Original subtitles

...expecting an overcast start to the day

with showers in the afternoon...

And now to the mysterious illness

that has sickened more than 200 American

spies and diplomats around the world.

Five years after it first surfaced in Cuba,

the cause and culprit remain unknown.

Today, new information has surfaced that sheds new light

on the phenomenon from a fresh perspective.

For the first time, three of the original victims

in cases known as "Havana syndrome"

are speaking on television

with the approval of the State Department.

They say they are going public now because they are alarmed

by the escalation of incidents and out of concern

for their colleagues.

It felt like I was stuck in this state

of, like, disorientation,

not able to function-- "What is happening?"

And my whole body was pulsing.

My daughter woke up in the middle of the night,

gushing blood.

My ears were ringing. My head was spinning.

I felt like I was gonna vomit.

I couldn't stand up. It was terrifying.

It was like a high-pitched metallic drilling noise.

Something that I'd never experienced in my entire life.

My baseline changed. I was not the same person.

It's become known as "Havana syndrome."

The American embassy...

...a mysterious illness.

American embassy...

...attacks affecting US diplomats.

White House staff and their families.

Where did the direct energy come from?

Who undertook the attack?

How do you develop these systems,

but also regulate them so technology enhances life

but doesn't take life?

Tonight, we're launching an effort which holds

the promise of changing the course of human history.

...the capabilities on which society depends

for its very survival and existence.

More stealthy and sinister than bullets or bombs,

a new class of weaponry is completely invisible.

It can incapacitate personnel and disable equipment

with bursts of pure energy.

It's an ancient idea, set loose in modern times.

When Archimedes developed his mirror ray of fire to burn

the Roman Republic fleet in 212 BC,

and Pliny the Elder talked about using water and glass

to set people alight in 77 AD.

And Da Vinci used concentrated solar power

against human bodies.

Little did we imagine that these great minds of European

thinking would be starting to open Pandora's box.

Conventional weapons are all based on one basic premise.

Whether it's a bullet, whether it's a directed energy,

it's still meant to cause some sort of damage

on the final target.

With a directed energy weapon, we don't have a bullet.

It's just pure energy that comes from an emitter

and reaches a target.

We're talking about any weapon that uses a form of energy.

There are five different types of energy weapons.

Radiofrequency weapons,

sound blasters,

light-based weapons,

laser-based weapons,

and electromagnetic pulses.

Radiofrequency weapons that could be microwaves,

that damage and disrupt electronics,

or millimeter waves that generate heat.

So here an example would be the US Military's

Active Denial System, ADS,

also known as the heat ray.

Long range acoustic weapons,

basically sound cannons or the thunder generator.

Light-based weapons are also part of this.

You would have the LED incapacitator

that creates strobe lights,

and thereby dazzles your opponent.

There are laser-based weapons that can be either

high powered, and they are able to burn electronic circuits,

like the laser Avenger,

or detonate explosives, like the Zeus.

Or they can be more low powered, like the PHASR rifle

that is used to dazzle opponents.

Energy weapons are different from most other military

weapons insofar as most of the time they are used

not to kill the opponent, but rather, incapacitate them.

Near the border with Afghanistan,

the streets resembled a war zone.

Police used both tear gas and steel-tip sticks.

Police fired water cannons.

Tear gas is being fired through every two minutes.

Authorities used tear gas and fired live ammunition

into the air to repel thousands of demonstrators.

Police began using forceful measures, including tear gas.

Despite the use of water cannon,

many students remained steadfast.

This protester, according to witnesses,

fainted from the tear gas.

There are plenty of methods used for crowd control,

like tear gas, rubber bullets, or water cannons that,

even though they're less lethal than regular weapons,

they're not injury free, and some of those injuries

are debilitating.

An energy weapon offers the ability to stop a crowd

without permanently hurting anyone,

but it still serves as a deterrent.

These energy tools are much more attractive

in terms of political expediency.

On the face of it, these weapons may appear

to be more humane, but importantly,

they're also harder to trace.

Where did the direct energy come from?

Who undertook the attack?

All of these attributes give you a degree of political

deniability that becomes increasingly attractive.

Among these invisible systems are other things that create

electronic fields, radio frequency fields,

or magnetic fields.

The constant exposure to these high levels of energy could

cause the symptoms that are now known as the "Havana syndrome."

Mysterious brain injuries

reported by US National Security Officials.

It was like a dentist drilling on steroids.

I got vertigo.

The US Government publicly doubts that an adversary

is targeting Americans.

