Trump’s “Golden Dome” Won’t Work—but It’ll Make Elon Musk Richer

This is all nonsense, of course. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a Golden Dome system would cost as much as $831 billion over two decades. Scientists warn that even if all the complex technology and computer software works flawlessly, an adversary could defeat the defenses by simply launching a salvo of missiles that would overwhelm the system and deploying basic countermeasures that could spoof the sensors.

Whether the systems works or not doesn’t matter for the contractors who get rich on contracts to design, develop, and deploy these weapons. That may be why Musk has partnered with two other companies owned by Trump supporters, software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril, to help design and build the system. Musk’s company estimates that the initial design contracts alone could be worth between $6 billion and 10 billion, according to Reuters.

Think of it as a “pump and dump” scam, where investors buy a cheap stock, inflate its value with hype and exaggerated expectations, then get rich by selling the stock at the inflated levels. Here, contractors and their government supporters take an old, devalued concept, pump up its value with exaggerated promises of instant success, secure big, multiyear contracts to build it, then get even more contracts for more systems when the ones they built don’t work.