The Golden Dome missile defense system is intended to protect America—but Democratic lawmakers argued yesterday that it would have the opposite effect.
“It’s a gold-plated boondoggle that will enrich defense contractors and ignite a new nuclear arms race,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said yesterday in a press conference. “Golden Dome would push Russia and China to expand their arsenals, reject arms control treaties, and plunge the world into a terrifying new arms race.”
War gaming: Markey’s comments were tied to the release of a report written by three nonprofit or nonpartisan organizations working to prevent nuclear war. In the report, researchers studied a simulated missile attack, and found multiple holes in the proposed Golden Dome architecture.
The report analyzed a system capable of intercepting 80% of incoming attacks—what it calls an “unrealistically optimistic goal” given the track record of 40 years of missile defense systems, and the complexity of the near-peer missile threat. The report found this scenario would leave 132 targets across the US—home to 75M people—vulnerable to being wiped out.
Researchers also questioned the cost estimates for the program’s SBI component. Laura Grego, senior research director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that at least 24,000 SBIs would be needed to block an incoming attack of just four ICBMs launched within minutes of each other.
“Strategic ballistic-missile defenses, such as those proposed as part of the Golden Dome initiative, are often marketed as a humane alternative to deterrence,” Grego said at the press conference. “There really is no prospect for building an effective missile-defense system against a realistic attack by nuclear long-range missiles, in the foreseeable future.”
The resulting fall-out from a robust attack on US soil would cripple the electrical grid, destroy the food-distribution network, and lead to over 1B deaths worldwide in the months following an attack, argued Ira Helfand, who is the report’s principal author as well as cofounder of the US affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
Money for nothing: No matter the price tag, lawmakers argued that the US should pursue diplomatic channels in lieu of funding a system that can’t promise 100% effectiveness.
“We demand that the majority in Congress listen to the scientists, listen to the CBO, listen to the public, be the servants of a people’s democracy—not a vanity of an egomaniac. We must not fund the Golden Dome; invest in arms control, not another arms race,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said at the press conference.
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NASA has potentially funded or supported hundreds of scientific collaborations since 2015 that might involve Chinese researchers, a new Congressional report says.
The House Select Committee on China’s report, released Thursday, says these collaborations may violate the Wolf Amendment, which is a law that prohibits NASA from working with Chinese researchers.
Context: NASA and OSTP cannot use government money to collaborate with China or Chinese-owned companies under the amendment, unless Congress and the FBI authorizes an exception. The amendment is named after former Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA), who led its adoption in 2011 and who also wrote the new report’s foreword.
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