I don't believe its contrarianism. Sure, its an interesting science experiment but it has no viable way to generate power in any way. The lasers needs to be more efficient by a factor of 100x in the best case scenario(it depends on the specifics of how they calculate net gain). Then you probably need to increase that by another factor of 2-5x even assuming you have a way to convert that thermal energy to electricity.

No one has any idea how that would ever be viable; other fusion alternatives at least have a way to accomplish thermal transfer from the reactor. Then you somehow have to figure out how to build a financially viable power plant. Oh, by the way, the lasers need to fire 1000x more for that. No one has any idea how that would work either.

There is a reason no one but a national lab interested in fusion reactions with massive financial resources has done this before; its interesting but doesn't produce any kind of viable power source.

Edit: The INF was proposed and designed as means to ensure the viabilty of the nuclear stockpile. It and the French equivalent were never understood as somehow prototyping a fusion power plant for the reasons laid out above. The press reporting here is just not accurate.