The idea sounds like something out of a science fiction movie: thousands of satellites orbiting Earth, space-based sensors tracking missiles in real time, and weapons capable of destroying threats just seconds after launch. But behind the spectacular “Golden Dome” project promoted by President Donald Trump are serious doubts about its feasibility.

A new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the system could cost up to $1.2 trillion over two decades — a figure nearly seven times higher than the $175 billion Trump initially promised. And even with that monumental expense, experts warn that the shield might not stop a massive attack from Russia or China.

The actual cost

Trump presented the “Golden Dome” as a revolutionary defense system capable of protecting the United States from advanced aerial threats, including ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles. The project was launched via an executive order signed during the first week of his second term.

At the time, the president assured that the system would be fully operational before the end of his term in January 2029. He also stated that the total cost would be around $175 billion.

However, the new CBO report paints a much more costly picture of the project. The nonpartisan agency estimated that developing, deploying, and operating the system over 20 years could drive costs up to $1.2 trillion. Acquisition costs alone would exceed $1 trillion.

The CBO itself clarified that the estimate does not represent a definitive government design, as the Pentagon has not yet detailed exactly how the system will function or how many components it will include. The report notes that this is “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific Administration proposal.”

A space shield inspired by Israel

The “Golden Dome” concept is partly inspired by Israel’s “Iron Dome,” the well-known multi-layered system that intercepts rockets and short-range missiles launched from Gaza, Lebanon, or Iran.

However, while Israel protects a relatively small territory against regional threats, Trump’s project aims to cover the entire continental United States, as well as Alaska and Hawaii, against far more sophisticated weapons.

The proposed architecture includes ground-based and space-based capabilities to detect, track, and intercept missiles at various stages of flight. A significant portion of the cost would come precisely from that space-based component.

According to the CBO, about 70% of the acquisition cost would go toward space-based interceptors and a constellation of approximately 7,800 satellites. An orbital system needed to destroy just ten incoming ballistic missiles alone would cost nearly $720 billion.

Trump justified the plan by arguing that strategic threats have evolved dangerously over the past few decades. In his executive order, he stated: “Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex.”

Doubts about its effectiveness

Beyond the cost, the report also raised doubts about the system’s true capabilities. The CBO concluded that the “Golden Dome” could effectively respond to a limited attack by countries with lesser capabilities, such as North Korea. But the picture changes when facing military powers comparable to the United States.

The analysis warns that the system “could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack mounted by a peer or near-peer adversary,” referring to countries such as Russia or China. In other words, even with a multibillion-dollar investment, the shield could become overwhelmed by a massive missile launch.

That possibility fuels the skepticism that already existed among military experts and lawmakers regarding the technical feasibility of the project. Several officials have warned that current U.S. missile defense systems have failed to keep pace with new technologies developed by potential adversaries, especially in the field of hypersonic missiles.

There are also doubts about the timeline. Trump said he wanted to see the system operational before the end of his term, but experts consider it extremely difficult to build an infrastructure of that magnitude in less than four years.

The political debate and multimillion-dollar contracts

Despite criticism, the government has already begun allocating resources to the project. Congress previously approved approximately $24 billion for initiatives related to the “Golden Dome,” while the Pentagon requested an additional $17 billion in future budget allocations.

In addition, companies in the defense and aerospace sectors have already secured major contracts. SpaceX and Lockheed Martin received contracts worth up to $3.2 billion to develop prototypes of space interceptors.

General Michael Guetlein, the project’s director, recently defended the initiative before lawmakers and dismissed the most alarmist estimates. As he explained, many external estimates simply take the cost of previous systems and multiply it. “That is not what Golden Dome is doing,” the general stated. “We are laser-focused on affordability.”

However, even he acknowledged that the space component poses enormous financial risks. During a hearing last month, he warned that if the space interceptors cannot be produced at a reasonable cost, they will not go into production.

Meanwhile, Democratic critics argue that the program could turn into a massive windfall for military contractors. Senator Jeff Merkley, who requested the CBO report, called the bill “nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans.”

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A group of U.S. lawmakers has called on the Pentagon to immediately suspend joint military operations with Ecuadorian forces in the north of the country, targeting drug trafficking “terrorist organizations” active in the area. In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and seen by EL PAÍS, the legislators demand that the mission be halted pending an investigation into the incidents and ask for clarification of the legal basis for U.S. involvement, which has not been authorized by Congress.

