High voltage and high current means Z-pinch - the conductor itself is going to compress itself, thus resulting in basically delaminating from the glass sheathing. This is why we have rubber/petroleum-based flexible sticky insulators on cabling like that, it can somewhat flex/shrink with the conductor and is more likely to stay attached and less likely to get damaged.
Just transmit laser power down fiber optics at that point. Either way you're going to need semiconductor switching (it's IGBTs all the way down baby!) nothing electromechanical is going to handle that kind of load.