They've already built the bunker

Is Donald Trump building a bunker under the ballroom for himself?

In my opinion, no. Relying on the words of a self-aggrandizing, potentially senile, and increasingly paranoid man is a fool's errand. It does not explain why courts have permitted "security-related" underground construction to proceed and it does not explain why Congress has made major appropriations to fund a similar—and equally vague—scope of work. No, a wealth of credible evidence shows that whatever secure facility is under construction at the White House is only one component in a vast and decades-old continuity of government project begun after the September 11th attacks.

Proof of it is visible in the image at the top of the page: an opening in a concrete foundation wall.

Whatever is on the other side of that aperture is an open secret in Federal planning circles. The scope and extent of the facility is generally left to rumors, but its existence is quietly accepted. Washington is a town full of secrets and has been for a long time. Indeed, the version of the East Wing that Trump tore down was itself built to conceal a secret: the construction of the compound's original bunker. Why would its replacement be any less clandestine?

Built at the beginning of World War II, the old air raid shelter actually sat just to the south of the modest neoclassical pavilion, under some shrubbery. Over the years and several renovations, the facility was renamed the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. It is where Trump himself reportedly spent the evening of May 29th, 2020 there, as the George Floyd protests surged. Visitors report that the space was cramped and shabby. More importantly, DC's obsessive culture of security is never satisfied. Consequently, plans to modernized the PEOC have followed every major crisis, including more outlandish plans like the 1960s nuclear-resistant Deep Underground Command Center, or DUCC.

The thing is, there is good evidence they did build something like the DUCC, and the press reported on it. In fact, one of Trump's buddies, conservative journalist Ronald Kessler stated in a 2018 book and also in interviews, that a new bunker facility was completed at the end of the Obama presidency and that Trump has toured it. The media, for their part, treated this new structure with a wink and a nod: an open secret among the "savvy." After all, the White House Press Corps had watched it get built right under their nose, or rather their feet.

What I hope to show in this post is that they were mistaken: the huge mess that they saw in the 2010s was a noisy misdirection for a much, much bigger project that the government simply could not hide. Now that Trump is claiming credit for the bunker, the attention on this new component may only bury the larger whole beneath the hole. That curious door in a foundation wall is the way down.

9/11 framed the problem

DC came to a standstill on September 11th, 2001. The metro was shut down. I remember watching long streams people in business attire walk by my school as I waited to be picked up. Driving was even worse, with rush hour traffic colliding into school pickup, emergency closures, and people just trying to get out of town. According to reporting at the time, security agencies felt this gridlock proved it would be difficult to evacuate the President in either a conventional or terror attack. The President would have to shelter in place.

So began a new round of top-secret planning to ensure on-site continuity of operations at the White House. What the complex faced was a problem basically every community in the US deals with: it had obsolete infrastructure. This is what they told the press in 2010, and, you know what, I think it's true. It's just that sometimes the best way to conceal something is to tell the truth about something else. Even better, is to attract attention with a third thing. This is what I believe happened with something known as the "White House Big Dig."

The Big Dig was a construction project that involved major infrastructure upgrades all around the complex, mostly from 2010 to 2012. The most visible portion of this project was a very large hole dug on the north side of the West Wing. The work garnered a lot of attention because it temporarily displaced "Pebble Beach," a paved part of the North Lawn where TV journalists report to camera.

However, I have never seen a photograph of that project that looks like a fifty-foot deep (minimum) hole. High-resolution images of the excavation are hard to come by, however, the bottom of the hole appears to be visible in the photo above, roughly 20-30 feet below ground, assuming the steel piles are spaced 6'-8' apart, per industry standards. They certainly built something there, but I doubt it is the bunker described by Kessler. Also, the dates don't line up with Kessler's claim. The northwest pit's 2012 completion date comes in the middle of the Obama presidency, not the end. And even at the time, sources were telling the press that there were future phases to come, including one at the East Wing.

A clue to what Kessler was actually talking about was actually right down West Executive Avenue. While the press corps was joking about the hole in front of their eyes, they weren't talking about the sheds.

