Trump’s Golden Dome (🇺🇸 US-UK🇬🇧 Edition)

Donald Trump wants to build a Golden Dome over America—a vast missile-defense system combining satellites, sensors and interceptors on land, at sea and in space.Presidents should have big ideas. Kennedy had the moon. Eisenhower had the interstate highway system. Reagan had Star Wars.But presidential ambition should begin a conversation with government, not end one.Scientists, engineers, military officers, strategists, budget analysts and Congress exist for a reason: to determine whether a president’s grand idea can actually survive its encounter with physics, technology, strategy and cost.Golden Dome may ultimately produce important advances in missile defense. But it also reveals something important about the presidency itself: presidents must be ambitious enough to ask government to do extraordinary things—and disciplined enough to listen when government answers.Because reality insists upon participating.— DunneaginTo read the text of this essay and explore the catalog, visit Civics Unhinged on Paragraph.☕ Reader editions and collected volumes—including Volumes 1, 2, 3, and The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy—are available on the Fourthwall bookshelf. Get full access to ~ Civics Unhinged: Dispatches From Trumpistan ~ at dunneagin.substack.com/subscribe