An investigation alleges they may have been targeted

by a secretive Russian intelligence unit.

A report that links a Russian intelligence unit

to "Havana syndrome."

The reports of effects vary greatly with strange

sensations, with high pitched noises, sense of pressure,

hearing loss, vertigo,

and cognitive impairment.

All these things were experienced widely

by a wide group of people across a wide area.

This was a global phenomenon.

When I took a look at a map that showed where these type

of injuries are being reported, I noticed that the majority

of them happen to be in places where we consider it

a high counterintelligence threat.

That means that we and our friendly neighbors

are employing all sorts of electronic countermeasures.

I couldn't help but wonder if those themselves

could contribute to the problem.

Investigators attributed the sound to a special type

of cricket, the West Indies short-tailed cricket,

But the same symptoms

were also found among diplomats in Vienna, where this type

of cricket obviously doesn't live.

The JASON report of 2021 firmly denies

that any such direct energy weapon

was the cause of these issues.

And yet, how would you attribute their attack?

How would you know if it actually came about?

Several people have said that the impacts of what they have

felt have stopped them from living normal daily lives.

Neurologists and behaviorists will tell you how deeply

the brain can be impacted by energy waves,

giving symptoms very much the same

as those experienced by American diplomats in Havana.

Even before the "Havana syndrome"

kind of got everyone's attention in the news,

the issue of direct energy weapons

has been out there for years now.

There's all sorts of questions against what kind of impact

does it have on a human.

Some people still believe they are harmless,

but they're increasingly in the minority.

We're now trying to deal with a vast array

of second and third order implications

and impacts of weapons

that we're not sure we fully understand.

If you look at what happened in the protests in Iran

over the last couple of years,

the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Forces

were out in the streets using non-lethal means

to suppress the protesters.

But in many cases, they're actually shooting

rubber bullets and there's countless reports

of protesters literally having their eyes shot out.

But what we're starting to see is those quote unquote--

"Non-lethal means" can actually lead to significant harm.

So is non-lethal less evil than a lethal solution?

Now, when you start talking about directed energy,

that same kind of concept begins to come to question.

Where are the boundaries?

Another driver of this interest in energy weapons

is the simple economics and cost of war.

It's not really economical to use

a $65,000 missile to shoot down a drone that costs maybe $600.

The idea that energy weapons don't require reloading

that are cheap on a cost-per-kill basis

is very attractive both militarily,

politically, and economically.

Think about a ship, for example, that has a bunch

of missiles in its silo, some drones coming towards it,

and each one of those you have to fire off a missile to use.

And yet reloading the missile requires you

to transit back to your home base,

taking you off-station

for perhaps months at a time.

Instead of that, a direct energy weapon

allows you to stay on station and available to shoot

time after time after time.

Decades of popular culture imagine this futuristic

long-distance weapon as a death ray.

Then, science brought us...

the laser.

Laser is an acronym for Light Amplification

of Stimulated Emissions of Radiation.

It's created when particles of gas are contained

between two mirrors.

They get excited by the energy from an electrical source

and emit a series of photons that are increased

with the help of mirrors,

allowing the beam to be directed.

Introduced in the 1960s, it has been used

for several scientific and industrial applications,

as well as being for mere entertainment.

But it's also been adapted for military

and defense applications.

PHASR stands for Personnel Halting

and Stimulation Response Rifle.

Its purpose is to temporarily disorient and blind a target.

Another weapon is the Avenger laser system,

capable of firing power shots of up to 10 kilowatts.

This is designed to be able to shoot at drones to scramble

the internal electronics of the system being targeted.

The Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation,

or the SSL-TM, was test fired in the Gulf of Aden in 2021

and successfully engaged the target.

Before that, the USS Portland used that same laser

to bring down a flying drone.

Russia has now deployed five operational units

of its Peresvet system, being used to destroy UAVs in Ukraine,

and with a range-- Russia claims,

of up to 1,500 kilometers.

But at this point, it is not entirely clear,

whether that is just Kremlin propaganda,

or whether that has really happened.

One of the issues with lasers is that you can't use them

over long distances.

The earth's atmosphere being full of particles mean

that the power, the energy of a laser beam,

it's broken up over longer range.

This doesn't happen in space, where the lack of particles

in a vacuum allow you to reach much longer ranges

with the same power laser.

This is why lasers have become a really important tool

in what's become known as space warfare.

You are go for landing-- Over.

The Soviet Union astounded the world by being the first

nation to launch an artificial satellite into outer space.