The letter, spearheaded by Democratic representatives Chuy García, Greg Casar, and Sara Jacobs, is signed by around 20 lawmakers, mostly from the party’s progressive wing, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna. It is also backed by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International USA, the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). It was made public at the start of a two-day visit to Washington by Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, who is due to meet Vice President J. D. Vance and OAS Secretary General Albert Ramdin, among others.

“We are deeply concerned by reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities during joint U.S.-Ecuador military operations conducted in northern Ecuador in early March,” reads the letter, which gives the Pentagon 10 days, until May 22, to respond.

The lawmakers refer to a joint operation announced by U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), which oversees U.S. forces in Latin America, on March 3 against “designated terrorist organizations in Ecuador.” Six days later, U.S. President Donald Trump informed Congress that U.S. forces had taken part on March 6 in military actions against “the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.” The administration has provided no further details, meaning that “the scope of U.S. military involvement in Ecuador remains unclear, both to Congress and the American public,” the lawmakers warn.

They also cite statements from senior Pentagon officials pointing to a more extensive U.S. role in the operation. Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs Joseph Humire told the House Armed Services Committee that on March 3, the Pentagon supported, “at the request of Ecuador,” bilateral kinetic actions against cartels in the border region. “The joint effort, named ‘Operation Total Extermination,’ is the start of a military offensive by Ecuador against transnational criminal organizations with the support of the U.S.”

Meanwhile, SouthCom commander General Francis Donovan told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 19 that “special operations forces, including both ground forces and air forces, could quickly plan with the Ecuadorians to ensure that any use of force fell within our requirements.” He added: “[I was] very impressed on how the Ecuadorians operated on both those operations… very professional planning. I took part in both, observing both.”

A report published in late March by The New York Times suggested that one of the targets may have been a cattle farm used for milk production, with no known links to drug trafficking or organized crime. The report cited witnesses who said that Ecuadorian military personnel attacked and questioned unarmed civilians, set fire to homes, and carried out acts of torture on March 3 at the site that was bombed three days later.

The operations took place in the border region between Ecuador and Colombia, described in the letter as “highly sensitive and volatile.” Military activity there risks fuelling cross-border tensions that could escalate into a broader armed confrontation, they warn. “Indeed, in mid-March, the discovery of an unexploded Ecuadorian bomb that was found on the Colombian side of the border caused a diplomatic crisis between the two countries,” the letter states.

Beyond these incidents, lawmakers express concern about closer ties between the U.S. military and the government of Daniel Noboa, a close ally of President Trump, whom they accuse of an “alarming authoritarian and anti-democratic drift.” They cite, among other developments, “the violent repression of Indigenous-led protests,” public threats against the Constitutional Court, and the freezing of civil society organizations’ bank accounts.

The letter says: “Ecuadorians have endured more than two years of a prolonged state of emergency, marked by the military’s domestic deployment to combat so-called ‘narco-terrorists.’ This militarized strategy has failed to reduce drug trafficking or violence,” argue the lawmakers. “Ecuador recorded its highest homicide rate on record last year,” they add — more than 9,200 deaths in total.

The letter concludes: “The United States cannot credibly claim to promote the rule of law while supporting or enabling abusive practices abroad. Nor can it afford to escalate military operations in a volatile border region without mandatory Congressional authorization, clear safeguards, accountability, and respect for human rights.”

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For 40 years, the world has been under the grip of a “global obesity epidemic” — a surge in excess weight that raises the risk of developing cancer, cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurological diseases. The scientific community coined the term “epidemic” in the 1990s in response to the rising prevalence of obesity, and it has persisted ever since to describe what is now considered one of the major threats to global health. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls it “globesity.”

The idea of a non-infectious pandemic spreading inexorably across the globe has taken hold in the public imagination, but new research published on Wednesday in Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, tempers that view somewhat and offers a glimmer of optimism. The study finds that while obesity is more widespread today than at the end of the 20th century, its growth has slowed — or even reversed in recent years — in the world’s wealthier regions. In poorer countries, however, it continues to rise sharply.

