Why Trump’s “golden dome” missile defense idea is another ripped straight from the movies

Reagan, by all accounts, believed that SDI would be the ultimate tool of peace for all nations, and he even offered to share the technology with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Trump, in contrast, sees Golden Dome as part of his “America First” brand. He has lamented that past American leaders supported the development of other missile defense projects abroad while neglecting to build similar security measures for their own country. The Golden Dome is both an expression of Trump’s belief that the world is leeching off America and a bargaining chip in negotiations toward a new power balance; Canada could be covered by the shield for free, he has said—in exchange for becoming the 51st state.

Trump has argued that America has been both demographically diluted by unchecked immigration and financially depleted by freeloading allied nations—undermining its security on both internal and external fronts. His first term’s marquee promise to build a wall on the southern US border, paid for by Mexico, aimed to address the former problem. That administration did build more physical barriers along the border (though US taxpayers, not Mexico, footed the bill). But just as important, the wall emerged as a symbolic shorthand for tougher immigration control. 

The Golden Dome is the second-term amplification of that promise, a wall that expands the concept of the “border” to the entire American airspace. Trump has projected an image of his envisioned space missile shield as a literal dome that could ward off coordinated attacks, including boost-phase interceptors from space and cruise- and terminal-phase interception by ground and air assets. When he announced the selected plan from the Resolute Desk in May, he sat in front of a mockup that depicted a barrage of incoming missiles being thwarted by the nationwide shield, depicted with a golden glow.

The Golden Dome’s orbital interceptors are supposedly there to target the early boost phase of missiles on or near the launch site, not over the United States. But the image of a besieged America, repelling enemy fire from the heavens, provides the visual and cinematic idea of both threat and security that Trump hopes to impress on the public.  

“This administration, and MAGA world, thinks about itself as being victimized by immigrants, government waste, leftist professors, and so on,” says Edward Tabor Linenthal, a historian who examined public narratives about SDI in his 1989 book Symbolic Defense: The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative. “It’s not much of a jump to be victimized by too many nations getting nuclear weapons.” 

Even in our era of entrenched political polarization, there is support across party lines for upgrading and optimizing America’s missile defense systems. No long-range missile has ever struck US soil, but an attack would be disastrous for the nation and the world. 

“We’ve come a long way in terms of missile defense,” says Tomero. “There has been a lot of bipartisan consensus on increasing regional missile defense, working with our allies, and making sure that the missile defense interceptors we have work.”

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Trump has challenged that consensus with his reversion to the dream of a space shield. He is correct that SDI failed to materialize in part because its envisioned technologies were out of reach, from a financial and engineering standpoint, in the 1980s. But the controversy that erupted around SDI—and that tarnished it with the derisive name “Star Wars”—stemmed just as much from its potential geopolitical disruptiveness as from its fantastical techno-optimism.