Two sheds, united in mystery

In the sequence of Google Earth historic aerials below, we see the site before construction in 2005, at the beginning of the Big Dig in 2010, and then after it had wrapped up in 2013. Notice the two structures that appear south of the East and West Wings.

If you go and check this out yourself, you will see that the east shed appears sometime before 2007, doubles in size in 2013, and then is gone by the spring of 2016. The west shed appears in late 2007, and wraps up around the same time as the Big Dig in 2012. You can also see a lot of utility work going on around the complex, as claimed. Now, maybe google is just busted, but I can only find the sketchiest discussions of these shed structures or the general scope of utility work.

In the absence of anything else, let's look at aerials more closely.

The West Wing shed

South of the West Wing is a semi-buried structure with a green roof, containing the Navy Mess and the White House Situation Room. It was originally built by FDR as part of his renovations to the West Wing, and initiated the Federal Government's long tradition of stuffing things underground instead of admitting that its needs have grown. The situation room is both a specific room and also a suite of highly controlled support spaces. This suite was renovated and expanded between 2006 and 2007, including major expansions. South of this structure is the White House's swimming pool. Built in 1975, it was renovated abruptly in 2002. The poolhouse actually appears to sit on top of the Situation Room suite and supposedly has an access stair to below so the president slip in for a dip discreetly.

If we look at the aerials, we can see the white shed structure appear around the time of the Situation Room renovation in 2007. It similarly appears to touch the retaining walls of the pool that was rebuilt in 2002. After it disappears, two grated areaways remain. Some kind of infrastructure was built in this location at this specific time, and it was more sensitive than the rest of the infrastructure work around the White House, which was conducted using ordinary pits and trenches.

The East Wing shed(s)

Almost directly across the South Lawn stood the east shed, with its 2007 and 2013 phases. Its expansion is very interesting, since the structure extends to an area directly south of the former East Wing. This secluded lawn East Wing was the supposed location of the World War II bunker, the PEOC. In the sequence of aerials below, you can see what appear to be areaways covered by grilles, which I have highlighted in magenta. These show up in the earliest imagery available on Google Earth, the Historic American Buildings Survey, and remain in imagery taken in late 2025, during early ballroom excavation, so I think they give us a good sense of where the PEOC sat.

It's very interesting that the east structure is dark-colored, unlike the one on the west side. I think this is because East Executive Avenue, the locked-off street between the East Wing and the Treasury Building doesn't get much press attention. In fact, I have been unable to find photos down EEA from the Bush and Obama years. In contrast, Presidents regularly embark and disembark from their motorcades on West Executive Avenue (as in the photo with Obama above), so it gets a lot of press coverage. It's possible officials simply decided they couldn't hide the west structure, just like they couldn't hide the Big Dig hole. On the East Side, closer to the PEOC, they clearly wanted to be more discreet.

The same discretion applies to work that appears to happen atop the PEOC between 2017 and 2020. It could be landscaping, it could be repairing the PEOC's waterproofing, or it could be something more substantial.

Dig in

Unfortunately, discretion gets a lot harder when someone decides to build a big ballroom around the thing you're trying to conceal. That is clear in aerial imagery acquired by ABC on May 28th, 2026, when foundation work on the bunker and ballroom were nearing completion. On the north side of the construction site, the outlines of the foundation closely match the footprint of the ballroom. On the south side, the line of excavation jogs in and out as it plunges deeper. That the southwest corner is angled is intriguing, but we're not ready to talk about that. For now, let's focus on the shape of the area that has been left unexcavated.

