If I wrote about conservatives thinking wildfires are caused by a space laser weapon to attack the US I would be asked to not make such ridiculous caricatures but https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66457091
Fun fact: Reagon spent over $250B on a space laser program during the cold war. It failed and nothing useful was gained from it.
Space lasers work and are a great way to destroy other sattelites. His SDI program was way crazier though, X-ray lasers fueled by shaped charge nukes to shoot down ICBMs.
Still more reasonable than Project Pluto. I can’t believe how far we got in that particular mistake.
ETA the x-ray lasers were only a part of it. They were throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
For anyone interested, Jacob Geller made a video about this specific topic
tumblr -> reddit -> lemmy
