The Golden Dome Scam: How Defense Contractors Are Selling a $2 Trillion Nuclear Lie | Paul Jay

Michael Smith
This is Law and Disorder.

Maria Hall
Today on Law and Disorder, we learn about the details of the current threats from nuclear war as the hands of the Doomsday Clock are expected to advance closer to midnight this week.

Michael Smith
Our guest, Paul Jay, is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker. He describes the little-known histories of the Cold War that have led us up to where we are today.

Maria Hall
Stay with us.

Michael Smith
I’m a New York City attorney and author, Michael Steven Smith.

Maria Hall
And I’m Maria Hall, a Los Angeles civil rights lawyer. In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created a Doomsday Clock. It was meant to draw attention to the existential dangers posed by human technology. They set the metaphorical time to seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing the destruction of life on Earth.

Just two years before, in 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world saw firsthand the potential of nuclear annihilation. As World War II was ending, a different kind of conflict was underway: the Cold War.

Over the next four decades, the United States and Soviet Union competed for nuclear dominance not only through foreign policy and military strategy, but also on their respective home fronts, using propaganda and retaliation against critics. Throughout this period, people of conscience, like Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s, repeatedly sounded the alarm. Ellsberg and others warned that there was no way to win a nuclear war. If one side launched, the other would inevitably respond, leading to mutual destruction.

Today, more than 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the nuclear arms race continues. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the United States and eight other nations continue to stockpile nuclear weapons, including Russia, China, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, France, the United Kingdom, and North Korea.

Last January, a week after Donald Trump began his second term as President, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest humanity has ever come to global catastrophe. The Bulletin announced its decision to update the clock yet again this week. Whether the Bulletin sets the clock closer to midnight or not, the question remains: is there the will to change our trajectory and a path to avoid global destruction?

To help us explore these questions, our guest for this segment is Paul Jay, award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and founder of theAnalysis.news. Jay has spent decades investigating the inner workings of government, corporate power, and military policy, combining investigative rigor with a storyteller’s clarity. He is currently working on a new documentary to be released in the fall of 2027. It’s called How to Stop a Nuclear War, and it’s based on extensive interviews with Daniel Ellsberg and narrated by Emma Thompson. The film examines how close humanity has come to nuclear catastrophe and why Ellsberg’s warnings remain urgently relevant today. Paul Jay, welcome to Law and Disorder.

Paul Jay
Thank you very much.

Maria Hall
Well, let’s start with current events. Since listeners may not be familiar with Donald Trump’s nuclear policy, please tell us in broad strokes, what is the administration’s approach to nuclear weapons, both offensively and defensively?

Paul Jay
Basically, a continuation of American nuclear protocol, doctrine, and investment, except more. Trump is not qualitatively different, but he’s increasing the investment in nuclear weapons as he is across the board in the military-industrial complex. But in nuclear weapons, the plan now in this new $1.5 trillion military budget will essentially increase nuclear investment by about 25%, which is very significant. The bigger departure, you could say, of Trump is that he’s returning to this idea of an anti-ballistic missile system, the so-called Golden Dome, which I call the Golden Con. My tagline is, it’s not about the dome, it’s about the gold. It’s the latest in a series of massive, very dangerous boondoggles.

Anti-ballistic missile systems more or less began in the mid 1950s. It started with not missiles. It was a system called SAGE to take down Soviet bombers. It’s incredible how little people know about SAGE. It’s an important piece of our film because it really sets the pattern for Reagan’s Star Wars, other forms of anti-ballistic missile systems under Nixon and under Bush II, but the significant expansion of the Golden Dome is a boondoggle… not on steroids. I’m not sure what the drug or the word to use would be.

It’s probably a one to two trillion dollar investment. It’s quite unlikely to work at all. The only thing worse than it not working at all and being a complete boondoggle is if it does work, because if it works at all, it’s extremely destabilizing. It scares the hell out of Russia and China, and it means an even more increased arms race to keep up with their fear of an anti-ballistic missile system.