As you can see above, it roughly corresponds to the footprint of the east sheds. More importantly, that mysterious opening that hovered behind the president seems to lead directly into this "unexcavated" area—which is marked by a strange, dark circle. When we look at a photograph taken in early March, when excavation was in full swing, it is clear that the north "unexcavated area" is a structure that already sat in the ground. Although employing the same shoring as the rest of the pit, the steel soldier piles are significantly rusted and lagging

Although shored with a similar same soldier pile-and-lagging system as the rest of the pit, the piles are heavily rusted and the lagging is totally rotted. They have been in the ground for a while. Behind them are other components of a "blind" foundation assembly, namely a torn black drainage board or geotextile and a white polymer waterproofing membrane. The membrane that has been patched with the same Blueskin asphalt-polymer membrane as the mysterious door. Based on their depth below surface, I suspect these were penetrations for in-ground utilities.

The other thing to notice is the very large concrete piles required to support the enormous and opulent ballroom. None are present in footprint of that northern structure. (Nor the zone with the plywood barriers, but like the angled shoring, that area is one we're going to have to have to come back to.) What is clear is that there is some kind of structure in the ground. It is waterproofed, so it's not just a sewer or an old foundation. And seen at May 19th press conference, it may have connected to the old PEOC and seems to connect to the new bunker.

In truth, I thought this was something else until I happened upon a clue by a stroke of pure luck. I am a man of routine and superstition, so I always walk home through the center of Dupont Circle at around 6:05 PM. I consider chalk graffiti to be bad luck, so if I see some on the ground, I instead walk along the benches, and sometimes sit at the last one, because it is the shadiest. I took this route in happened back in June, and by a strange coincidence found a package with the word "BORE ME." I opened it, to see if I could return it, and imagine my surprise that it offers an incontrovertible clue to what this structure is.

Drilling down on one clue

The clue comes in the form of a technical white paper given at the North American Society for Trenchless Technology's 2016 conference, the No-Dig Show. The presentation, titled "Latest Technology Used on Record Breaking Curved Drive Microtunnel and Other Unique Requirements" describes driving an 84" diameter tunnel through a "high security classified location" in Washington, DC.

The project by Huxted Trenchless described matches the East Wing site both through its dates and the dizzying array of unusual constraints that faced the constructors. First, in terms of timing, the report says that preliminary design was approved in 2012. This is ahead of erection of the second shed in 2013. It also says that the project was recently completed, aligning with the deconstruction of the East Wing sheds by 2016. Second, the project parameters are exceptionally specific. The report highlights that "the microtunneling launch shaft, pipe laydown and slurry plant were located in two warehouse buildings," whose hoist height was limited to 20 vertical feet. This was done, the paper says, to not disrupt public walking tours that came within 10 feet." Indeed, between 2001 and at least 2020, public White House tours underwent security screening in a trailer at the south end of East Executive Avenue and then walked past the sheds to the East Wing. The congruence with what we know about the sheds is remarkable. But if construction occurred in 2013, that would be after the west shed was removed. So where was the other end this small tunnel?

The paper does not mention a terminus. Instead, it describes the tunnel as running 480' on a 700' radius. These dimensions match a really good candidate for the end: a deep shaft at the north end of East Executive Avenue, visible in aerials between 2014 and 2015. This is actually quite close to the location of the WMATA Red Line tunnels between Metro Center and Farragut North. WMATA's early technical documents specify segmented tunnels to have a 16'-8" interior diameter. Add the thickness of the tunnel liner and a 20' exterior dimension is reasonable. Sure enough, the report says that the bore had to "finish within 18 feet of the spring line of an existing 20 foot diameter tunnel." Once this shaft is taken for an end, another detail in the paper falls in to place. It says that the tunnel had to "pass 16 feet below an existing pedestrian tunnel." This, to me, sounds like a steam/access tunnel built by FDR between the East Wing and the Treasury Building for an ad hoc precursor to the PEOC.

Put it all together, and it's just a perfect match:

Now, the shaft site was outside of the White House fence and I remember being very curious about what was going on in those two enclosures on the Pennsylvania Avenue plaza. But clearly, I was not curious enough. After all of the very visible utility work on the west side, the government went for extreme secrecy on the east. The report says they were originally considering a more visible approach, a precast culvert closer to the surface. And it went further once they chose to proceed with microtunneling, as "pipe had to be covered prior to the delivery to the work site," stabilizing the ground required grout injection that slowed the boring, and working entirely inside a shed presented a lot of minor challenges.