The failure, nicknamed Sputnik, seeded American fears

of technological inferiority.

The Soviets still had more humiliation to exact.

Yuri Gagarin ushered the human race into the space age.

The Americans assumed that the first man in space

would be an American.

One power or another is going to seize that strategic

high ground of space and then dominate the globe.

My fellow Americans, tonight we're launching

an effort which holds the promise of changing

the course of human history.

Stories and controversy over SDI,

the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The Soviet Union is believed to have a ground-based laser

already capable of destroying satellites in space,

and like the United States, has for many years

had the ability to take out satellites

with missile technology.

As the arms race continued to escalate,

the narrative changed for new weapons tech.

The Strategic Defense Initiative focused

on weapons of defense rather than annihilation.

In the early 1980s, US president Ronald Reagan

decided that he needed to reset the relationship

with the Warsaw Pact.

The era of mutually-assured destruction, when both the US

and Soviet Union had developed enough nuclear weapons to wipe

each other out, looked like there was no end in sight.

Reagan was being told by his generals that they were

outmatched and outgunned on the battlefields

of Western Europe.

Coming out of the Cold War, everyone was weary

with the threat that US

and the Soviet Union might go to nuclear war.

Reagan understood that the West's economic might was

a key factor in the battle against the Soviet forces.

Reagan put forward the Strategic Defense Initiative,

otherwise known as "Star Wars."

The SDI consisted in developing a system

of space-based sensors and lasers.

So an armed satellite that could detect and destroy

missiles shortly after launch.

They would be complemented by Ground-Based Interceptors,

GBIs, missiles that could be fired against incoming missiles

in mid-course and outer space.

Destroying a missile in outer space has two advantages.

First of all, you, of course, destroy the missile.

Secondly, you also minimize the effects from the blast,

most notably, the radiation.

Now, the American public had the hope of a totally new type

of weapon system, one that attacked the missiles

that were attacking us.

That made "Star Wars" very attractive

to the average citizen.

SDI held huge promise against a Soviet Union who, whilst

being a space-faring nation, didn't quite have the same

ability to match the technological progress

and promise that "Star Wars" could deliver.

This was the moment at which the world was about to shift.

The idea that mutually-assured destruction,

the doctrine that had held the balance of power together

for the previous generation,

was no longer going to work

against a "Star Wars" program

that promised a real defense for the United States.

But it was all a bit premature.

We did not have the lasers that would be required to actually

interdict a missile, and we did not have the capacity to detect

all of the Russian missile launches.

But still, "Star Wars" was considered a success.

It was a powerful psychological weapon.

Psychological operations became a hallmark of the Cold War era.

We found that sometimes if an enemy believed you had

a weapon system or a capability,

that was almost as good

as actually having that itself.

The Soviet Union's efforts to pour a bunch of money

into developing their own type of "Star Wars",

led to the collapse

of their already weak economic system.

This helped the walls come down in Berlin.

Whilst the strategic defense initiative was eventually

shelved and never used, it elicited a fear about

the changing balance of power and the way the world thought

about space and about warfare.

Just the mere threat of space-based weapons

was to have the grandest of implications

back on Earth.

The night of July 8, 1962,

would be a very different night for the residents

of O'ahu, Hawaii.

At exactly 11 PM and nine seconds,

a series of disturbances with electronics

started to occur all over the island.

As many as 300 streetlights simply switched off.

And all of a sudden, strange lights in the sky

illuminated the Hawaiian shore.

Slow, flickering lights would change colors

for what seemed like a few minutes.

And when it all seemed over, a very bright light

was seen on the horizon.

For a good minute, the sky over the island

was as bright as during daytime.

Even a local telephone company had its microwave link damaged.

Atmospheric nuclear test over the open ocean.

A thermonuclear device off the coast of Christmas Island.

The city returned to darkness after the clouds turned

pink, rose, and orange.

An intense blow appeared to the north,

then spread south and disappeared.

Star Fish, by far, the most widely discussed nuclear test.

24 weapon development shots were fired

at the Christmas Island site.

To determine the effects of high-altitude

nuclear explosions

on radar and communication systems.

Five seconds, four, three, two, one, zero...

The cause was a project called Starfish Prime, which led

to the unexpected discovery of the electromagnetic pulse

as a side effect of a nuclear detonation.

In a world growing more dependent on electronics,

EMP would become a game-changer.

Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test.

It was done to learn about the damage that a nuclear

detonation in a high altitude could do.

