Is Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ feasible? A congressional supporter weighs in

Is there a point that you, accountants, and I know you're not the only decider in the mix here, kind of pulling back on some of the goals and saying we'll do sort of a reduced range version of this or do something that seems achievable now, a minimum viable, and see if we can expand it later

Well, I mean, I certainly wouldn't rule anything out. Any system is better than the system we have now

Any improved system is better than the system that we have now. But again, I think it is technically feasible

And I think at the end of the day, it will be an expensive system

There's no doubt. But I think it will not be as expensive as many people think it will be today because of the technology

You look at AI and some of the other things that really will drive

AI will play a big part in Golden Dome for sure. and it will play a big part in driving the cost of Golden Dome down over the life of that

Where will AI systems say incorporated into AI where will those be five years from now as opposed to today Those are going to be drivers of lowering cost of systems as an example So you know again I believe in it

as it has been laid out conceptually by the president, and I also believe in the plan that

I saw briefed by General Guglain, and hopefully that the president will sign off on. Are there any

public misconceptions about Golden Dome that you bump up against pretty regularly in terms of

how it will work, its scope, if every American city is going to be protected from missiles equally

Can you talk about some of that? Yeah, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about it

again, even among people who should be experts on it. And I don't consider myself one. I'm just

a policymaker. But we talked about people thinking that it's just ballistic missile

defense and it's really not. It's to protect us from a whole range of other threats

So that's one. The fact that it will have to be a layered approach, right

It's not going to be like one system. I think there a conception that it would be just a laser that they fire a laser and it eliminates the threat clearly going to have to be more of a layered approach Some of it would be space some of it would be land

I mean, I think there's just a lot of misconceptions out there about what it would be and what it

would protect. And I don't want to get into too much of what the system, as it's briefed

would protect. But, you know, there are going to be layered approaches that protect different

levels of things. But overall, it's going to be the best system that anyone in the world has

And it will far exceed what Israel has right now, because it's much more complicated

obviously, to protect a geographic area the size of the continental United States and

Alaska and Hawaii than it is to protect a smaller country like Israel

So there's a lot of misconceptions out there, for sure, both amongst the public and I think

amongst policymakers as well And finally clearly a lot hinges on getting the architecture that you need from the administration getting that out in the space that you can work with it But what else are you hoping to accomplish with the caucus through the end of this year Well we love to obviously start with that architecture and lay it out and do a briefing

for the members in the caucus. And we want the caucus, by the way, to be a bipartisan caucus

Right now, we've got a lot of Republicans that are signing up for it. But there's Democrats

and I've talked to several of them, trying to get them on board to joining the caucus and making

it a bipartisan issue. This shouldn't be a partisan thing just because President Trump came up with it

It's a good idea. And as I've said many times, it's a good thing that Israel has what they have

with Iron Dome right now. So, you know, we want to make it bipartisan, but we want to use it

really to just educate members about the threat that's there and the technology to counter that

threat and really just build consensus, bring in industry so that they can help educate members

about the technology that's out there to do this. This stuff is possible for us to do

Only in the United States of America do we have the ability and the technological advancement to

get this done