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US President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) shared an AI-generated image of a 'golden dome' for the White House, a concept which had caught his eye, something similar to Israeli Iron Dome.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared an image captioned "Golden dome for the White House." James P McGovern, a Democratic senator, said that it was a 'vanity project'. In a post on Facebook, he said, "Trump's "Golden Dome" is yet another self-absorbed vanity project that does nothing but waste taxpayer dollars and drive the world towards another nuclear arms race. We should spend our resources on making America more affordable--not another trillion-dollar giveaway to defense contractors!" As per Time Magazine, the proposed "Golden Dome" missile defence system could cost almost a whopping USD 1.2 trillion over two decades, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, far exceeding the USD 175 billion price tag he originally offered. The nonpartisan budget office, however, cautioned that its analysis was not based on a finalised blueprint because the Defence Department has not publicly detailed the full architecture of the complex system. Trump, in his tomming of the project, termed it as "forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland." Instead, the office said its estimate reflected "one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific Administration proposal." The report offered the clearest indication yet of how expensive the ambitious project could become, as well as the enormous technical and financial challenges of building a space-age shield against missile attacks. The "Golden Dome for America" initiative first came into being in the first week of his second term in an executive order. The Pentagon official overseeing the project, General Michael Guetlein, said in March that the programme would cost USD 185 billion through 2035--roughly a decade--for what he described as the system's "objective architecture", Time Magazine reported. (ANI)
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