The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.
Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'
The current collision between the Department of Defense and Anthropic over whether Anthropic's A.I. models should be bound by ethical constraints or made available for all uses the Pentagon might have in mind raises significant concerns about the future of AI governance.
President Trump stated that Iran's naval forces were 'lying at the bottom of the sea' and warned that any ships approaching the blockade would be 'immediately ELIMINATED.' He compared the blockade enforcement to US counter-narcotics operations at sea.