America’s stupid-ass space weapons plan
It will be late, it will be too expensive, and it won't work. Other than that - amazing!
President Trump has announced a plan to deploy military technology in space, called Golden Dome. It’s supposedly modelled after Israel’s Iron Dome defense system but, you know, in outer space—using missiles or lasers (pew! pew!) to shoot down ICBMs.
I know a little bit about space tech, though not nearly as much as this guy, and I see a few problems with the plan. President Trump says Golden Dome will be operational before his current term ends, which is complete nonsense. Much of the technology needed to make a satellite-based weapons array a reality has yet to be invented.
Cost is another issue. Trump claims his Golden Dome will cost around $175 billion, but realistically, it would require a trillion-dollar budget—possibly multiple trillions, depending on how much pork the big military contractors and satellite companies can squeeze (oink) from American taxpayers.
Putting weapons in space also contravenes international law—specifically, the Outer Space Treaty. It’s a pretty solid and somewhat idealistic agreement, ratified in 1967, which is why it reads like it was written by someone living on the Haight-Ashbury. The treaty is a strong piece of legalese that prohibits placing bigly weapons in space and emphasizes that space should be used, like, peacefully, man.
But perhaps the biggest problem with Trump’s Golden Dome is that it simply won’t work. Technology has advanced since Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), aka “Star Wars,” but not by enough. Using lasers for inter-satellite or satellite-to-Earth communications is the future of the telecom industry, and it isn’t easy. Trump is talking about shooting down ICBMs travelling at 15,000 miles an hour (unless the plan is to shoot them before they even take off? Which would open a whole other raft of escalation issues).
None of this seems to matter to the current administration. Whether the Golden Dome works (it won’t) or not, the military-industrial complex will still be paid, and it’s evident that this is the motivation behind much of what is occurring in the US at present.
Moreover, can America just not provoke another expensive, pointless arms race? As someone who travels extensively, I can tell you that the rest of the world is getting pretty sick of your kill-crazy, America fuck yeah nonsense.