Hush-Hush Affair Love and other negotiations in the time of the NDA.

THE NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT IS designed to live in the shadows. But earlier this year, I started to notice them everywhere.

- Reeves Wiedeman

There was, of course, the NDA Donald Trump gave to Stormy Daniels, which was at the heart of his criminal trial and would now play a role in a second presidential election. In Silicon Valley, employees at OpenAI complained that the digital juggernaut of the moment was sending out NDAs that threatened to claw back their vested equity if they criticized the company. Lawyers representing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in their divorce were arguing all spring over who had tried to make whom sign the more onerous NDA. O.J. Simpson reportedly gave one to every member of his family before they could visit him on his deathbed. And in May, in a very modern cry for help, Miss USA demanded a release from her NDA through a cryptic Instagram post in which the first letter of each sentence spelled out i am silenced.

Those were just the NDAs that made headlines. In Vermont, a teacher at a Brazilian-jujitsu center was apparently requiring students to sign an NDA before receiving their black belt so they wouldn’t run off with his techniques. A 70-year-old woman in London convinced her local council to dim some streetlights that were keeping her awake and was then asked to sign an NDA so other residents wouldn’t be encouraged to bring further complaints. In Bhutan, where a government project to build a “Mindfulness City” had been shrouded in secrecy, a lawyer writing in the state newspaper argued that it was necessary to alter the country’s “traditional culture of gossiping and information sharing” and replace it with “a tool that is relatively new in Bhutan—the Non-Disclosure Agreement.” During an event at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, a professional wrestler who had been accused of signing one to cover up a backstage incident (he denies doing so) was taunted by fans with a thunderous chant: “NDA! NDA! NDA!”