The Pentagon’s announcement this week about “directed energy weapons” shines additional light on technology long associated with reports of brain-fogging “Havana Syndrome” — and raises question about whether DEWs could be misused, two guests tell “Katie Pavlich Tonight.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said he observed successful tests of directed energy technology against drones and cruise missiles. The targets reportedly were taken down by laser and microwave weapons.

On the positive side, former U.S. Navy pilot Matthew “Whiz” Buckley says, DEWs will provide a cheaper alternative for the U.S. military to knock out some threats, rather than having to launch missiles that cost millions each.

“Your enemy can bankrupt you, so we have to deploy these lasers,” Buckley said Wednesday. “The economics are starting to level the battlefield here.”

But there are potential negatives about the technology, which has been blamed for the “Havana Syndrome” afflicting U.S. diplomats in Cuba and other countries. Experts have disagreed on whether directed energy caused the symptoms, but that’s a moot point now, says whistleblower Eric J. Hecker, who calls the weapons “an absolute threat to domestic America.”

“The Department of War lied about this for many years, saying they didn’t know what was causing Havana Syndrome. They said they had no idea, nobody has this technology,” he said. “Well, guess what: The Department of War this year stated we possess directed energy weapons and we’re scaling them up.”

Buckley said the military’s revelation about DEWs makes him think that one day the Pentagon will own up to being behind “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”

“I’m fairly certain there aren’t any little green men from Mars zipping around in some of these ‘Tic Tacs’ or whatever,” he said, referring to the capsule shape of some UFOs. “Probably 10 to 15 years from now, the government’s going to come out and say, ‘Yeah, those were all our stuff, and we knew it all along.’”

Buckley added: “If you can dream it, or have a nightmare about it, there’s somebody in a room somewhere trying to make this thing — or already made it.”

Defense-tech diversifies as “voracious” investors pour in

The defense-tech sector is a whole lot more than just drones — and it’s diversifying by the day.

The big picture: The Silicon Valley Defense Group’s latest inventory of prominent private-capital-backed companies and their contracts, known as the NatSec100, bears this out.

• The top quartile, bracketed by Anduril Industries and Blue Origin, includes makers of autonomous boats and hypersonic missiles as well as a serial factory specialist, plus a quantum computer.

• Keep scrolling and you’ll see nuclear batteries, secure communications, ground autonomy, augmented reality for pilots and lunar rovers.
• More than a third of the list appears for the first time. Meantime, a dozen previous listees, including Hawkeye 360 and Kodiak Robotics, have gone public.

What they’re saying: “When we started this — and this is a bit of an exaggeration — there was a little bit more of a challenge to come up with 100 companies. Now, the challenge is to fit the top 100 companies,” Mike Keating, the executive director of SVDG, told Axios.

• “We have companies that aren’t in the top 100 that have deployed technologies as part of Epic Fury. They’re in the field in Ukraine,” he added.
• “The reality is the private-capital appetite is voracious. It’s not going down.”

Follow the money: In-Q-Tel, which recently reworked its investment strategy, backed 33 companies in this year’s rankings.

• Alumni Ventures backed 25. Washington Harbour Partners, 16. Andreessen Horowitz, 15. Lockheed Martin Ventures, 14. BlackRock, 11.
• “Last year alone we invested over three-quarters of a billion dollars in the defense-industrial base,” Mina Faltas, the founder of Washington Harbour Partners, told Axios. (He specifically cited space, nuclear energy and AI.)
• “Our view is that private capital and the public sector, that PE and VC, that primes and system integrators, that startups and neo-primes should work together as a community.”

Yes, but: These contractors still aren’t winning major chunks of Defense Department spending. As the Defense Tech and Acquisition blog noted: “Our topline takeaway is that the NatSec100 companies still only received a pittance (0.5%) of DoW contract obligations last year.”

What we’re watching: Whether a $1.5 trillion defense budget, as promised by President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, trickles down to the smaller startups.

The intrigue: JPMorgan sponsored this year’s NatSec100.

• The financial institution in late 2025 launched a $1.5 trillion defense investment initiative. Months later, it expanded to Europe.

The bottom line: Merritt Ogle, the SVDG chief operating officer, told Axios the number of companies eligible to make the list had roughly quadrupled over the last four years, from around 300 to 1,200.