And Perhaps a Golden Ticket to Nuclear War
JUL 29, 2026
Golden Dome, President Trump’s ambitious dangerously escalatory missile defense shield, may cost Americans as much as $18 billion in the next fiscal year. According to my AI friends (perhaps soon to be running Golden Dome under the name of Skynet), here’s where the bulk of the money is slated to go:
- Missile Warning and Tracking: $6.8 billion to develop Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellations.
- Space-Based Interceptors (SBIs): $3.2 billion for initial contracts with defense developers like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril Industries.
- Space Domain Awareness: $1.6 billion specifically to monitor and safeguard the dome’s own network from adversarial threats.
- Personnel Expansion: Funding to hire 506 full-time civilian employees to accelerate homeland missile defense development.
What scares me the most about Golden Dome is that it might eventually work — somewhat. Thus it could weaken deterrence and increase the chances of a nuclear exchange.
Allow me to explain. In theory, the U.S. could attack a weaker nuclear state with an incapacitating “first strike,” with Golden Dome being used to intercept the few missiles/warheads remaining to the adversary. This scenario, more than possible under leaders like Trump and Hegseth, might force a cornered adversary to launch everything they have in an all-out strike on the U.S., with the goal of overwhelming whatever system is fielded under the Golden Dome moniker.
Fear of scenarios such as this led to the ABM Treaty that greatly restricted the deployment of missile defense interceptors. The policy of MAD, or mutually assured destruction, was kept in place as a form of deterrence. It’s grotesque but it worked. What would happen if one side with nukes had to worry far less about a nuclear attack because they possessed a shield or dome of sorts?
It’s certainly possible Golden Dome will never prove that effective while wasting colossal sums of money. Indeed, that might be the “best case” scenario. It’s also possible it could prove moderately effective, emboldening a nuclear power in possession of the same to threaten others, even as other nuclear powers, China for example, expand their arsenals and plans for a large-scale first strike.
The sensible way ahead is to scrap this ultra-expensive “dome” and to work toward negotiated reductions in nuclear weapons globally. You don’t need to intercept missiles and warheads if they’re never built.
Bracing Views 
Nuclear weapons / nuclear deterrence is one of the most insane and evil ideas to ever rattle around in a human skull. It is the epitome of insanity. The acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction is apropos.
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Just don’t understand it, Bill. Each and every single argument made against the Safeguard/Sentinel ABM system, back in the Johnson and Nixon years when that fraud and impossibility was afoot in Congress and this nation of ours, holds true today with Trump’s unconscionably fraudulent Golden Dome. Does anybody have any memory in Official America—the political class, the newsmedia, the intelligentsia? Certainly they are showing all the signs of historical illiteracy, an affliction we seem to have worse than any other peoples or nation. Thinking back, though, I don’t recall that much opposition from these folks to that USDA Certified Dunce Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars idiocies, but there was some, at least. Where are the voices in Congress against this? While the American academy is silent on this, however, we should all note all the academics who are in favor of this harebrained scheme of His Redheadedness, and get rid of them all from the academy or any brains-trade profession for being either stupid or whored-out, either of which should be grounds for removal from either profession, but, sadly, aren’t.
Thinking more still about it, ever since we shitcanned the ABM treaty (which went largely unnoticed by all and sundry) we’ve been working on, and deploying, dual-purpose ship and land based antimissile missiles, which are to a degree peddled as protecting us from the stray incoming ICBM warhead. Umm, er, uh, our latest round of glorious military adventures in the Middle East have shown them not to work against lesser targets than ICBM warheads. And the shameless hucksters for a new ABM system ignore this? As does everyone else, it seems.
It is all rather discouraging. The Military-Industrial Complex can’t come up with a turd that Congress won’t fund. We get stuck with the bill. And the consequences.
Best–
Dan ________________________________
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100% correct, Dan.
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It appears that the level of corruption is hovering around 100% and zero accountability. Perpetual wars, perpetual profits. No sane governance, no oversight because congress is also on the take, in bed. One big financial circlejerk. Ironically, the only way they’ll get to spend their $trillions is to offshore it to the First Intergalactic Infernal Bank of Hell. Happy trails.
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The landing of a man on the moon was a memorable achievement that astounded the world but was after all a stunt. Now we see technology advancing on all fronts not carrying man anywhere but instead leaving him behind. AI is the perfect example.
I haven’t heard anything about the pointless Man-to-Mars project lately, but I suspect this crazy idea to send bags of living tissue that demand a carefully controlled environment to a planet already being examined in detail by robots is still consuming money.
Climate change is the towering issue to mankind and all life on earth as it presents environmental alteration that not even worthy projects like the Nature Conservancy can handle. What is the point of buying up land for wildlife when the climate of that land will change leaving the wildlife in an alien environment from which they cannot migrate?
Are any of the hedge fund/private equity investors doing anything at all to address climate change? Is there a concerted, or any, action to reduce fossil fuel use? Does anyone think it strange that a 150 pound animal considers it normal to be moving around by him/herself in a several thousand pound metal box that releases 20 pounds of CO2 with each gallon of gasoline used?
If there is any assignment for technology it should be to address the climate change that technology has brought. Because nobody is willing to pay big money for this and profit rules, we march on to a warmer world, data centers adding to the problem through more energy consumption.
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GOLDEN DOME – GOLD WITH YOUR DOLLARS
“The sensible way ahead is to scrap this ultra-expensive “dome” and to work toward negotiated reductions in nuclear weapons globally.”
TOTALLY AGREE, BUT… YA’ THINK our dear MILITARY INDUSTRIAL CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX (and their BRIBERY DOLLARS) will go for that? Naah, you are too damned smart to think that!
“DEFENSE” contractors never had it so good.
Too bad they are costing us OUR VERY FUTURE to FUND THIS IDIOTIC CRAP!!
Also, the DOME Thingy didn’t seem to protect our so-called ally very recently; so… WHAT THE HELL! NOTHING CAN GO WRONG; Nothing can go wrong, noth…
This idiocy can easily lead to a Nuclear Exchange; or a SLOW DEATH by sacrificing the health and welfare of American citizens through cuts in Health Care and Social Security.
A CORPORATE CAPTURED CONGRESS (with help from a certain foreign nation) is burying us with their bottomless appetie for “campaign contributions”. Apparently, GREED, in this country absolutely knows no bounds and will eventually CONSUME US if no one has guts enough to stand up and halt it; or at least sloiw it down a tad.
BTW, Just exactly when did “NEGOTIATION” become a dirty word.
Jerry King
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