Co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, Peter Thiel speaks at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
President Trump trumpets his proposed defense system against missile attack using space-based weapons, dubbed “Golden Dome.” Earlier in September it entered its contracting phase in which it will provide a single, flexible procurement mechanism with rapidly issued task orders rather than separate competitive processes. Basically, Golden Dome returns to the old failed Reagan Administration concept of the United States using space-based sensors and interceptors to detect and destroy foreign missile threats. In a bogus way, it claims to amplify and multiply the success that has accrued to the much smaller and more focused defensive systems used for individual American military bases and vessels, and the “Iron Dome” system in Israel, and spread it over all North America.
Largely freed of competition, Golden Dome task orders can go to favored Trump contractors, including high-tech billionaires who are his close allies.
The evidence accumulates that Golden Dome is going to be an enormously costly and extremely wasteful system. And, the contracting for high-tech work seems sure to go to Palantir. Palantir’s board chairman, the extremely well connected billionaire Peter Thiel, longtime Trump-backer and mentor of Vice President J.D. Vance.
Golden Dome has played a huge part in Trump defense ideology during and since the campaign. It gave Trump something seemingly fresh and strong to say about defense, something seemingly linking him with a world of high-tech advances and let him condemn the Biden Administration for a seeming lack of boldness. That way, he poses himself as propounding an imaginative, innovative defensive measure while not having to face real-world and difficult defense problems like the Russian invasion of Ukraine or Chinese potency in the Pacific.
In July, a letter by Senator Edward J. Markey and nine other Senators said:
“President Trump has said that Golden Dome would cost $175 billion and be ‘fully operational’ by 2029. But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that it could cost as much as $542 billion to deploy a constellation of space-based interceptors (SBIs) designed to defeat one or two intercontinental ballistic missiles launched in a limited attack, such as by North Korea. Countering a possible Russian or Chinese attack involving hundreds of warheads would require a much larger, more technologically advanced, and more costly system. . . . Despite what could amount to a trillion dollar investment, Golden Dome would be all-too-easy to defeat.”
Earlier in September, the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), more cheerleader than critic of Trump’s, issued a report that the cost of Golden Dome could range as high as $3.6 trillion. AEI gave a range of possibilities, from that high figure for a system doing what President Trump asserts he wants Golden Dome to do, down to lower figures that while still far above Trump’s $175 billion, would have much more limited capabilities what he claims.
So now that the Administration is launched on procuring Golden Dome, the natural question is, who benefits? Some of the contracting may go to traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. But, the new hallmark of the Trump administration has been the mutually beneficial cultivating of Silicon Valley billionaires. The beauty of Golden Dome is that it involves not just hardware from traditional contractors, but tech products from the Trump Administration’s closest new friends.
In terms of the role of government contractors, Golden Dome brings to the forefront, first of all, Space-X, Elon Musk’s company for launching space vehicles. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the role Elon Musk played at the beginning of the administration. Beyond Space-X, President Trump and executives with high-tech ventures have cultivated relations with each other. Golden Dome is the perfect place to build such relations.
The high-tech company expected to take the leading role in Golden Dome is Palantir. An August expose by the Project on Government Oversight, “Gold Rush: Top Trump Officials’ Silicon Valley Ties” (hereafter the “Silicon Valley Ties Study”) probed the high positions in the Trump Administration of officials with Palantir connections.
A closer look at Palantir is warranted. The co-founder, and chairman of the board, of Palantir is Peter Thiel. A Forbes article said this:
“Palantir [is] the artificial intelligence and government contractor extraordinaire chaired by Peter Thiel, Trump’s longest big-time Silicon Valley backer and mentor to Vice President JD Vance and many others in prominent roles in the new administration.”
Thiel’s background: he made his first billion in Pay-Pal; he made another fortune in Facebook; Forbes figures his current worth at $25 billion; and Palantir is one of his major current ventures, started by doing big data analysis for the CIA, specializing now in AI. Thiel is currently in the limelight for having mentored, financed, and boosted Vice President Vance. In sum, Thiel employed Vance in his Silicon Valley venture capital firm right after law school, helped Vance start his own venture capital firm, introduced Vance to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and got Trump’s endorsement for Vance’s Senate race, and contributed a crucial $15 million to Vance’s Senate campaign.
Thiel has been a billionaire political activist, including making large campaign contributions. In general terms, his philosophy is described as extremely conservative although, he would say also libertarian. Thiel has made very substantial campaign contributions to Trump over the years. Another cofounder and billionaire member of Palantir’s board, Joe Lonsdale, another Trump backer, is described in a Forbes article thusly: “Lonsdale and Thiel are among the big tech titans most vocal in Silicon Valley’s shift to the political right.“ So Palantir’s role in Golden Dome is an occasion for Thiel to leverage his political connections.
Another Silicon Valley contractor, Anduril, is part of a joint bid to Golden Dome together with Space-X and Palantir. Anduril thus seems destined for a lucrative role in Golden Dome. Anduril’s billionaire founder, Palmer Luckey, is described as a prominent fundraiser for Trump. He hosted a fundraiser at his home, with President Trump present, in 2020, and hosted another fundraiser in 2024.
The Silicon Valley Ties Study published a later, second version in which it reported the figures showing sales of stock options, recusal, and so forth, and elaborated that it had asked about those subjects before initially published and not been given information. The Silicon Valley Ties Study declared that “These entanglements of powerful government officials and cutting-edge contracting firms, amid broader industry effort to weaken ethics restrictions, are leading critics such as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to express concerns, She says these conflicts of interest have the potential to improperly influence government decisions affecting billions of taxpayer dollars.”
The Silicon Valley Ties Study continued, quoting Senator Warren, “Defense officials’ loyalty should be to our national security, not to lining their own pockets. . . For months now, I’ve sounded the alarm about potential corruption related to the Golden Dome, and these conflicts of interest raise new questions about whether the program is being used to enrich Trump administration officials rather than keep our county safe.”
While it may not be necessary to look that far into the future, obviously J.D. Vance is on deck for 2028. Golden Dome could be the cash cow for Vance through Palantir and Thiel.
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