Now, why are they fearing an anti-ballistic missile system? Because everyone knows that has followed the story, ABM systems are essentially not defensive because everyone knows they can’t stop everything, probably can’t stop hardly anything. But if they can stop anything, they might be able to weaken a second retaliatory strike. In other words, an ABM system that kind of works enables an American first strike. There’s a long history within the Joint Chiefs of Staff and nuclear planning that a first strike is very much in the arsenal of American protocol, which is why they won’t take first strike off the table, even rhetorically.

Michael Smith
Paul, let’s get into the substance of your film, How to Stop a Nuclear War. What kind of research did you do, and what inspired you to focus on Daniel Ellsberg as your subject?

Paul Jay
Well, I think, and Dan thought, that the underlying reason why something isn’t being done to prevent nuclear war is Cold War psychology. I think it’s very important that we understand the Cold War did not end. I’ll explain that in a second, but Dan’s basic idea was, and it’s not just his, that the risk of accidental miscalculation, nuclear war, is not zero. And there’s nobody, it doesn’t matter how much they want to defend the current American or global military structures, nuclear structures, nobody can say the risk is zero.

In fact, anyone who understands this issue at all knows the risk is far from zero. So if the risk of an Apocalypse, the risk of annihilation, nuclear winter, probably the end of humanity, if the risk is far from zero, of accidental war, miscalculation, especially now with the introduction of artificial intelligence into command and control. Maybe AI isn’t going to say fire, but AI is the one that’s going to interpret the sensor data, the ground-based radar systems, the massive amounts of data coming in to decide, is this launch for real? Is what’s coming at us, ballistic missiles, or is it what we’re seeing, geese, or something bouncing off the moon, something which we’ve seen in the past?

The risk is, as I say, far from zero, so how come we’re doing literally next to nothing to reduce that risk? The big powers, nuclear powers, aren’t negotiating how to reduce risk. In fact, they’re not even talking to each other about the risk of nuclear war. There’s zero negotiations going on on new arms limitation treaties. So the question is, why? Why aren’t they reducing the risk? And two, why isn’t the public outraged at this?

This is why we think, when I say we, I’m including Dan, the Cold War psychology that they’re out to get us, and the only thing that stops them, and they can change. It can be the Soviet Union one day, it can be international terrorism the next day, and now it’s China with a dose of Russia. There’s always an external enemy that’s exaggerated. The threat is exaggerated, and that’s the essence of the Cold War.

The Cold War was never about Soviet military expansionism, because there wasn’t any. With the exception of being sucked into Afghanistan, and of course, there were interventions in the Eastern European countries that were part of the Soviet Union. But as far as external military expansion, beyond that, the CIA was telling the Truman administration, and from then on, the Soviet Union was in a defensive posture. Whatever you make of what’s going on domestically, and certainly, Dan believed the Soviet Union was a tyranny. The political repression was severe domestically, but it was not an external military threat.

Number two, let’s be reminded of the fact that the U.S. policy all through the Cold War, up until now, has no problem with political repression in other countries. It just has to be a country that’s not pro-American. In fact, between 1945 and 1990, it seems like as many as 200 dictatorships were created in the name of the Cold War, basically either through electoral manipulation, as in Italy in 1948, or funding the Greek fascists in ’48, ’49, right on to the Korean War, which is something we’re researching in-depth.

There’s a reason they talk about the Korean War being the forgotten war, because it’s in fact the template for everything that came afterwards. You prop up a vicious dictator, and you use the language of freedom and democracy to do it. That becomes the template, whether it’s Vietnam or all the other Cold War interventions, which I’m sure your audience is well aware of, whether it’s in the name of fighting terrorism and so on.

It’s always wrapped in this kind of language, but it’s always a direct intervention to assert what was called in 1942 by Luce the American Century. The American century essentially was to control the non-Soviet world, and then it became control the non-Soviet Chinese world. Obviously, never about freedom or democracy.