It is a lot of work to stay discreet, especially for the purpose stated in the report: conveying 4" and 5" electrical conduits. Again, the justification is that it is a utility project. Perhaps the government was connecting the PEOC to the public electrical grid in public space, and wanted to avoid drawing attention to this vulnerability (and the PEOC in general). Perhaps the east and west sheds were part of similar microtunneling operations.

But if this is the case, we still haven't located the facility described by Kessler. Perhaps the next clue can be found in the most cryptic constraint mentioned in the Huxted paper, that it had to "come within 2.5 feet horizontally of an underground structure." It seems unlikely this is referring to the PEOC, since the launch shaft seems to be to the east of that bunker. Is there something else down there?

A ship that leaks from the top

Something else indeed seems to have been implied at the January, 2026 National Capital Planning Commission meeting. In an awkward exchange, The commission's chair, White House staff secretary Will Scharf asked ballroom architect Shalom Baranes about security considerations during excavation. Baranes responded by saying they were being sensitive towards the "infrastructure" on site. Unusually unsubtle for NCPC, that stilted allusion clearly indicates to me the presence of something that is not the PEOC, which was clearly demolished. Clearly, it cannot be the new bunker, since new construction would not be in its own way.

More clues came at the preposterous presser held in front of the bunker on May 19th. His statement seems plausible to me as the area is crossed by steel tube bracing that is required when excavation is sufficiently deep. This is a common temporary feature, and it will be removed eventually. Interestingly, the bracing is south of a guard post at the old East Wing's driveway. If you look up at the aerials, you will see that structure is almost directly east of the grates I identify as part of the old PEOC. Therefore, the new shelter must be fully to the south of the old site. This means it is aligned with the south end of the east shed, and whatever work was done inside.

But if the deep, post-9/11 facility described by Kessler exists, why did they need to build this bunker? Why replace the PEOC? Why are they being so open about one of the most secure facilities in the world? I think we may be facing another loud misdirection.

Amid the rambling at the May presser, Trump said that the excavation went down 60 feet, with two or three stories already erected. For some reason, the White House was discreet until the lowest levels of the new structure were covered, and but then was willing to let Trump show off the work. What I want to argue for the rest of this post is that the bottom of the pit connected to a facility that had already been there for a decade: the facility Kessler described.

But if there is something at the bottom of that pit, how did they build it? The two sheds never seemed to generate much construction traffic. And there were never big enough pits to match the massive excavation required for the sort of facility Kessler alleges. Just think about how much dirt was excavated to build the ballroom. If they built a bunker the Obama years, where did all that dirt go?

For that, we have to follow the ballroom's spoil down to East Potomac Park.

The following section describes closely guarded secure sites. Do not attempt to access any of these facilities.

Imagine a really, really long submarine

The United States Navy has the closest relationship with the Presidency of all branches of the military. The president's doctor is frequently a naval physician. The West Wing kitchen is staffed by naval specialists. The president's vacation compound at Camp David is a Navy base. And the Vice President lives on the secure, perfectly circular campus of the US Naval Observatory.

With this in mind, it is worth paying attention to a facility that is known to be highly sensitive, top secret and run by the Navy: the East Utilities Plant.

The East Utilities Plant is a nondescript structure tucked between the NPS regional headquarters and the Long Bridge railroad tracks in East Potomac Park. It's tan and it's covered in what looks like EIFS. It could be mistaken for a park service garage, except that it's plastered with cameras, and surrounded by an opaque fence sprinkled with military no trespassing signs. There also appear to be six exhaust stacks sticking up from one roof, adjacent to some other kind of port. If we look at historic aerials, however, we can see that this building just the tip of the iceberg.

