This Week in Government Tech Media – May 15, 2026

By Brad Bass /

We saw more news in the government tech media this week on the Golden Dome missile defense program, noting that the initiative comes with a jaw-dropping price tag. And for a change, we turned our sights to some state and local government stories on how those governments are dealing with the regulation of AI. Check out this week’s roundup of trending news below:

The High Price of Gold

A range of publications covered this week’s announcement by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the administration’s highly-touted Golden Dome missile defense architecture will cost more – a lot more – than initially advertised. Publications focused in the worlds of federal technology, defense and space had varying takes on the news:

  • The price tag for the Golden Dome architecture could reach $1.2 trillion to develop, deploy and operate over 20 years, according to a new report published this week by the CBO, according to coverage by Mikayla Easley in DefenseScoop.
  • The updated estimate is based on what the CBO described as a “notional” missile defense architecture broadly aligned with the systems and capabilities outlined in Trump’s 2025 executive order directing the development of Golden Dome, Lisbeth Perez wrote in MeriTalk.
  • In his piece in Defense One, Thomas Novelly noted that the new estimate is seven times the amount the White House initially stated, and almost double the CBO’s first estimate.
  • Lee Ferran quoted the CBO estimate in Breaking Defense as stating that most of the cost would be needed for acquisition, including “costs for the system’s major components — namely, the interceptor layers and a space-based missile warning and tracking system.” 
  • Later in the week, Ferran’s colleague Theresa Hitchens noted that the Pentagon’s Golden Dome czar Gen. Michael Guetlein pushed back at the CBO estimate, asserting that the assessment was based on old technology and incorrect assumptions about the planned architecture.
  • In Space News, Sandra Erwin reported that the largest cost driver is a proposed constellation of space-based interceptors, or SBIs, which alone would account for about $743 billion. 
  • John Plumb, a former assistant defense secretary for space policy, said at an industry breakfast meeting this week that affordability will be a major factor in Golden Dome’s success but suggested that even a scaled back version of the project could produce successful results, Ross Wilkers wrote in Washington Technology.

Regulating State AI

This week, we noted that several reporters who cover state and local government wrote about how some states are regulating the use of AI – and, in the case of California, using AI to do that. Here are reports on some of those developments:

  • While much of the attention around preempting AI-related laws and regulations has focused on the federal government stopping states, there is evidence that some states are also looking to prevent their local governments from regulating AI, Chris Teale reported in Route Fifty.
  • Teale also covered a letter from the Senate’s leading Democrat, Sen. Chuck
    Schumer, to the Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin calling for better coordination with state, local, tribal and territorial governments in responding to AI-driven cyber threats.
  • A growing number of state agencies experimenting with generative AI tools are building formal governance frameworks to manage the technology’s risks and opportunities, according to research published by the UC Berkeley School of Information and relayed in an article by Sophia Fox-Sowell in StateScoop. 
  • Also in StateScoop, Keely Quinlan interviewed Aaron Wright, newly appointed as Alabama’s first chief AI officer, who said via email that one of his top priorities is ensuring that the state’s AI guardrails are dynamic and evolve continuously. 
  • Fox-Sowell also reported that the State of California announced the Engaged California platform to allow Californians to weigh in directly on issues ranging from workplace automation to the responsible use of generative AI in government, with feedback to be used to help guide decisions by state officials.
  • Covering the Engaged California announcement in Government Technology, Julia Edinger noted that the project will use a large language model to empower government workers to ask questions about the comments in plain language, such as what themes are emerging, and AI will help synthesize and categorize the comments for a final report after engagement isclosed.

Upcoming Industry Events

As always, we want to keep you up to speed on upcoming industry events you might find interesting. See our list below to find out what’s happening in the coming week:

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