Golden Dome Idiocy
A "shield" against nuclear attack makes nuclear war more likely
Donald Trump has a dream: a “golden dome” over America to defend the country against nuclear missiles. It’s a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s dream, the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” after the movie. The problem is that the dream represents a nightmare.
How so? Golden Dome would be dangerously escalatory, wildly expensive, and unlikely to work as a "shield" to America. It is worse than a mistake: it is a crime. It represents a massive theft from those who hunger and suffer in America. As Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953, wasting enormous resources on weapons systems is no way of life at all. It is humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron. Crucifixion is not made more pleasant when the cross is golden.
Put differently, the Golden Dome is a golden idol, a false god, one that by making a massive nuclear strike more likely endangers all of us and God's creation.
Golden Dome is a grotesque example of makework militarism and warfare as welfare for weapons makers. Though it's unlikely to work, if it did (partially) it would make a massive nuclear strike more likely, not less, endangering the world with the ecocidal terror of nuclear winter.
Golden Dome and the so-called investment in America’s nuclear triad are both examples of socio-technological madness--America’s leaders are like the mutants in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," worshipping the bombs that twisted them and which can only destroy what's left of civilization.
Some Christians today await the apocalypse when Christ is supposed to return--but the most likely apocalypse features not the second coming of a God-man but a third world war featuring bomb-gods of thermonuclear destruction.
As Daniel Ellsberg once noted, U.S. nuclear attack plans in the early 1960s envisioned 600 million killed, or 100 Holocausts (before we knew such an attack would lead to nuclear winter). We're lucky this insanity never came to pass. The only sane policy is to cancel Golden Dome and end "investment" in a new nuclear triad. Disarmament, not rearmament, is what's needed.
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The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space has released a statement against Golden Dome that you can read here. You can add your name to the statement, as I have. Here are some bullet points released along with the statement:
Golden Dome is financially reckless and unsustainable. Early cost estimates range from $550 billion to several trillion dollars over two decades. This dwarfs even the Pentagon’s annual budget and adds to the US’s $37 trillion national debt—a price tag that makes the project fiscally indefensible.
Experts overwhelmingly agree that 100% effective missile interception is a fantasy, especially against complex attacks involving decoys, hypersonic missiles, and maneuverable warheads. Even Israel's Iron Dome has been bypassed by more rudimentary drone and missile attacks.
Golden Dome includes space-based interceptors—effectively weaponizing the Earth’s orbit and triggering an arms race. This violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty and pushes nations like China and Russia to accelerate space weapons development.
By giving the illusion of first-strike survivability, it runs counter to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine that has prevented so far a nuclear holocaust and incentivizes other powers to retain or expand their nuclear arsenals, blocking disarmament efforts permanently.
Thousands of rocket launches for satellite interceptors would further damage the ozone layer, could generate dangerous orbital debris (Kessler Syndrome), and will harm our already fragile space environment.
The only guaranteed winners of Golden Dome are weapons giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, which stand to profit enormously regardless of the system’s effectiveness or risks.
The trillions funneled into Golden Dome could be used for urgent domestic priorities—such as healthcare, infrastructure, climate action, and education, directly benefiting millions of Americans.
In short, Golden Dome is a massive, dangerous, and futile vanity project, cloaked in patriotism but driven by profit, politics, and illusion.
You know you're getting older when you see the same techno bullshit come around again.
When I first heard of this idiocy, my first thought was that it was sold to Trump with the notion that it would be ready in 2-3 years and that his name would be attached to it for all time - something sure to play to his narcissism.
That it would never work is beyond doubt - but there will be fortunes made in the interim. The only thing certain is that the intent to build it further takes the world - and humanity's survival - away from future arms control talks and treaties with both China and Russia. We have no leaders - only madmen and grifters.