In the 2013 image, we can clearly see a deep structure in the footprint of what eventually becomes the building with exhaust stacks. We can also see a very deep shored pit to the northeast, perpendicular to a prefabricated metal building (or shed) with distinctive white stripes. This shed was erected by 2004 and was shortened to make room for the building with exhausts by 2013, when the two pits were started. Whatever was going on underneath that site was sensitive enough that, as the 2015 image shows, the permanent structure was constructed out of view, fully inside the shed. The Washington Post article above, and other reporting at the time, emphasized the that construction took the design review agencies by surprise, although they all came around. The articles also noted that the facility saw a steady stream of dump trucks and other heavy equipment, which seems to have lasted over a decade. Where was that dirt coming from?

For that clue, we need to look at another shed with those distinctive white stripes. This one appeared in 2002 on the grounds of the Naval Observatory.

This structure had a short but eventful life. Residents in the tony neighborhood complained of dump truck traffic and hard rock blasting. The gossip was that they were building a bunker for the Vice President. And then, by 2004 the construction wrapped up, leaving one nondescript structure on the site. In late 2005, a second one was added to its north.

I personally remember both the trucks and the rumors very well. I played sports on nearby fields (and screwed around as a teen in the general area). Unfortunately, I can't get very good imagery from the shed's brief existence. Whatever it is, it seems to have chronological and typological connections to the other mystery sheds.

This becomes very clear if we compare the structures side-by-side. In the image below, I have taken images of the structures at their maximum extent, all at the same scale. I aligned them on the long axis and overlaid a 25' grid.

Most of the buildings are 50' or so wide, and anywhere from 80' to 120' long. The northern building at the East Wing, is 50' wide and 120' long. The East Utilities Plant Site was around 100' wide and 150' long at its maximum size. Clearly, this more secluded project is the largest, not even including its multiple temporary outbuildings and eventual underground structure. But how about the schedule?

Again, the East Potomac Park site is the most consistent feature of the project. Some amount of construction activity is visible from 2004 to 2016: at least 12 years. The East Wing structure, especially if the Trump-era site work is included, lasted the almost as long. Relative to these long-lasting projects, the two most ballyhooed components of this project, the West Wing north structure and the Naval Observatory element, were under construction briefly. Yes, it is possible these projects include bunkers, but whatever they were doing at the East Potomac and East Wing sites was much more extensive. In fact, there is only kind of project I know of that involves long construction durations and very small surface sites: a tunnel.

Follow the water

Some of the best evidence for a tunnel is water: groundwater, specifically.

Between 2005 and 2012, three tanks of water sit scattered around the East Potomac Park site. To me, these look like settlement basins, which are used to remove sediments or other contaminants from water before it is released into the environment. They are very common when below-grade construction requires dewatering, i.e. pumping groundwater out to remain dry. Alternatively, they could be used clean the tunnel minings, or "muck." If this is their purpose, then they imply a tunnel was bored with either slurry or earth pressure balance (EPB) tunnel boring technologies, which use pressurized mud (natural or supplied) to temporarily stabilize their cutting face. This wet muck then has to be dewatered and filtered, perhaps with these tanks. EPB TBMs have been the predominant tunneling technology in central DC since the construction of the Green Line under the Anacostia in the 1990s. Beginning this summer, two will be used to bore a large sewer overflow tunnel through the Potomac Parks (notably dodging the East Utilities Plant), so it is reasonable to think one was used for this Navy project.

Irrespective of whether the tanks function for EPB TBMs or just general dewatering, the timing of their appearance in 2005 predates the erection of the sheds at the White House. Their removal in 2012 follows the demolition of the West Wing shed but precedes the expansion of the East Wing shed and the start of the major reconfiguration at the East Potomac site. These dates leave a window of up to 90 months of tunneling and excavation, over seven years. Is that enough time to tunnel the 20-30,000' to the Naval Observatory and do whatever else they were up to?

Relative to the other recent tunneling projects in DC, easily yes. Two 26'-diameter EPB machines were used to mine prior phases of DC's sewer overflow reduction project. One bored the 24,000' Blue Plains Tunnel over 23 months while another bored the 12,500' Anacostia River Tunnel over 12 months. That second machine was rebuilt and used to bore the 27,000' Northeast Boundary Tunnel through more challenging terrain over about 42 months, including a mid-tunnel tune up. So, with average speeds of 640-1040 feet/month, we can estimate that the TBMs would cover the 20'-30,000' distance to the NO in 20-47 months. The 90 month observed window is very comfortable.

