>Highly precise, high-power, high-efficiency lasers have all sorts of applications, including in manufacturing, communications, even things as mundane as drilling deep holes. If we get the tech needed for a pulsed-fusion plant, these lasers are going to be used everywhere, not just in fusion plants.

These lasers have absolutely no use in any of those applications. You're talking about a totally different definition of "high power".

>And that's the real concern. You have to worry about some terrorist group buying some surplus mining or manufacturing equipment, and then using it to breed lead into plutonium. Or, if the knowledge is public enough, they might just build the lasers themselves. It represents a path to nuclear weaponry without ever having to get a hold of an ounce of uranium.

That's hilariously absurd. Never will any kind of laser used for manufacturing, telecom, etc. be usable for laser driven fusion or nuclear weaponry. That's not how any of this works.