, no procurement trail, and records that could stay sealed for 12 years. The whole apparatus sits inside the White House (metaphorically, and maybe physically??), which conveniently puts it beyond the reach of congressional oversight.
This is the kind of story that starts small: a byline in a footer, a domain name, and certificate logs that pointed away from congressional oversight and toward the executive branch. In this conversation, we start where the reporting started, with a byline in the footer of TrumpRx.gov, and follow the certificate transparency logs to NDS preview sites for vote.gov, an FBI Charlie Kirk tip line, a passport portal, and more, none of them publicly authorized by the agencies involved.
From there we get into the surveillance infrastructure embedded in these federal sites, the DOGE-to-NDS personnel pipeline, and why an operation this consequential lives inside the White House with no real oversight.
Thank you to WAJ from THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali for having me on and getting into all of it. This story deserves as much air as it can get, because it touches nearly every federal agency we interact with online. The full reporting is linked below. Read it first, then come back and watch.
📄 Read the full reporting first (all sources at the bottom):
📺 More on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thedreydossier