So what does that have to do with nuclear weapons? It’s this underlying theory of deterrence. “We need more, and if we need more, we know they’re going to want more. So then we want more.” So who benefits from this insanity? Obviously, the people are making money out of building this stuff. The investment and the justification for the nuclear threat and supposed deterrence are the backbone of the psychology of the whole military-industrial complex. It’s not just about nukes.

Everybody knows you can’t deliberately use nukes against a nuclear power, and so far, there seems to be enough of a taboo of even using them against a non-nuclear power, either with fear that it might spill out into confrontation with a nuclear power. Nixon certainly thought about and made some plans to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Truman openly threatened them in Korea, but they didn’t use them, and the same thing with the Russians in Afghanistan, when they were losing in Afghanistan, they didn’t use nukes, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.

The underlying thesis of the film, which again comes from Dan’s stuff, is that nobody in power wants to commit suicide. So the likelihood of a deliberate, planned nuclear war, especially nuclear power against nuclear power, is very, very remote. Again, not zero, but very remote. The problem is, as we know from history, shit happens.

So, you get something that happens, like in 1983… People may know who follows this. A guy named Petrov is at a Soviet radar station and sees what looks like an attack has started. It’s at a time of the height of the Cold War. One of the facts we found is that the Americans, just before this Petrov incident in ’83, in the year or two, 1982, 1983, they were deliberately sending planes into Soviet airspace, feeling out the radar and making it look like a preparation for a first strike. They wanted the Soviets on edge. So when this false radar reading comes in and this guy, Petrov, sees it, it’s in the context of the… Andropov, who was President of the Soviet Union. It’s in the context of that, where he already thinks a real preparation is coming. In fact, Reagan is caught, thinking he’s off mic and jokes to someone sitting next to him at a press conference or something. “You know, maybe now is the time for a first strike.”

It’s right at moments of potential conflict that you get an accident that gets misinterpreted. You could see that now. Just imagine if the tensions over Taiwan go back to where they were when Pelosi visited, and the Chinese are kind of blockading Taiwan. Guam is the forward base for an attack on China, as well as the Humphrey base in South Korea, which, in fact, most people don’t know, by far the largest American military base in the world, and it’s in South Korea, right on the border with North Korea. It’s there not just to threaten the North Koreans, which is also dangerous in terms of nuclear war, but it’s there as a forward base against China.

Imagine if in a scenario of high, high tension, some space garbage takes out one or two American nuclear strategic satellites, and AI interprets that as the beginning of a first strike, because if there was a first strike coming from Russia or China, one of the first things they would do is knock out satellites. So the film is about what we can do to reduce this risk? And to answer that question, we’re going to dig into Cold War psychology, how it still operates today, and what people can demand today to reduce the risk.

Maria Hall
If you’re just tuning in, this is Law and Disorder. I’m attorney Maria Hall here with my co-host, attorney Michael Smith. We’re speaking with award-winning journalist and filmmaker Paul Jay.

Paul, for listeners who feel overwhelmed or powerless hearing all of this, what can individuals do to lower the risk of nuclear war?

Paul Jay
Well, in some ways, it’s somewhat like a climate change issue, but the difference is this. To really deal with the climate crisis, there needs to be a fairly fundamental change in the American and global economy. We need to do it because I’m not in any way underestimating how dangerous the climate crisis is. But to reduce the risk of nuclear war does not require a transformation of the global economy or the American economy. It can be done by implementing a few quite concrete proposals that Dan has proposed and others, but in general, nobody talks about them.

Number one, educate yourself, know these issues, and start overcoming the taboo against them. The risk can be mitigated. See, there’s an all-or-nothing psychology that’s been created. Either “A nuclear war is coming, and we’re all dead, so what’s the difference?” Or “We’ve been okay for 80 years, so why are we worried now?” Both of these things are misconceptions and dangerous misconceptions. The companies that make money out of this don’t want us talking about it. The people in Congress, there’s a handful that have tried to talk about this, and they have committees that try to do things. Mainstream media doesn’t even cover it.