It was discovered that an after effect of nuclear detonations

was the destruction and disruption of electronic

equipment in a wide geographical area.

The EMP effects of that blast overload circuits

and destroys any system that is used to conduct energy.

That means that the system is also destroyed long term

and needs to be rebuilt.

The question this raises is, can you take an EMP pulse

and direct it to a refined target where it does fry out,

overload, or burn an electrical system?

And what are the impacts it can have on a battlefield?

Well, what happens if you can't understand how to replicate

that energy in a very targeted manner?

Given how digitized the battlefield is becoming,

the idea of an electromagnetic pulse being used in any way

that would shut down anything electronic on a battlefield

is fundamentally reshaping how we might think

about battlefields in the future.

All the unprotected equipment on the battlefield

would be destroyed.

That would include the targeting system for tanks,

all radios, any system that runs on electronics,

and that includes something as simple as a device

that has any kind of capacitor, diode, chip,

anything that relies on electronics.

Even planes would not be able to stay in the air.

One of the things we're seeing right now is, kind of,

the evolution of military doctrine.

It's understanding how an EMP pulse can be used

as a first-strike doctrine to degrade or weaken your enemy

before more conventional action.

EMPs can be created by nuclear explosions,

but there are also other ways to create an EMP,

and that allows it to be more targeted.

The equivalent of a million tons or more of TNT.

It may well prove to be man's greatest hope for peace.

Like a man-made sun, the fireball glows

high above the Pacific Ocean.

Although the physics behind EMP are complex,

the results are clear.

Basically, it's a nuclear bomb which fries every electronic...

It may also affect satellite communication.

What is being done today to protect the grid

from weaponized electromagnetic pulse?

They would challenge our communication ability.

Resiliency against electromagnetic events.

Make sure our systems are ready to go on a moment's notice.

Once the value of EMPs was realized,

new weapons were developed

to bring its power to the battlefield.

There is a battery powered,

anti-drone,

electromagnetic pulse rifle.

The device emits a separate electromagnetic pulse

that cuts off the drone's contact with the operator,

loses control, and then is rendered useless.

I believe that in Afghanistan, some of these newest rifles

were tried with various levels of success.

But think about being on a large battlefield,

where you might encounter

drone swarms of 10, 20, or 30 of them coming at you,

each one with the capability to kill.

The THOR weapons system is one of our first steps in trying

to counter this problem.

It stands for Tactical High-Power Operational Responder.

It's designed to be used against the small, cheap type

of drones that were used against us in Afghanistan.

The THOR uses an electromagnetic pulse

over a much wider field that enables you not just to take out

one drone, but potentially a whole swarm.

But the pace of drone development quickly outstrips

all countermeasures.

And the THOR is still relatively limited

in range and coverage.

So, wider range EMP weapons

have been researched and developed.

The latest EMP weapon overcomes THOR's limitations

by taking the fight to the air.

One weapon that has been successfully deployed and tested

by the US Military is called "CHAMP."

CHAMP stands for the Counter electronics High power

microwave Advanced Missile Project.

Essentially, it is a missile that has the capability

of emitting multiple EMPs at various targets.

And so the result of the CHAMP is a directed

EMP in a highly targeted area.

So you can use CHAMP to disable enemy electronics, and that can

either be the mission itself or it can be the first stage

of a two or three stage attack.

As far back as 2012, one was tested that actually disabled

seven different targets before it self-destructed

over an empty desert.

During that test, the CHAMP missile navigated

a preplanned and programmed flight.

Then it emitted high-powered energy bursts over each

of its targets, knocking out both their data

and electronic systems.

The ability of CHAMP to fire from over the horizon

and wipe out systems and subsystems from a great distance

is a real evolution in how we think about warfare.

The idea that you can fire a cruise missile

from hundreds of miles away,

that it could fly over the horizon and target

not just potentially a server farm, but even down

to an individual computer, is now becoming a reality.

But the fact that we developed that in 2012

and reportedly have deployed it

makes me wonder...

by now, do any of our enemies have it?

And if they do, would they not consider using it

against a civilian populace?

In the event of a large EMP attack, you could imagine

a situation where all electronic systems

don't work anymore.

Communications, transportation, the financial market,

even our hospital, our healthcare systems,

nothing would work anymore.

Generally, EMPs aren't lethal to the human body

or anything organic. It just destroys electronics.

But, of course, the secondary effects could be

absolutely catastrophic because our societies so highly rely

on electronic measures.

If the healthcare system collapses, that could also kill

a lot of people as a secondary effect.

