How much does Trump’s Golden Dome actually cost?
Polygraph | Newsletter n°306 | 5 Jun 2025
IN THIS NEWSLETTER: What the Big Beautiful Bill’s $150 billion in military spending is for, why Trump’s cost estimate of the Golden Dome is wrong, and why the media’s figures miss the mark too.
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Situation
The Senate is now working on its version of the Big Beautiful Bill, the GOP megabill that the House passed late last month. The final product will likely differ from the lower chamber’s legislation, mainly because some Senate Republicans object to the House version’s deficit increase and Medicaid cuts.
Not much disagreement is expected over the military spending portion of the bill. The legislation’s spending framework instructs the Senate Armed Services Committee to “increase the deficit by not more than $150,000,000,000” through policies under its jurisdiction. That matches the amount approved by the House Armed Services Committee (and later the full House), as you’ll see in the table below. What each chamber says the $150 billion should specifically buy may vary in places, but not when it comes to the big-ticket items like the “Golden Dome,” a missile system that’s among the president’s top priorities.
What $150 billion buys
As you’d expect, funding for the Golden Dome can be found in the Pentagon portion of the legislation (under Title II). This part of the bill is broken up into sections, which are summarized in the table below based on what they buy and ordered by their total cost. (The only exception is the “Other” row, which combines a couple lower-value sections.)
All told, there’s $150.3 billion in military spending in the GOP megabill, and based on the legislative text, nearly all of it will go to private companies. Rarely will you find provisions that aren’t likely to fund contracts or outright subsidies for private industry. Here are examples from the “Ships, subsidies for private shipbuilders” row in the table (Section 20002 of the bill):
p. 111: “$4,600,000,000 for a second Virginia-class submarine” (contracts for ships)
also p. 111: “$750,000,000 for additional supplier development across the naval shipbuilding base” (subsidies for shipbuilders)
Most provisions in the bill are like that, and all of them are in the $24.7 billion “Golden Dome” section. This is wealth redistribution — just not the kind that either party likes talking about.
^Alt text for screen readers: GOP megabill funnels $150 billion to the Pentagon and its contractors. This table describes each section of the bill and lists its cost in billions. Ships, subsidies for private shipbuilders: 33.8; "Golden Dome" fantasy missile shield likely built by Musk's SpaceX: 24.7; Munitions, mining/refining minerals: 20.7; Drones, AI, weaponizing commercial tech: 13.5; Nuclear weapons: 12.9; Infrastructure, equipment, "readiness": 11.5; Military buildup in Indo-Pacific, Space: 11.1; Barracks, bonus pay/benefits: 7.3; New aircraft, preventing retirement of old aircraft: 7.3; Southern border deployments, operations, detention facilities: 5.0; Other: 2.4; Total: 150.3. Data: Author analysis of Title II, H.R.1 - One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
How much Trump’s missile shield actually costs
A reality TV star turned two-term president is proposing a missile shield he named the “Golden Dome,” kickstarted by a bill called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The truly absurd part, though, is the conversation around the Golden Dome’s price tag. (Either that or it’s the guy about to make that argument, who almost named his Substack I Just Charted before thankfully settling on Polygraph.)
Trump recently claimed the Golden Dome will cost $175 billion, and that the GOP megabill containing his agenda includes a $25 billion down payment for it. As the table above shows, he’s right about the second number. The first is another story.
The president’s $175 billion figure has already been widely fact-checked and firmly established as an underestimate. The media’s consensus “well, actually” number for the Golden Dome appears to be $542 billion, which is based on a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate.
That number isn’t right either. To be fair, it’s less wrong than what Trump said, but it feels more wrong because fact-checkers confidently said it was right. The CBO’s $542 billion figure is being presented as an answer to a question it’s not meant to answer. Here’s what I mean:
The CBO estimate referred only to the cost of a missile defense system’s space-based component. The Golden Dome plan includes both ground- and space-based components. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the frontrunner to build the space-based portion.
The CBO was estimating the cost of a missile shield designed to shoot down “one or two intercontinental ballistic missiles” (ICBMs) launched from North Korea. Trump’s executive order specifies that the Golden Dome would defend against attacks “from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” While that last category includes North Korea, the first two refer to China (which has more than 600 nuclear warheads) and Russia (which has more than 4,299), respectively. As the CBO notes, the number of space-based missile interceptors needed “to counter ICBM attacks by China or Russia rather than by a less capable adversary such as North Korea would need to be much bigger — and therefore more costly.”
So how much does Trump’s missile shield cost? Prepare yourself for a disappointing but accurate answer.
The Golden Dome costs as much as Congress is willing to spend on it. The project is a scam, and like most scams, it won’t shut down on its own. Trump’s missile shield is pure fantasy — it will never be completed, never become fully operational, and will consume public resources indefinitely. Technically, its cost is infinite.
Trump says his missile shield — which he claimed would “defeat any foreign aerial attack on the homeland” — takes after Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which Reagan said would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” That’s exactly my point — the SDI was a giant boondoggle that ended up costing as much as Congress was willing to spend on it. It was a project defined by greed and incompetence, with great efforts made to create the illusion of competence. Per a recent article by journalist Taylor Barnes: “The army had staged a 1984 missile defense test by planting a remote-controlled explosive on the target missile so that it would blow up whether or not the interceptor actually hit it.”
The Golden Dome will provide plenty of opportunities for more great reporting like that. That’s the extent of its redeeming qualities.
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Finally a full time job for for the elongated muskrat with a black eye, “it will never be completed, never become fully operational, and will consume public resources indefinitely. Technically, its cost is infinite”