Lasers require a lot of power. I doubt this is going to work.

"Lasers require a lot of power."

This statement is meaningless as written. You can emit as much or as little with a laser as you like. You could say "a lot of power is required for a reliable inter-satellite optical link", to which I would say "citation needed".

Iridium has been doing inter-satellite links since the late 90s and moving from RF to optical doesn't change the game that much.

iridium rates compared to SpaceX are not comparable and not the same technology

The data rate has very little to do with the complexity of the satellite-to-satellite links, and steering RF and optics isn't as different as you might think.

that's partially true. the data rates have a lot to do with frequency reuse, which means more complicated designs. starlink is complicated in the dynamic conditions, but the beamforming is relatively simple.

Power budgeting is basic engineering. They wouldn't install lasers on satellites if they couldn't power them.

Solid state Lasers can be very low power. Think of a tiny laser pointer, albeit with better optics. And path loss will be very low in a vacuum.