Conventional thinking would have you believe at the moment

that any kind of semi apocalyptic scenario would have

to be conducted by a state, someone who possessed

nuclear weapons and the ability to put them high up in space

to give you these impacts.

And yet, the idea that a lone wolf attack,

that a non-state actor

could conduct an attack like this,

is not beyond the realms of possibility.

So the downside and the risk of disruptive technologies

is what happens when that technology falls

into the hands of the wrong person,

whether you're talking about a criminal organization

or a terrorist organization or a non-state actor

that's acting on behalf of an adversary.

The ramifications and the impact of that are massive.

As disruptive technologies continue to evolve

in the 21st century,

what we're gonna start seeing is a significant

reliance on space-based systems and space-based platforms

that are gonna enable these systems.

You're starting to see the evolution

of yet another domain of warfare,

in this case, space warfare.

T-minus ten,

T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven...

six, five, four...

three, two, one.

Go Falcon, go Dragon, go .

Endurance ascends.

An international crew destined for the international...

Stage one propulsion...

That's 1.7 million.

...calls from the propulsion officers here.

Propulsion's phenomenal.

Sophisticated weaponry can never assure peace on Earth,

but now the stakes are growing infinitely higher

as we expand into space.

The militaries of many nations are looking at space

as the new frontier.

It's not unlike people many centuries ago used to view

the oceans and the lands beyond them.

Well, since the late 15th century and well into the 19th

and 20th century, the countries that were able

to project command and control of the high seas were able

to really dictate trade, commerce, communications.

So, as the importance of the space economy continues

to grow, you are gonna start seeing that arms race

between the likes of the US,

China, India, Western allies, and Russia to try to create

and command control of near space.

We have never succeeded in freeing our planet

from the implements of war.

But if we cannot yet achieve this goal here on Earth,

we can at least keep the virus from spreading.

We can keep the ugly and wasteful weapons

of mass destruction from contaminating space.

And that is, just exactly, what this treaty does.

Whether it's around mining rights,

whether it's around controlling certain assets in space.

Norms and decorum between nation states

is going to be critical to make sure that we tame

the wild frontier of space.

The Outer Space Treaty is an internationally acknowledged

set of behaviors that says you will not place weapons

in space that is designed to come down.

That doesn't mean that you can't put satellites

in space for surveillance, for warlike purposes,

but that you can't place weapons there.

This is really important because all warfare

acknowledges the requirement for height.

The essential nature of space, therefore, means

that satellites become their key assets, and space being

the ultimate high that any battlefield commander

really needs to see over the horizon

and to understand the battlefield.

So if you look at the evolution of conflict and warfare,

going back to the medieval times,

if you're looking to lay siege on a castle

before you actually attack it,

one of the things you're trying to do is knock out the sentries

so they don't see the attack coming.

When you look at space,

some of the same basic concepts apply.

If we're gonna start relying more on space-based systems,

it would be argued that before a major conflict or a war,

does an adversary now see or seek the means

and the ability to basically shoot out your eyes and degrade

your ability to be able to sense what's coming?

US policy is all countries should have a right

to peaceful access to space.

The fundamental position of the Russian Federation

is that outer space should be absolutely weapons free.

It is our collective responsibility to ensure

the safety of assets in the space, like satellites.

We're concerned about the impact that debris

from destroyed satellites could have on other satellites.

We have identified 400 pieces of orbital debris

from anti-satellite tests that was done by India.

I think that's a very troubling thing.

Earlier today, the Russian Federation

recklessly conducted a destructive satellite test

of a direct ascent anti-satellite missile

that now threatened the interests of all nations.

Anti-satellite weapons have a long tradition

of shooting down satellites.

They've been tested against decommissioned ones.

They've been used and tested in commercial

and military spheres.

The idea being that you have the ability to take out

individual or perhaps large numbers of satellites

in a targeted and detailed way.

The US and our adversaries continue at a rapid pace

to develop new types of energy weapons

for both offensive and defensive use.

Since 1995, and particularly during the 2020s,

the PLA from China have worked considerably

and used test fired laser to dazzle weapons

against US satellite sensors.

The idea being to dazzle, to temporarily disrupt,

but not destroy.

How do you protect them?

How do you harden them and prevent them from either

an EMP attack or a cyber-attack,

or in some cases, actual physical attack?

Satellites have small rockets on them that allow them

to maneuver to avoid kills.

But the idea of an electromagnetic pulse,

an EMP in space, can destroy not just one,

but hundreds, perhaps thousands of satellites.

