Space Security:

Is the Golden Dome Fit for Earth’s Strategic Stability?

· By Julia Salabert ·

“It’s an evil world out there.” —U.S. President Donald Trump

Direct deterrence—the effort to discourage attacks on a country’s territory, notably by reducing the chances of success while increasing the costs of aggression—arguably became “an afterthought in U.S. strategy toward most regions of the world”. Discussions in Washington in recent years, triggered by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, however, reflected a renewed interest in the approach. The most recent evidence of this is U.S. President Donald Trump’s new security flagship initiative, Golden Dome, which was unveiled in an executive order and detailed in an Oval Office address that described it as the latest example of pursuing “peace through strength”.

Inspired by former President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” project, which was abandoned in 1993, and Israel’s “Iron Dome”, the Trump White House introduced Golden Dome as the answer to some of the most critical national security challenges facing the United States today. These include the increasing sophistication of newly developed offensive weapons by adversaries such as Russia, China, and North Korea, and the growing weaponization of space. These challenges have arisen amid the obsolescence of a 20-year-old American ballistic missile defense infrastructure and the near-total stagnation of international arms control efforts, part of a broader trend of eroding global governance structures.

The Golden Dome Architecture

Conceptually, the Golden Dome is not merely a space-based missile defense system but an impenetrable and infallible “system of systems” designed to ensure the security of almost all U.S. territory, even from “peer or near-peer” adversaries and highly advanced missiles, including nuclear ones or those launched from space.

Congress has just been briefed on the Golden Dome’s initial budget, and the U.S. Northern Command and Space Command are still working on a draft capabilities document for the initiative. But it is already clear that the goal is to achieve U.S. territorial invulnerability through a constellation of several hundred detector satellites. These would locate missiles and their launch infrastructure on land, in the sea, in the air, and in low-earth orbit, precisely track their post-launch trajectories, and intercept them using kinetic (e.g., missile interceptors) or non-kinetic (e.g., lasers) means. Proponents of the effort argue that “breakthrough technologies have now made something like Golden Dome possible,” fulfilling Reagan’s vision. Still, the challenge to stitch together all the components and nodes, some of which have yet to be developed, to enable communication, coordination, and response within milliseconds, is colossal

Political Feasibility

The need to increase U.S. territorial security is broadly supported in Washington, but the means to achieve it are, as is often the case these days, deeply contested along partisan lines. Amid fierce debates about federal budget cuts, Golden Dome’s staggering cost, potentially reaching $1 trillion, unleashes significant anxiety due to its potential to threaten funding for other government responsibilities such as health care or education.

To reduce costs, proposals have emerged to assign satellites a “day job”. This would give them a role beyond missile tracking, perhaps even one for commercial purposes. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already proposed offering Golden Dome as a “subscription service,”  where the government would pay for accessing the technology. It is one among several options that U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein is considering.

The SpaceX proposal implies that the United States’ most critical defense system may not be government-owned. It also raises important questions about the immense economic windfall that the project represents for powerful space, and tech industry players, the owners of which are long-time Trump supporters. They include Musk’s SpaceX, Peter Thiel’s Palantir, and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Industries. As part of Golden Dome’s military-civil fusion model, Anduril’s artificial intelligence (AI) and sensors would support enemy missile identification and interception. Palantir would centralize and analyze the vast data streams, and SpaceX would provide most of the space hardware.

But this aspect raises Golden Dome’s domestic political cost. In a letter addressed to the U.S. Department of Defense inspector general, Democratic lawmakers have already expressed concern “about whether defense contracts to build a Golden Dome [were] an effective way to protect Americans or [were] meant to enrich Mr. Musk and other elites".

