The uses of advanced laser networking kit is to to gain an advantage in front-running.

Which is to say, to get your brokerage's orders in ahead of a large institutional order.

IOW: Legally-sanitised insider trading.

I don’t care.

Maybe informative for others.

My actual opinion on that is that you used to have to go to the square where people were exchanging. People farther distances away simply were not there and had to wait in the newspaper to know what happened with prices. I don’t consider advances in communication to be controversial in that regard. I do think people should be aware of who sees their communications.

The problem is that you need an increasing amount of capital to trade. It raises the barrier to entry.

Not 'to trade' but to enter the small world of HFT. Many, many industries have capital barriers to entry, I don't really see the big deal. Just as I cannot start an HFT firm, I also cannot start a toy factory or restaurant without sufficient capital. If you actually look at how much money HFT firms earn relative to the finance sector as a whole, they're pretty small fish. They just pay a lot because they have relatively few staff.

Thats not true at all

Why is that? You have to own some laser networking kit in a line-of-sight to play along. That costs money.

The dogy bit is knowing that a large institutional order is coming.