This is really significant, because unlike 50 years ago,

where there were only a handful of satellites operating,

now there are hundreds and thousands of satellites

in different orbits around the Earth.

These provide the capabilities on which society depends

for its very survival and existence.

As our societies grow more dependent on satellites,

space has become big business, changing the relationship

between government and private enterprise.

Dragon is on its way to the space station.

This is the 100th successful flight--

OK, pop the champagne.

Bringing the common man into space.

Yeah, it's a great event.

Over the last 15 years, it's becoming cheaper

and cheaper for private companies to create assets

that create services in space.

You're starting to see more and more private enterprises

get involved in the launch business.

As launch costs go down, you're starting to see more

and more viable commercial platforms and business models

that can take advantage of putting up systems

and networks in near space.

It's not unlike centuries ago when the British and Dutch

East India Tea Companies fought for control

of the trade routes on the high seas.

They often used privateers or pirates

to fight that battle for them.

So as more and more companies put satellites

and other vehicles in space,

and then new nations

are entering into the space race,

space will become a very crowded arena.

What's also starting to happen

is the US governments, the European governments,

and organizations like NASA are basically abdicating

having a presence in near space

and focusing on long term space exploration.

That void is being filled by private enterprise

that are creating platforms to take advantage

of collapsing launch costs

to create a whole new ecosystem and economy in space.

So the European way is trade first,

government, military, follow later.

The American way is military first, trade after.

We don't really understand how Russia and China

would do this in the same way, because both of them have

government-led policies.

China space enterprises are still government owned.

Russian space enterprises are still government owned.

Whereas in the West, you've seen this use

of commerce going first, the idea that Elon Musk

was putting satellites up,

and now provides a service.

...two, one--

It's a really different way of engaging with space

and philosophically, how you go about it.

Our civilization is highly reliant on space-based

capabilities, like satellites that enable our communication,

GPS, traffic control systems, everything from traffic lights

to track trains, signal movements for ships,

airplanes, but also things like the stock market

or the internet.

If you're able to knock out the links between the satellite

capabilities in space and the earth stations,

then you're able to disrupt

the way that societies act and behave.

Societies are now so dependent and interconnected through

space-based capabilities that there would be a snap back

to something around the Iron Age.

Our reliance on satellites leaves us vulnerable

to less sophisticated satellite-killing weaponry.

Lasers are suddenly relevant again.

Lasers in space have a certain amount of attraction.

The ability to harness greater power from the sun,

because there is no attenuation from the air, allows you

to achieve greater power outputs from a smaller area in space.

That means not only are they more cost effective,

but they have greater reach.

This, of course, means that a reinterpretation, perhaps,

of the Outer Space Treaty would be required.

We had agreed between states and actors in space

that we wouldn't place weapons in outer space.

A laser, is, to all intents and purposes, a weapon.

That re-imagining, that breaking, that rewriting

of the Outer Space Treaty is something that is likely

to be required in the foreseeable future.

Reagan believed in peace through strength.

That requires us to continue to develop ever powerful weapons

with devastating effects.

But how do you continue to do that without running the risk

that you create something that can hurt yourself?

Weapons manufacturers, armed forces,

political leaders, at least I'd say in our liberal democracies,

Are striving to minimize the risk of collateral damage

by developing more targeted, and more precise,

and more sophisticated weapons.

So I think direct energy weapons, they're gonna have

a much larger impact on the battlefield than perhaps

we've seen or expected

So the original warfare really involved

sticks and bricks and clubs.

The ability to exact a lot of damage on bystanders

or civilian casualties was limited.

But as you start to see the growth and evolution

of warfare, the ability for collateral damage

and bystanders being harmed or killed become

much more real.

So as we see disruptive technologies reshape

the evolution of warfare and conflict

in the 21st century,

how do you develop these systems but also regulate them

so they're not causing mass damage and casualties

on bystanders and people that are civilians?

But even if these weapons were regulated, we can't be certain

of who has them and who does not.

It wouldn't be beyond reach for a rogue nation,

a terrorist group, or other bad actors to either purchase

or develop their own.

They could use those against us in a clandestine manner.

We may get the effects of such a weapon,

but never know who caused it.

You need to understand how we can control these

so technology enhances life but doesn't take life.

The democratization of weaponry, of sophisticated

capabilities, of people capable of using these weapons now,

starts to crack open that Pandora's box.

Have we progressed technology and developed weapons

to a point where we don't really understand what their utility

might be?