The Need for Bipartisan Reconciliation

Given Trump's sway over Congress, bipartisan friction may not appear to be an immediate concern. However, the likely long-term horizon for Golden Dome’s implementation also makes broad political agreement on the initiative critical. The administration expects the Golden Dome to be “fully operational by the end of [Trump’s] term”, drawing comparisons to the Manhattan Project, which was completed in six years. But this optimistic timeline overlooks the wartime urgency that drove the development of the atomic bomb and the arguably much stronger political unity on defense matters at the time. Considering that Golden Dome depends on many significant technology breakthroughs, and in the face of high failure rates in space innovation, deployment may well occur long after Trump’s second term.

Launching such an ambitious and costly initiative without securing even a minimal degree of bipartisan support risks undermining the project’s credibility and durability. In a democratic system in which political leadership can change every four years, enduring deterrence requires cross-party consensus to ensure strategic continuity.

Geopolitical Consequences

Golden Dome’s seismic impact extends far beyond U.S. borders. It could rattle global stability by shifting U.S. nuclear doctrine from a “deterrence-by-punishment” equilibrium marked by mutual vulnerability to a credible one-sided “deterrence-by-denial” system. If achieved at scale, this protection could allow the United States to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons, especially as Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism towards these costly “big monsters”. Such transitions, however, hold serious consequences for competitors’ and allies’ strategic thinking. 

For adversaries, in an international landscape marked by rivalry, one state’s pursuit of invulnerability becomes another’s catalyst for adaptation. The perceived U.S. attempt to insulate itself from second-strike retaliation is likely to accelerate competitors’ qualitative and quantitative investments in overcoming the defense system by, for instance, developing “exotic” superweapons. China has already accused the United States of violating the Outer Space Treaty’s principle of peaceful use, to which both are signatories. Other peer competitors could exploit the U.S. proposal as an opportunity to build their own dual-use (defensive and offensive) invulnerable defense system. In such a scenario, not only could a rival’s system undermine or even neutralize the U.S. missile defense network, but it would also erode global strategic stability by leaving less protected states vulnerable to coercion by missile shield-armed great powers. 

For U.S. allies, the Golden Dome raises fundamental issues. Canada has already expressed its willingness to join the initiative as an independent partner, while President Trump implied that only U.S. statehood would guarantee equal access and favorable costs. As such, the consequences and opportunities for even more distant partners remain unclear. Technologically advanced actors could benefit from participation through ground-based or space-based contributions that may strengthen cooperation. In addition, Trump’s executive order suggests that Golden Dome could be extended to protect American troops in Europe and Asia. In this scenario, the system is likely to be compatible with the U.S. Space Force’s international partnership strategy. 

Pessimistic observers, however, worry that Golden Dome could increase U.S. isolationism. It may signal U.S. abandonment of its allies or a shift in the country’s strategic priorities away from partners excluded from the system’s protection, leading to what some call “alliance elasticity”. In this scenario, cohesion erodes, and countries begin to hedge, diversify, or pursue alternative security arrangements. They may, for example, develop their own nuclear capabilities for deterrence. 

From Defense to Diplomacy: A Last Chance for Space Governance 

Whether or not Golden Dome is eventually successful, it has already achieved drawing significant global attention to space governance. At a time when AI, missile technology, and low-earth-orbit systems are rapidly outpacing norms and rules designed to regulate them, and geopolitical tensions are escalating, Washington could seize the considerable international interest its proposal has attracted, into a political momentum aiming at strengthening global strategic dialogue. 

If effective deterrence is the ultimate goal, U.S. policy must rely on more than offensive technological threats and prioritize managing potential aggressors’ motivations and allies’ anxiety. Achieving this often requires shaping the broader geopolitical context to ease adversaries' concerns and to raise the political costs of aggression. Deterrence is truly effective when sufficient capabilities are paired with credible political reassurance, making aggression unnecessary and counterproductive. Dialogue on space security, even with Russia and China, could, therefore, be revived. 

As such, though framed as a defense initiative, the Golden Dome may offer just enough leverage to bring key actors back to the diplomatic table—and spark the contours of a new strategic deal. The sooner this can start, the better.