The finding that obesity is following different paths across the world provides a ray of hope in the face of this global threat. “This offers a more optimistic picture that progress is being made and challenges the widely accepted view that we’re experiencing a global epidemic of obesity — which may be an oversimplification of the diversity of the situation in different countries,” said Majid Ezzati, a researcher at Imperial College London and lead author of the study, in a statement.

The scientists argue that the trend towards obesity “is not inevitable” and attribute the slowdown of the epidemic in wealthier countries to a mix of social, economic, and technological factors affecting access to different types of food. As for the emergence of breakthrough weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, the authors believe they are too recent to have influenced trends so far, but expect them to play an important role in the future trajectory of obesity prevalence.

According to the study, which analyzed data from 232 million people in 200 countries between 1980 and 2024, obesity levels have moved across the world at different speeds over the past 45 years. In the 1980s, the prevalence of the condition began to rise in high-income countries and then spread globally — but at varying rates and intensities, producing highly uneven patterns.

Before the turn of the millennium, for example, obesity rates among children were increasing in high-income countries, but that trend has since slowed, stalled, and in some cases even reversed. Denmark was the first country to curb the trend in the early 1990s, followed by Iceland, Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany. By the mid-2000s, the rise in childhood obesity had levelled off in much of the wealthy world. Only Australia, Finland, and Sweden recorded sustained and persistent increases in childhood obesity.

Improvements in high-income countries were first seen in children and, roughly a decade later, in adults — earlier among women than among men. The authors note that by 2024, in some countries, such as Spain and Italy, the growth rate of adult obesity had turned negative, meaning the condition was in decline.

For Albert Goday, an endocrinologist at Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, the study offers “a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel of the obesity pandemic,” though he cautions against complacency: “We can see that the relentless rise in obesity has eased in some regions. But can we relax because the epidemic is under control? No. If that were the takeaway, we’d be making a mistake… prevalence remains very high,” he warns. According to Spain’s Health Ministry, 15% of adults and 7% of children in Spain are obese.

The Nature study also emphasises that, even within these declining trends, wealthy countries have slowed the rise in obesity at very different levels. In Western Europe and Japan, stabilization or reversal occurred with prevalence rates of between 4% and 15% among children and 11% to 23% among adults. By contrast, in English-speaking high-income countries such as the United States and New Zealand, the plateau came at much higher levels, with adult obesity affecting between 25% and 43% of the population and childhood obesity ranging from 7% to 23%.

This plateau — or even reversal — in the rate of obesity growth has been common across rich countries, but not universal: the study shows that prevalence has continued to rise over the past 45 years among both sexes in Finland, and among women in Norway and Belgium.

Widening inequality

The research nonetheless highlights a growing disparity that shows no sign of narrowing. Despite the more encouraging trends in wealthier countries, obesity has continued to climb in poorer regions over the past 45 years. In fact, in 2024, the rate of increase in obesity reached record highs among women in 84 countries and among men in 109 — almost all of them in low- and middle-income regions.

Camille Lassale, a researcher at ISGlobal, says the study captures the “epidemiological transition” now unfolding worldwide. “Countries with lower and middle incomes are beginning to face the same problems as wealthier nations,” she explains. This shift is closely linked to globalization and to lifestyle changes that increasingly reflect Western patterns — from diet to physical activity.

Even within poorer countries, the sharp rises in obesity are occurring in very different contexts and from highly varied starting points. In 2024, for instance, obesity rates in East African countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda remained below 5%, while in parts of Central Europe, such as Romania, and in Latin America, prevalence ranged between 30% and 40%. In all these regions, obesity was rising, but from very different baselines.

The authors argue that traditional explanations for the rise in obesity — such as food availability, physical activity at work, leisure habits or urbanization — “may be relevant, [but] they alone do not explain the heterogeneities that we uncovered.” They also point to the influence of other social, economic, and political factors, as well as cultural aspects and social norms, including perceptions of body image and the gap between ideal, actual, and perceived weight. The researchers also note that income levels and their distribution, along with education, shape food choices and participation in sports.

The impact of anti-obesity drugs such as Ozempic is assumed to be limited or negligible in this analysis, which runs up to 2024, when access to these treatments was still fairly restricted. Looking ahead, however, the authors argue that these medications “provide an additional route for addressing obesity, but their highly variable costs through public and private providers are currently an obstacle to increasing their coverage and may increase inequalities.”

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