So number one, educate yourself. And I hope our film will go a long way to doing that. Just to be clear, the film is coming out in September 2027. Sort of the beginning of the next presidential cycle. So number one, get to know the issues.

Number two, there are some concrete demands that people should confront both in the streets. Dan always hoped that mass protests, whether it’s about climate, or whether it’s “no kings,” or whether it’s about ICE, the issue of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war should be part of every mass protest. It is an imminent existential threat. We’re not talking far off. The kind of scenario I’m talking about could happen tomorrow. We can’t be in denial or go to sleep.

Some other concrete steps, and maybe the most important, say absolutely no to the Golden Dome. The fraud of the Golden Dome is that every expert has said, hitting an ICBM with an anti-ballistic missile is like hitting a bullet with a bullet, which is why Reagan’s SDI thing never made any sense. Number two, even if now it’s SDI plus AI, which is what the Golden Dome is, a big network of satellites and ground-based stations, but in the final analysis, you still have to hit a bullet with a bullet.

Well, let’s say AI can do that. Let’s say, there’s no proof, there’s no evidence yet, but let’s say their artificial general intelligence can hit a bullet with a bullet. It is almost impossible that AI is going to be able to differentiate a bullet from the bullshit. No missile comes in by itself. It comes in surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of decoys. Decoys are cheap. You can spend your $2, $3 trillion on an anti-ballistic missile system. Nothing you’re going to be able to do will overcome the relatively cheap technology of evading it.

Everybody knows that’s true, which is why it’s not about the dome, it’s about the gold. It’s about the money that’s going to be made. But like I said before, if it works at all, it’s destabilizing. It makes Russia and China think a first strike is coming. So say no to the Golden Dome. Stop all funding and get educated to explain to people what I just said. And what I just said is really quite indisputable. I don’t think any expert would say I’m wrong, which is why even in the military leadership, there are people who have spoken out saying this whole thing’s nuts.

Be able to explain this, even if people are thinking they’re going to vote for Trump, the underlying thing, which I think is true, nobody actually wants a nuclear war. Nobody. I don’t think Trump wants a nuclear war. Nobody wants a deliberate nuclear war. So the question is, why are they risking one? I think people of every political spectrum, except a tiny handful that are maybe hoping for an apocalypse, but that’s a very tiny, slim fraction of people. So, no Golden Dome. Number two, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, ICBMs, of which the United States has many, are inherently dangerous because it’s use them or lose them.

Now, if you saw this recent movie, House of Dynamite, it completely got this point wrong. No missile hitting Chicago creates a use them or lose them scenario because that’s not where the ICBMs are. But it did get right the concept. ICBMs are the first things that will be targeted because Russia and China know where they are, and they are the things that can do lots of destruction. So they’re kind of tinder boxes. They’re either useless because they’re going to get hit or something misinterpreted as an attack launches them, creates a use them or lose them, and the president says, “You’ve got to use them now, or you’re going to lose them,” like that scene in the movie, and he decides to use them.

The thing is, there’s only one way to know for sure whether an incoming nuclear attack is actually a nuclear attack, birds, the moon, or some AI hallucination. There’s only one way to know. Let it come. Let it hit. Why? Because you can’t stop it anyway. There is nothing achieved by a preemptive strike, even if you think something’s on its way in, because you can’t stop something if it’s on its way in. It’s way better to let it hit. Take the hit. Why? Because the U.S. has submarines that can always destroy the world. The 14 nuclear submarines, each one of them, can take out about 27 cities, one sub. The sub fleet can take out all of Russia, every major city in Russia and China, just the submarines.

So if you’re actually worried about deterrence, there’s your deterrence. You definitely don’t need that many subs to have deterrence, either. If Russia, the U.S., and China really only cared about deterrence, I have to say this is mostly being driven by the United States; one or two subs isn’t 30, 40 cities enough deterrence? You don’t need all the rest of it.