(As an aside, I left the fourth, smaller machine out of this analysis, but take a minute to appreciate that they named a giant drill bit that moves slower than a snail after Bloomingdale-area woman and civil rights leader Lucy Diggs Slowe. C'mon!)

A little oopsie

Something else started happening in 2006 that builds the strongest case possible for a tunnel—at least between the East Utilities Plant and the White House.

Now, the western parts of the National Mall (East and West Potomac Parks) are 100% dredged sand and silt. The ground is almost worthless for foundations and prone to movement when water movement is also present. The history of the park is 130 years of settling problems. All major structures in the area around the Mall, like the Jefferson Memorial, rest on heavy foundations driven to bedrock. The pavement and embankments, however, rest on this unstable silt, sand, and sediment. In soils like this, water takes up space and can even modify the molecular geometry of the soil. Removing groundwater from soils like this therefore leads to consolidation, i.e. reduction in volume and therefore subsidence of the surface. If those tanks are settling tanks from a dewatering operation, the water must be coming from somewhere.

Well, in 2006, the National Park Service seems to have noticed the embankments and pavements to the north and west of the Jefferson Memorial (and even the building itself) were shifting and sinking. The west flank of the memorial area had always experienced some of the most severe settling around the Tidal Basin, where by 2002 high tide routinely overtopped the embankment, creating the famous dwarfed Cherry Blossom tree known as "Stumpy." The subsidence in 2006, however, was abrupt and rapid, affecting areas that had previously been stable. In geotechnics this is an emergency situation.

NPS commissioned reports and quickly secured money for major repairs of the area directly in front of the Jefferson Memorial. The rush to fix a surprise problem attracted the attention of DC's many watchdogs, busybodies, and gadflies. Their suspicion grew when NPS declined to release some of the project documents that were expected for design review. Eventually, one group retrieved and published documents using a Freedom of Information Act request. This included a geotechnical analysis by Schnabel Engineering, a well-established firm. And this, I think is the smoking gun for the tunnel.

I am not a geotechnical engineer, but I can understand the gist of a geotech report. Figure 47 shows a two-stage drop in "pore pressure," a measure of the hydrostatic (still) pressure of groundwater in a given soil. Drops in pore pressure are common when groundwater is being pumped out of an area, usually construction below the water table. As discussed above, this can lead to consolidation, and therefore the kind of subsidence that manifested around the Jefferson Memorial. These results are expected on construction sites that involved dewatering, requiring close monitoring to avoid damage to adjacent areas. Schnabel was unable to explain these drops with natural phenomena.

The other telling observation comes from inclinometers, which measure the displacement of a pipe drilled into the ground. The charts provided in Figures 44 and 45 show not only a severe shifting to the northwest close to the surface, but also a separate and very distinct displacement between 80 and 100 feet below grade. Again, I am no expert, but this is very unusual to encounter in ordinary foundation work. Based on research, the dynamics and shape of this movement appears to be consistent with displacement caused by tunneling. Instrument I-1 is to the west of instrument I-2, suggesting that a structure to the west of the memorial might be even deeper. Notably, the report's narrative does not describe this lower stratum of displacement and simply moves on after noting that natural dynamics cannot explain what is happening.

To be honest, I am surprised they released these figures at all; other parts of the report were redacted. Could it be disinformation meant to fool people like me who think they're savvy? Maybe! Welcome to the hall of mirrors. On your left you will see John le Carre and Graham Hancock in a hot tub, Bigfoot jerky is $12 an ounce.

It's an infrastructure project

I have been following this for fun since 2010, and ultimately, I have to hand it to the Navy. They did a good job of keeping whatever they did under wraps. I have asked government officials about the project, and while the way they told me nothing told me a lot, they still, at the end of the day, told me nothing. I suspect most of them had deduced what I have, but don't know much. What I outline above, to be clear, is the best I could do with information on the web: aerials, documents, posts, and websites. It is what they could not hide or wanted us to see, including the allies and adversaries of the United States.

