President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States.
Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years.
In a nearly 1,000-page proposal, a group of far-right former officials and experts have authored a policy agenda, dubbed “Project 2025,” for a future right-wing presidency. The plan, which would gut America’s 250-year-old system of checks and balances to allow far-right extremism to take over the federal government, includes a vision for the “common defense” that will place the United States in direct confrontation with its adversaries and privilege unilateral militarism over a thoughtful, holistic, and adequately resourced national security strategy. In so doing, Project 2025’s proposals would fundamentally undermine America’s national and economic security, and ordinary Americans will pay the price.
Relying on an adversary to supply critical components in equipment that our nation deems mission-essential is, to put it mildly, foolish. But that is exactly what the United States has been doing when it comes to China and semiconductors.
The expansion and robust implementation of a Zero China Chips policy, originally introduced in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would help change this equation. It would mitigate the risks associated with depending on China, while simultaneously boosting semiconductor production domestically and among our allies and partner nations—a reliable path towards removing the PRC’s leverage over the U.S. and the globe.
When Donald Trump pled not guilty on June 13, 2023, to federal criminal charges related to his alleged illegal retention of classified documents, it was his first opportunity to formally answer charges that he violated the Espionage Act.
The Justice Department alleges that, after his presidency, Trump held, in an unsecure location, documents about some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, including information about U.S. nuclear programs as well as U.S. and allies’ defense and weapons capabilities and potential vulnerabilities to military attack and that he repeatedly thwarted efforts by the National Archives to retrieve them.