So demand an end to ICBMs. Get rid of them. Get rid of launch on warning. Get rid of ICBMs. All they are is another boondoggle. There’s an ICBM caucus in Congress from the states that have it, and the argument they give to defend ICBMs is not national security. It’s all economic. “Oh, it’s jobs.” Every time there’s profit at stake, it’s always about the jobs, where, of course, if you took that money and invested it in productive infrastructure, you’d have more jobs.

Those are two demands. Of course, the sole authority that one guy or woman can end the world. It’s insane. There are other issues we’ll explore in the film, but I would say those two are the most decisive. The only other thing that’s very pressing right now is no new testing.

Russia, the U.S., and China, because of it, although they, too, they’re all talking about beginning nuclear tests again. Nothing would spur a whole new arms race, even more than it’s already been spurred. So three things: no Golden Dome, no ICBMs, and no new testing.

Finally, at least talk to each other. At least have some kind of form of talking, like with North Korea, it’s really easy. Agree to negotiate without preconditions. The Korean story I can’t get into now, maybe another show, but the nuclear powers don’t even have channels of communication open. So there are concrete demands people need to educate themselves about. In the midterm elections, presidential elections, state elections, and even at the city level, make this part of the conversation and break the taboo about discussing and debating nuclear war policy.

Michael Smith
This has been a really important, if that’s the right word, conversation. We’re grateful to you. Can you tell us where listeners can learn more about your work and when and where they can see your film? It’s called How to Stop a Nuclear War.

Paul Jay
Well, like I say, the film is not coming out until the fall of 2027. We are now building a website. When the website is fully built, when the film comes out, we are going to put all our interviews up in full, not just the parts that make the film. We’re going to have a version of the film available on the website with QR codes. Every time we say something in the film, you can go to the QR code. It will take you to the whole depth of research of why we’re saying what we’re saying.

But right now, the website is stop-nuclear-war.org. We’re beginning to put stuff up. There’s a link there to get on our mailing list, so you know when the film is coming out, but most importantly, when we start getting closer, and even now, if you want to get your name on the email list, we need a big campaign to get the film out, to get it seen. Who knows what the political climate in the United States is going to be in the fall of ’27?

I’m expecting there’ll be even more large-scale protests. I’m expecting even more draconian crackdowns. Obviously, what’s going on in Minneapolis is a rehearsal for martial law, assuming there are midterms, and that’s an assumption I wouldn’t bet money on, but let’s assume there are midterms. It looks like Trump is going to either lose the House and maybe the whole of Congress, but that means he’ll just rule through executive order.

Anyway, it is going to be a political shit show, but one of the things this film is going to do… And I’m extremely lucky because our funding is all philanthropic, and we have decent funding to make the film. But our funding is not gatekeeper funding. It’s not Netflix. It’s not a major broadcaster. I hope we get on them at some point, but right now we’re going to open theatrically, one way or the other.

We’re going to question the entire assumptions of the Cold War. We are going to tell the real history, and we are going to tell the real story, the truth of the current state and risk of nuclear weapons and the military-industrial complex. It’s going to be stuff that the mainstream media, and not just to Republicans, but the leadership of the Democratic Party, isn’t going to like much either.

So we’re going to need a lot of help getting this film out, and we are really appealing across the political spectrum. This isn’t a film just for people who support progressive politics. It’s very important. In fact, we’re going to test the film in areas that vote for Trump and the Republicans. We’re not going to mitigate what we say, but I think nuclear war really does transcend normal political boundaries, which in some ways makes the film even more dangerous.

Michael Smith
Give our listeners that website one more time, please.

Paul Jay
Stop-nuclear-war.org.

Michael Smith
Paul Jay, thank you very much for being on Law and Disorder.

Paul Jay
Thanks very much for the invitation.

Maria Hall
Visit us online at lawanddisorder.org for archived programs and links to many of the issues we discuss. That’s lawanddisorder.org.

• Michael Smith - Law and Disorder
• Maria Hill - Law and Disorder
• Paul Jay - Director of How to Stop a Nuclear War