All that I can do is speculate with my professional experience, historical knowledge, and this research. I will not pretend to have figured everything out. In fact, until Trump's remarks on March 29th, 2026, I assumed the entire project was completed in 2016. But maybe that GSA rep was telling the truth in 2010 after all: there was an East Wing phase yet to come.

Let me cook:

Between 2002 and 2016, the Navy built a tunnel between the East Utilities Plant, the PEOC at the White House, and the Naval Observatory. The principal construction site was the East Utilities Plant, which was used to launch one or more tunnel boring machines and remove mined spoil. The other two sheds concealed the connections from this tunnel to existing infrastructure. It is possible that it was mined entirely through bedrock, but it is also possible they used a hybrid TBM that ran through soft soils around the Tidal Basin.

Some kind of underground structure, presumably the bunker reported by Kessler, was mined from the tunnel below somewhere south of the PEOC. I think they mined upwards into the east shed to minimize disruption, conveying the excavated material to the East Utility Plant, where it was loaded onto trucks. The purpose of the shed's expansion in 2013 was to construct a connection between the existing PEOC and the new structure. The Trump-era work was related to upgrading parts of the PEOC that were not touched in this phase. Is this structure five stories below grade, or deeper? Hard to know, but I suspect it is in bedrock.

One or more tunnels were bored under the South Lawn, connecting the larger tunnel to the West Wing and the Situation Room, via passages added during the 2002 renovation of the pool and Situation Room. This connects these principal national security assets to the PEOC, both in terms of infrastructure and possibly for moving the President around. This also suggest that whatever structures were built under the west shed do not connect directly to the primary tunnel.

Alternatively, it's possible the bunker itself spans the South Lawn, and there are entrances on both sides. Perhaps in this case, the "infrastructure" alluded to by Baranes is not the bunker itself, but a connection that was put in place in anticipation of a future phase. Impossible to say.

Beyond building the new bunker, purpose of this tunnel is... infrastructure. Federal officials have described the project as an "infrastructure upgrade." They did extensive infrastructure upgrades around the White House at the same time. What appears to be the main facility is called a "utilities plant." I think the tunnel provides resiliency to the White House in the form of secure power, telecom, water, and hot/cold water. I am skeptical it provides air unless the tunnel itself is used as a plenum. It is difficult to move air miles in small ducts.

The East Utilities Plant supports the rest of the system. The exhaust stacks poking out of its roof look like diesel generators to me, albeit a unusual ones. The only things that looks like intakes are the adjacent, shorter cylinders. I would speculate that electrical switching equipment and diesel and water tanks occupy the bulk of the excavation that is visible in aerial photos. Even though this facility would not survive a nuclear strike, there are many other forms of attack on the White House for which the EUP can provide decentralized resilience.

The connection to the Vice President's residence is again, infrastructure. I suspect they make it possible to shelter in place under the same circumstances as the White House. If there is direct connection to the house, it was carefully concealed. Given the brief period of time that construction occurred here, I suspect that no TBMs were launched from the Observatory site and most of the construction was on a shaft into which a tunnel was driven. If a bunker was built, it was also mined from below, with spoils removed at the East Utility Plant. Similarly, the permanent structures appear to be too small to accommodate heavy lift cranes that could remove a TBM. If it is the end of the tunnel, the TBM was either buried in place or dismantled and brought back through the EUP. Perhaps the addition of the second structure in 2005 indicates a rough start date for tunneling.

I suspect the tunnel runs to the west of the Jefferson Memorial, in the area of the late, famous cherry blossom tree "Stumpy." This area has seen accelerated subsidence and was prioritized for reconstruction.

