I would imagine they hold an incredible amount of power.
I would like to know what you think "an incredible amount of power" equates to. A single lightning bolt has far more energy in it than a Tesla battery could ever manage and I wouldn't even consider all the lightning bolts on Earth combined to be an incredible amount of power. A gamma ray burst is what I would call an incredible amount of power, but thankfully we cannot cannot get anywhere near those levels of power in our control.
We just don't have the capabilities yet to manage enough power to make a truly effective directed energy weapon of the likes that people believe exist currently. Huge amounts of energy aren't inconspicuous and our technology level would require massive resources and infrastructure to produce it. Think of the National Ignition Facility where fusion research using huge lasers are going on. It's not something that can easily hide or direct to any target they want. We're still infants when it comes to super science.
So it would need funding in the amount of trillions of dollars, similar to what the Pentagon had go missing and was supposed to address on 9/11 2001?
Physics doesn't care about money. Trillions of dollars doesn't give you the capabilities to generate and control incredible amounts of energy. For this reason I say that any directed energy weapons we do have are weak and mostly ineffective. They are likely just exaggerated stories intended to invoke fear in those who don't understand physics and like to be scared. Why actually try to build scary death rays when all you need to do is give people the impression that you already have scary death rays? Fear is all that matters since that is what they use to control people.
See also 'nukes'
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