Pentagon frets over ‘A House of Dynamite’ nuclear doomsday film

Posters for the proposed Golden Dome for America missile defense shield are displayed before an event with President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. (AP/File Photo)

The plot of A House of Dynamite, the new thriller from Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow, hinges on — spoiler alert — US missile defenses failing to knock down a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile headed for Chicago.

The Pentagon agency responsible for the more than $50 billion system of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California designed to avoid just such a scenario isn’t happy about it. The movie, starring Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, had a limited theater release and is now streaming on Netflix.

A Missile Defense Agency internal memorandum argues that the doomsday scenario depicted in the movie is inaccurate. The Oct. 16 memo, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News, is meant to make sure agency leadership “has situational awareness and is not ‘surprised’ by the topic, which may come up in conversations or meetings.”

The object of the Missile Defense Agency’s angst is depiction of US missile defense as ineffective, especially in light of the fact that President Donald Trump wants to spend tens of billions of dollars on missile defense, including with his bid for a “Golden Dome” defensive umbrella.

The document, labeled “Only For Internal MDA and Department of War use and is not public releasable,” is dated a day after almost every member of the Pentagon press corps, including Bloomberg News, vacated the building rather than agree to rules that could restrict news gathering of documents such as the MDA assessment.

It was prepared to “address false assumptions, provide correct facts and a better understanding” of the US’s currently deployed system, it said. While the film “highlights that deterrence can fail, which reinforces the need for an active homeland missile defense system,” its fictional portrayal also underestimates US capabilities, according to the memo.

“The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target and we understand this is intended to be a compelling part of the drama intended for the entertainment of the audience,” but results from real-world testing “tell a vastly different story,” the Pentagon says in the memo.

As guidance for questions about the system’s cost, the memo avoids a dollar amount, saying “the cost is high but not nearly as high as the cost of allowing a nuclear missile to strike our nation.”

A Government Accountability Office report in 2020 said the Pentagon had spent about $53 billion on the ground-based system and planned to spend about $10 billion through this year to continue developing, producing and sustaining it. The system is managed by Boeing Co. and operated by personnel under the US Northern Command.

Accuracy Rate
One focus of the memo is a line in the movie in which the defense secretary, played by Jared Harris, laments that current missile defenses have a 50% chance of knocking down a missile despite their $50 billion price tag.

The MDA says that’s based on earlier prototypes and today’s interceptors “have displayed a 100% accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade.”

Experts dispute that. Laura Grego, a long-time missile defense critic with the Union of Concerned Scientists who has seen the film, said the scenario it depicts is the least threatening possible — a single missile on a known trajectory. Military tests have been similarly limited, she said.

“A robust defense should anticipate facing multiple incoming ICBMs and credible decoys, and direct attacks on missile defense elements, but none of those were part of the story in this film,” Grego said. “The fictional threat is arguably about as easy as they come.”

The Pentagon said in a statement to Bloomberg News that it wasn’t consulted for the film, which “does not reflect the views or priorities of this administration.” The system “remains a critical component of our national defense strategy, ensuring the safety and security of the American people and our allies.”

A Netflix spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A representative for Bigelow pointed to her remarks on CBS’s Sunday Morning arguing that she didn’t seek cooperation from the Pentagon.

“I felt that we needed to be more independent,” she told CBS. “But that being said, we had multiple tech advisers who have worked in the Pentagon. They were with me every day we shot.”’

The Trump administration hasn’t disclosed substantive details of its still ill-defined Golden Dome land, sea and space-based defensive shield. Space Force General Michael Guetlein, the four-star general leading the effort, last month completed a blueprint for the program. The Pentagon declined to provide details about its scope or cost.