I have seen speculation online that the tunnel also runs to the Pentagon. Maybe, but I don't see evidence of it. Certainly, the Pentagon was gut renovated between 1998 and 2011—in addition to the total rebuild of the section destroyed during 9/11. If a shaft similar to the one built at the Naval Observatory was constructed, it could have been concealed in the renovation, even occurring under the existing building itself. This is pure speculation.

Does the tunnel contain a full size train system that allows VIPs to move around DC during a nuclear war, like Moscow's Metro-2? No, of course not, this was funded by the Bush Administration. It's Bus Rapid Transit.

How does the ballroom fit into this?

Per the GSA rep's comments from 2010 and Trump's from 2026, I believe that whatever continuity of operations work is being done as part of the ballroom project, it has been planned since 2001.

If I were a journalist investigating this, I would instead ask the following: did Trump's decision to build the ballroom trigger this long-awaited phase of the project, or did the military talk Trump into building a ballroom so they could complete their security facility? If it is the latter, they got the same outcome as all the other people who have tried to use Trump to advance their agenda. After decades of work and going to extraordinary lengths to draw as little attention to the sensitive project, the President can't stop talking about it. The Navy has a ship that leaks from the top—and the leaks will only get bigger as more imagery comes out.

Oh, and by the way, who built all the tunnel and Big Dig work? Well, it was a joint venture between two contractors with extensive experience in heavy infrastructure, secure facilities, and major historic renovations: Kiewit Corporation and the construction manager for the ballroom, Clark Construction.

What about other theories, like a data center?

I want to emphasize the mundaneness of this project. After 9/11, the government determined that the White House needed a safe place for the President to hide in an emergency and it needed secure utilities. Even when Trump runs his mouth about this project, he emphasizes the importance of protecting himself and other VIPs (people he hangs out with). What the White House does not need is an "AI data center." If that sounds plausible to you, this is a wakeup call. Clean up your information environment ASAP. This makes no sense, and I hate that I have to explain this—and I just wrote 4,000 words of crankery.

Now, there will no doubt be some kind of data frames and all manner of secure communications systems in the building. The White House is full of equipment whose purpose is strictly need-to-know. The DC area is full of secret facilities, SCIFs, gray sites, fronts, and on and on. Northern Virginia is a hub for data centers because three-letter agencies were massive early uses of the internet, and there are hardened fiber lines all over the place. So, until David Icke tells me where in the Gulf of Arabia I can find the Annunaki command center, I will assume DC is the spookiest place on the planet, full of "electrical closets" the janitor can't open.

But what I as an architect do not see is sufficient mechanical backend for some kind of 40,000sf autonomous AI server farm. The drawings do not show the kind of spaces required for rejecting the enormous amount of heat generated by data centers. Unless they are using an exotic HVAC system they don't even use at the the NGIA campus or NSA Utah facility, they would use cooling towers that need to exhaust to the open sky, and take in air from large areaways on all sides. Usually in data centers, these are fully outside the server enclosure or in exterior "wells" within the outer walls.

Similarly, there is no reason to place a critical data center underneath the biggest target on the planet. In fact, everything I've read about federal continuity of operations says they want to scatter critical infrastructure. The president's person is one of the few things that has to be at the White House. The idea that Trump is building a data center stems from the same presumption that he must have some plan, and that his lawless authoritarianism is systematic, when it is not.

I think it is more likely that Donald Rumsfeld built a portal to the Hollow Earth than that they're building an "AI data center." I think it is more likely that there is a crystal chamber where Susan Wiles goes to channel Atlanteans than that they are building an "AI data center." I thin it is more likely that the real Hillary Clinton is in a hibernation pod in the East Utilities Plant than that they are building an "AI data center." I am begging you, please try to figure out how the government actually thinks about continuity of operations and what data centers actually do.

In conclusion, I personally believe that intelligence agencies spread conspiracy theories to discredit nosy individuals and misdirect the public from merely secret activities. We know that UFO theories were promoted in order to conceal aircraft development: classic disinformation. In fact, I accept that what I take as evidence may be disinformation. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

Ultimately, the only entity that can get certainty about what is being built—and what was built—is Congress.

Last updated 6/29.